In 2019, after years of doing 100% of my cycling on a windtrainer, I made the gutsy move to get my road bike where it belongs – outdoors on the road. Dave helped me learn some basic mechanics like changing a flat and fixing the chain. He sat down at the kitchen table with me one afternoon and explained gears in a mathematical, not an intuitive way, after I complained that shifting just didn’t make sense. He gave me the confidence that I needed. From that point, my cycling journey has exploded as I became a road cyclist and learned co-exist with cars and other motorized vehicles.
Year and year, I have become stronger and stronger on my bike. In some ways, I feel like the bionic woman: better than I was before, better, stronger, faster. But I am still not fast enough. In the sport of triathlon, as most of the time is spent on a bicycle, I figured that if I want to be competitive, I need to get use to being on my bike for a long time and I need to push myself out of my comfort zone. This winter, I have been doing both by focussing on building a solid base for the spring.
Thanks to some major road construction in my area in the fall, most of the arteries that I ride to get out of town had become unsafe. I was frustrated because we had phenomenal fall weather for cyling. I loved riding outside for hours at a time, but I wasn’t willing to put myself at risk with the construction. So, at the end of September, Dave and I put my new-to-me tri-bike on my smart-trainer (we retired the windtrainer a few years before) and I used this as my starting point for getting comfortable being uncomfortable. I set a weekly goal (200-250 km per week, with a long ride of 70-90km) and challenged myself to ride on virtual routes with more elevation than I like. It took 6 weeks for me to first complete my weekly goal, but that achievement led me to modify my goals and build on them. It wasn’t more than another month before I targeted my total distance around 200km per week, plus my long ride. If my legs felt tired or if I got busy, I scaled back a bit. This approach seems to be working for me as five of the past six weeks saw total weekly distances between 200 and 300km per week; my longest rides have increased approximately 5 km per week from 90 km to 125 km, leaving me feeling awesome. Mostly importantly, my body feels strong.
Knowing that January is going to be a busy month for me, I plan to keep my distances the same but increase my long ride every 2 weeks so that my body can get use to them. I’m pretty excited about where this is headed and really hope that it will result in a strong triathlon season.
