Almost Ready To Start
The swelling in the legs has come down. It should after having to sleep with them elevated every night and with the steroids causing a little acid reflux action, my head had to be elevated as well. With the legs and head needing to be elevated, that meant my body was bent in a "V" position for most of the night. The poison oak is working it's way out of the body with little itching now. The high contrast between red and white skin is going back to normal. That's why I didn't even bother going to the pool as it would cause all kinds of stares and unwanted conversations.
So in the meantime, while I'm on my last steroidds to clear this crap out of my body, I've been putting the finishing touches on the next program that'll get me through the half-ironman distance in October. I think I've worked out all the kinks and next week I'll be starting on some more strength training. I read the other day Chris Carmichael's column in Bicycling Magazine where he discusses the PWR (Power-Weight-Ratio) rating and how to calculate it. He also provided some figures where he thought Cat-5 and Cat-3 riders should be and let's leave it at I'm a little short. I should be ok once I get to race weight but that's about fifteen pounds down the road. I should be striving for at least 225 or 250 average watts for 30-60 minutes. Besides looking at the bike numbers, I'm going to be working on swim technique so drills and more drills will be the order of business for June.
Not that there's any blessing to having poison oak but during this time my new Macbook Pro came in which means there's at least three days of downtime for everything else in my life until everything is transferred to the new machine. So Monday the new triathlon training program will start with some seriousness.
Labels: Bicycling Magazine, Cat-5, Chris Carmichael, cycling, PWR rating
