I'm flying out to Barcelona today and whilst the bike box turned up without any trouble, my other preparation this week has not really been ideal. My stomach has decided that it is not very happy so I've had to miss a few sessions this week which was not what I wanted but there you go.
I did do a 10 Mile bike timetrial this week. This is the first one I have ever done so wasn't really sure what to expect. Weather was fine and there were over 40 competitors each going off at 1 minute intervals. I was number 38 so had a bit of a wait until I got underway. There were some serious bikers out there doing this, lots of disk wheels and pointy helmets so I knew that they were going to be fast!
The course is pretty tough, the first 4 miles or so are uphill so I set off with the intention of pretty much giving it 100% to the top of the hill and then just try and hold on and pedal hard on the way back down, the course comes back past where you started, down a bit more of a hill before a sharp left turn and then a flatish last mile to the finish.
I certainly gave it 100% up the hill, this was a new form of pain!! When I had some testing done when I was out in Australia, I'm fairly sure that they calculated my max HR on the bike at 184, turns out that it is higher than that as I hit 187 on the last climb to the top of the hill!
It was good fun coming back down, I was in my top gear and pushing hard, I managed to keep the HR high for most of the down hill although there was one part where I couldn't pedal fast enough, speedo had me maxing out at 72 km/h. I then took the sharp left turn pretty conservatively and tried to smash the last couple of minutes on the flat. I was pleased with my time of 24.35, average speed of about 39 km/h (24.7mph).
I was the 19th fastest time of the evening, out of 42 finishers, fastest time for the day was 21.15.
Yesterday evening was spent trying to pack all my stuff for the weekend, there is so much that you need to take it is crazy! I think I am pretty much done now though, we're heading to the airport at about 11am to give me plenty of time to sort out getting the bike box checked in. Erika flies out tomorrow night after her sports massage exams.
My stomach troubles are still with me so I'm hoping that clears up before Sunday otherwise the race will not be much fun!
I have my race planned out with heart rate zones that I will aim to stick to during each section, hopefully that should result in me being able to run strong. I'm confident of a new pb and would like to get close to the 5 hour mark, I think it is unlikely that I will go under that but we'll have to see how it goes, lots of things can happen on race day. The weather forecast looks pretty good, 23 degrees and sunny on Sunday. Will report back after the race.
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