Karen writes: Grinding and Spinning

I realise I am completely hooked into triathlon training again, the weeks have suddenly gotten organised with the need to fit extra sessions in and all the extra hours.  Was training this tiring before though?  Yes, actually it was, probably worse when I look back at last year's notes.  Last week I did over 11 hours training, the last 3 days as usual the heaviest, with a 100km ride, a 1.7km sea swim, and a 20km run.  Almost a whole half Ironman.

The bike-ride was good, I was so sick of the mess and the traffic on the roads out by Takanini that I made a spur of the moment decision when I got to Clevedon to head towards KawaKawa bay.  What a nice ride, windy roads, undulating enough to be challenging, lots to see, and I stopped and turned round at the top of the big hill which goes down to the bay itself because I thought I would like to check the elevations before attempting that one.  I did that twice, made up a bit more mileage around Clevedon and came home tired-out after over 4 hours on the road. I had cycled the 100km at a much better pace last week, but that was on the flat, and this time I was trying out a technique I have been reading about, where you get your cadence up to 90-120 rotations of the pedals every minute, which apparently relies on different nerves and muscles.  The book I'm reading (instead of studying for this week's exam) claims this technique is  the ideal for going faster and saving energy as opposed to what I routinely do which is called 'grinding' (less than 80 rpm cadence).  So, I had a go at 'spinning' rather than 'grinding', and found myself going slower and absolutely exhausted, but pleased to be trying something new and also happy that I had found somewhere appealing to ride.  Hopefully those dozen or so very long rides over the next few months should be marginally pleasanter.

The wetsuited sea swim was ok, I just have to remember that any exercise doesn't feel wonderful in the first half hour, and swimming is no different, I was just feeling like the arms and legs had woken up and was getting into some sort of rhythm and it was time to get out, had forgotten however that when you go from threshing away in the water in a horizontal position, to suddenly vertical and attempting to run...there can be a risk of ending up unintentionally horizontal again, face first in the sand, if you aren't concentrating.

Running with the Te Puru runners on a Sunday morning is still the high point of my week exercise-wise.  I would have to be pretty moribund to miss it.  We speculated on all of those poor souls running in the heat in the city for the Auckland marathon, when the other runners met their targets and ran home, I headed for the hills and ran/plodded on the shady trails in the bush, it was still hot enough but not as hot as on tarseal in the city I was sure. The foxgloves are back in bloom, the gorse flowers crackle in the sun, and the mountain bikers straggle past...definitely grinding, not spinning.

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