Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Update on helmet/wheel situation

I'm at a conference right now for work...just chilling...sitting in a corner while everybody else is inside (I'm at a booth full of materials). What better thing to do than to spend time blogging?

So, I'm not getting my aero helmet. Not yet, anyway. I just didn't have time and since last Sunday was EASTER and everything was CLOSED (I swear I'm over it), I never had a chance to get down to Lombardi Sports to get my rocket/alien/aero helmet.

BUT...since Cristi and Courtenay both encouraged the wheels and I think they're just as cool (I just don't have the $1,200 to buy them myself yet)...I might be able to borrow a pair from my buddies from Lombardi Tri Team. YAY!! Let's keep our fingers crossed...old teammate Matt might be able to lend me his Zipp 404s...sweeeeeet. My bike looks so much cooler with those on it.

I wish I were leaving tomorrow. But no...I have to work. I'd love to even just stay an extra day down there, but oh well. I think I'm at that calm before the storm...kind of not realizing that the race is only 3 days away. Wow!

In any case, bike is at the shop, getting a tune-up. Going to start packing tonight and finish tomorrow night so that I'm READY TO GO, first thing on Friday morning and will be in the car by 5 a.m. STAT! That L.A. traffic on Friday afternoon is going to be a pain in my @$$.

That's all for now. I don't really have anything interesting to say, so in an effort to curtail mindless blogging, I'll just mention that Joe Friel had an interesting post on his blog yesterday about the effect cadence has during the bike portion of a tri on how the run goes. It was referencing one study that recently came out, which said that pedaling at a higher cadence for the last part of the bike would have a negative impact in all aspects of the run, including time to exhaustion, lactate accumulation, etc. Yet a few years ago a French study basically said the opposite - that pedaling at a high cadence would improve the run.

So Joe says:
Take your pick: pedal at a low cadence before entering T2 or pedal at a high
cadence before T2. One of them will improve your run performance. Which one? I
wish I could say. I have not come across another study on this topic yet. There
may be individual differences which affect the results such as your position on
the bike, how steady or variable your bike pacing was, how quickly you
transition, etc. If you have a personal solution for this dilemma please feel
free to post it.
Hm. There were a few comments in response to this where people hypothesized why these two differences might be. I had always thought I should try to keep my cadence right around 90-95 during a half-IM, but that was only from a few people who had assuredly told me it was the right thing to do. I was never able to really find a lot of concrete information on the topic. Now I see why.

2 comments:

Courtenay said...

Whoa. Your "first thing" is on the other side of the DATE LINE from my "first thing"... I am aiming for 8:30 which is sure to turn into 9.

I saw that Friel post too... which basically says to me ride where you are comfortable? I don't know. When I first started cycling I picked up a Cyclist's Training Bible and "coached myself" which was a total joke, I arbitrarily decided to skip base and go straight to build and it was all downhill from there... which I had a feeling might happen considering Friel's own caveat that the book was for people who'd been cycling for at least a couple of years, and maybe probably racing too.

Good work scoring some wheels. If you had 650's I was going to offer some sort of magical side of the freeway handoff of a loaner set...

Have a great time!!!!! I can't wait to hear about it!

Paul said...

The wheels definitely look cool. But the reality is the helmet has the same time savings. Both are better together. Also most people look where they are going which is forward. Best of luck this weekend. Hopefully I'll get to see you.