Triathlon Training 75 Days Left

I now have seventy five days left before the 2020 Grant County Triathlon. My third trip and things are looking grim regarding whether this race even happens. As of this writing, registration for the event is paused. On one hand, that’s “paused”, not “cancelled”, but curious if it will go off. The larger races, including Kona Ironman in Hawaii, has been cancelled so that’s not a great sign for the field at large. Given that this race is in July there’s a chance that it will happen, but if the state keeps pools closed you’d have to assume that a swimming race in a lake is off too. I am still training for it though, and here is my progress so far.

Training Notes

Nutrition

I write often about changing what I eat and using nutrition as a way to improve my training experience. Most notably the impetus for this is to reduce inflammation in my joints so I can train longer. This has led me to eating more vegetables and fruit and that is going well at the moment. I have also added a daily multi-vitamin and fish oil supplements. I don’t know if there’s a placebo effect (if there is I’ll still take it), but my knees feel great! For perspective, my knees would swell up after training sessions and hurt up to forty eight hours later to the point that I couldn’t do anything during that period but sit. Now they don’t really bother me except for the occasional ache, which I take as a warning to back off.

Equipment

I know if I want to trim time I have to get faster on the bike and the run. I have added drop bars to my bicycle and a treadmill so I can run indoors. The drop bars are pretty cool, but I’ve not found a way to make them comfortable in my hands yet. I have ordered foam tape to wrap them so hopefully that will help. The aerodynamic pickup here should be noticeable if everything I follow on the subject is accurate.

The treadmill has come into considerable help. Being able to run indoors given that I can’t access a gym is a game changer. Plus, I can just jam out cardio minutes on it without putting a lot of strain on my body. At first I thought there was a real mismatch between my cardio and physical health, but I’ve noticed my leg strength starting to catch up more.

Training

Swimming

No swimming right now as all pools are closed because of the pandemic. Huge bummer but I’m utilizing HIIT to grow my upper body strength. I’m bummed about this setback the most because I finally accomplished regular 2000M workouts before everything went to hell. That was a huge goal for me to hit and disappointment I couldn’t build on that progress.

Cycling

I’m utilizing Zwift training sessions to get my kilometers up. This has been sooo much fun. I am going to write a separate post on it because of how much I like it now.

Running

I mentioned the treadmill but I’ve also been researching a lot on technique. Nobody ever teaches you how to run properly, or at least how to run more efficiently. I have been studying stride, cadence, and stretching techniques. I know I need to up my strength if I want my time to drop and soon I’ll be starting a Strava based training run program as we get closer to the race. In the meantime I’m just logging in kilometers. I should note that I doubled my training distances to 5 kilometers!