Perfect Practice
Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
--Vince Lombardi
Yesterday, I listened to the Endurance Planet episode titled, Breakaway Friday - The Swim and dated, Friday, July 6, 2007. A great comparison was made during the program between running strides and swimming strokes. The commentator also discussed the number of strokes for triathletes compared to true swimmers. As I had a swim workout focusing on technique I decided to scrap the drills and spend the entire workout on counting strokes. Repeating thousands of strokes the wrong way reinforces the muscle memory to keep doing it the wrong way. Drill, drill, drill and more drills until the muscle memory changes. Then build endurance. Yes Vince, you were correct, only perfect practice makes perfect.
I started at 20 strokes per 25 yards at the beginning of the morning and by the end of the workout, the number got down to 14. I kept changing the form and the amount of rotation until the number came down.
Yesterday, I began the Build I phase of the training. Less weights and more cardio. Here's the breakdown.
The Tour has been exciting so far with some great sprints for the finish. Yesterday's spill with 2KM to go looked pretty bad and Tomas Vaitkus (Discovery Channel) ended up breaking his thumb in five places. Through the VeloNews live coverage and the Tour's page and Versus' television coverage in the morning and a replay at night, I feel like I'm not missing much. In fact, there's so much information, I can't get through it all.
Labels: practice, Tour de France, Vaitkus, Versus, Vince Lombardi
Tour de France Days
The Tour is finally here. After spending the last 12 months reading about drugs and problems with the sport, it's great to see some riding again. Full coverage on the Versus channel with morning and evening programming. Hincapie just finished the TT in second place so a nice start for the Discovery team.
Personally, this was a recovery week as well as a transition week. The left knee and the right shoulder both had some recovery and soreness to work out. Light running and swimming with more cycling made sense. Next week I'll drop the second weights workout for legs and start injecting more cardio workouts into the week. I liked how the 3-4 running days made my legs feel with recovery days between so I'll keep that but on recovery days do some elliptical. Cycling miles will jump, with swimming still concentrating on the drills.
My brother flew in from North Carolina so we found a couple of hours between rain storms to ride some veloway miles. He was on Salsa Verde (tri bike), me on Salsa Roja (single speed commuter). Salsa Verde was so fast that I had to get out of the seat and really pedal to keep up at times, but it made for a great workout.
Labels: Discovery, Hincapie, Tour de France
Little Adjustments
I'm in the third week of the half ironman program I've cooked up, using the Triathlete Magazine HIM program as a base. It's going pretty well except for the left knee. Even though the running at this point is real slow, there's something going on with the knee. It's like it needs to popped into place upon waking in the morning and if it doesn't get popped and then I run....well, it's uncomfortable. Getting on the bike seems to get it in alignment so I think I'll do a few miles on the trainer until everything gets into proper position. It's probably a better warmup than I've been doing anyway.
I read where a couple of friend's half ironmans imploded last weekend. From what they wrote or told me, it reinforces how negative thoughts can really pull the athlete down or how positive reinforcement can really elevate the athlete beyond their abilities. In both cases the athletes finished the race when they could've blown it off and raced another day.
I'm reading a lot of cycling materials, mostly from the web lately. Maybe it's the Tour that's about to start next week or that I'm obsessed with watts and my power output these days. "Jufre Pou, who weighs 147 pounds, averaged 388 watts for 32-minutes. His maximum 10-minute value was an astonishing 400 watts." This clip was taken from VeloNews. I've got a long way to go.
When the 2006 Ironman World Championships aired a few months ago I missed it. I was so mad turning on the TV and seeing the last two minutes I couldn't stand it. But, as luck would have it, I get to see it as it'll air again on Aug. 5 from 2:30 - 4:30 ET.
Labels: cycling watts, Half Ironman, Tour de France
