Holy crap! They should put a laymen’s explanation of what embrocation means on those packages of chamois butter! A little bit of a surprise when I decided to try the chamois cream (called D’Z Nutz, appropriately enough) today on a long training ride. It tingled…a lot… but then it got better. J
That’s right folks… I’m back to training. I didn’t learn my lesson enough last year with my half-ironman adventure at the Beach 2 Battleship race (B2B) so I’m back for more. And by more, I mean DOUBLE! I’m going to be enduring through a Full Ironman distance this year, either in late October or mid November. The official race has yet to be determined but, either way, it’s time to do some work.
So if you’ve kept track, I really haven’t posted anything since about April, when I was going CRAZY doing Maximum Aerobic Function (MAF) training with the help of my oh-so-annoying heart rate monitor. Bee Dee BOOOO. Ugh. I still have nightmares about that sound. So what am I doing for these first couple of weeks? Yup. MAF. Shit….. but I learned my lesson. I just look at my watch now, no more alarms. And when I feel like going, I go.
Take today for example. Now I’ve got lots of Garmin workouts posted on Garmin Connect but today was the first one I threw up on Facebook (making it “Facebook Official” that I was back in training) and it was a 3 hour ride for 56 miles, exactly half the distance I have to travel in either 12 or 16 weeks. It was just a confidence booster that I still had it in my legs. I’ll make the distance. I’ll make the times. I just want to have some fun while doing it. So today, while riding at about a 145 heart rate I remembered that there were some STRAVA sprint points on the ride. No idea where they were exactly but a general ballpark.
Now generally a long ride is for low intensity but sometimes you get a wild hair up your $@#$, or, in this case, a tingling feeling. So a nice, hard effort was in order. I can tell you the whole ride averaged over 18mph and I had a couple of sprints over 30 mph, but the best part was that overall, I felt great. I could have kept going, but Daddy’s got to go to work. Now that I’m seated, my legs feel fine but I’m finding my neck is getting sore. From experience, I know this is the case and it will get better.
Lots more time in the saddle (with that “special” felling apparently) and runs upcoming. Stay tuned and I’ll try to keep you updated on all the lies I tell myself to get through such a FUN event (See? Doing it already).
TriCycle & Run 