Sunday, January 22, 2012

Setting expectations!

I am usually late, actually that’s not quite true, in my professional life I am usually on time, occasionally early, in any typical week I spend 20-25 hours in meetings in various buildings as my company has expanded so I am often seen “fast walking” along corridors or playing frogger across the four lanes that runs between buildings. In my personal life I am a disaster! Why do I mention this, well because the expectation is that I will be late and so people, it would seem, bake that into their timelines.

So as mentioned yesterday my plan today was to run off the bike for 30 minutes. I was almost on time arriving back and figured that I would be able to squeeze in a quick 25 minutes or 3 miles, all I had to change shoes and ditch some of the cold weather clothing I was wearing, leg warmers etc. As I rounded the corner I could see my house and I could also see the SUV was off the drive…no one was in, I had no keys either! I dismounted and dug out my phone texted and called my wife but there was no reply. 50 minutes later she showed up.

“…well you’re always late so I figured you would be this time…

Yep expectations set and met! No biggie I sat on the front step in the sunshine and chillaxed, not quite the Brick I hoped for! That being said my ride went well it was very much a two parter, the first 20 miles spent on flat and fast loops around a local lake, the next 30 miles climbing through the Santa Monica Mountains and then an easy 5 or so rolling home.

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It was by far the longest ride on the new Cannondale Slice with the newly installed Adamo Break Away saddle, it went pretty well and all things considered I was comfortable, it’s going to take a little getting used but I did make a point of wearing Tri shorts rather than cycling shorts as that’s what I will be wearing on race day, I have also fitted my hydration solution which is an XLab Turbo with double Gorilla Cages, the bottles stayed in ok for the whole ride although I did notice that they were working their way out. something to be weary of in the future! 

xlab

So this end another week of training and all things considered it went pretty well, 4 days of doubles, the only miss was today’s brick run so I was about 3 miles/25 minutes behind the curve, with 134 miles covered in 12:18

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3 comments:

  1. Sounds like a perfect day, in a lot of ways...And now I know what that "thing" is. Not a biker, so when the pic shoed up on daily Mile I was like, Whaaaat?

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  2. That's an inspiring amount of training. I don't know whether to up my training or just sit here and be jealous. I suppose that's the decision that makes the biggest difference for an athlete.

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  3. Getting places on time is something I think you can fix. Now finishing a ride at a specific time, I am finding is pretty hard to do. When you are doing fairly long rides (like it seems like you are) it is really hard to predict how long it will take you. I would suggest padding your predicted finish times by an hour just to cover your bases.

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