Sunday, March 12, 2017

LPC Florida Triathlon Camp - Day 4 - Lake Louisa Brick Workout

I'm way behind posting my daily updates...no doubt because I was so busy at camp I finally ran out of time to keep up my blog. But I'm home now - and able to spend some quality time thinking back to a great week.

On Day 4 of camp, we went out to Lake Louisa State Park for an interval brick workout. Coach Mark had put 5 reps of the brick in my schedule, (Warm-up, 3 hard sets, cool-down) which I figured was a bit much for the time, but I was willing to give it a go.

There was a lot of traffic en route to the park due to construction, so we got there a bit late. Since the truck with the bikes was still stuck in traffic, Coach James suggested a warm-up run. I ended up doing 1 mile relatively easy - finishing just in time to see the truck arrive.

Nothing like having transition racks for a brick workout!
 
Once everyone was set up, we had a warm-up rep of the 11k bike and 1 mile run course. I ended up doing a second run warm-up since I'd already done the first one. But I figured it would all work out in the end (which it did since I didn't quite have enough time for a full cool-down rep of both bike/run).

For the main set, I wasn't sure how well I was going to do. My stomach was still very iffy after the Allen's Challenge the day before, but I figured I would do my best and see what happened. We all lined up together to simulate T1 - although the folks doing a 'draft legal' brick went first.

Before the start of the first rep

Turned out the first rep of the brick was pretty good. I averaged 31km/h on the bike, and then around 4:50 per km for the run. That was by far my best loop. While I thought the other two bike reps were closer...they weren't really. Both of those clocked in at 29km/h.

On the run, I faded a lot on the second loop as the heat started ratcheting up and I started to get hungry (I only had 1 slice of toast for breakfast - which wasn't enough to fuel a hard workout, but all my stomach could handle at the time). My pace on that loop fell back to the same pace as the warm-up. But while I was taking a short recovery break, Coach Mark said something about how once your mind stops pushing, you fade (I can't remember his exact words...but I took it to mean: mind over matter). That gave me a bit of spark to push into the third rep. While the bike was the same as the second rep, the run did get a bit faster, landing somewhere in the middle of Lap 1 and Lap 2 in terms of pace. I took the speeding up as a good sign.

I look awkward, but at least am smiling!

When I finished the run, Coach Mark said I still had time to do a cool-down loop on the bike, so I did. This was actually my favourite bike loop of the day since it seemed like I was the only one out on the road. It was like I had the entire park to myself since I didn't see any other bikes or cars. I simply enjoyed the ride and looking at the scenery since I wasn't trying to keep to a specific pace. It felt wonderful: a great way to end a hard workout.

Of course, by the time I got back, the truck was pretty much loaded and everyone else was ready to go for the swim. I had just enough time to pass my bike off to some of the camp coaches (who kindly took my bike off my hands and got it loaded) and pull on my wetsuit - and it was time to swim.

Thankfully the swim was pretty short since I was well and truly starving (okay, not really - but I was hungry). The water was lovely. We did a couple of warmup loops, some hard/easy reps, beach starts, and exits. I was pretty tired from the 5 reps of the bike/run (even if I had to count my last run-rep as the extra run warmup loop) so not really sure how hard my efforts really got. But I thought it was pretty good all told. Wetsuit performed beautifully and fits much better than my old one.

Running start...

After the swim, there was a bit of time for pictures - including one of all the women at Camp in order to celebrate International Women's Day. What a wonderful group of strong, inspiring and motivating women!

Awesome ladies at CampLPC

Later that night, I headed out to Disney Springs with Paula, Karen, Coach Mark and Coach Alex. Paula exchanged some running shorts at one store and then we took Coach Mark out for pizza for his birthday. 

Happy birthday Coach Mark!

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