Peer Pressure

I'll admit it. I am a complete sucker for peer pressure. Thankfully this is a late development in my life or I'd be passed out in an alley somewhere covered in needle tracks. But no, the peer pressure I'm susceptible to is completely from the training buddies. And it's good. It makes me faster. Twice this week I was pushed way harder and way faster than would have even been possible on my own (call me a big wuss if you want to, I can take it).

The trainer...



The dreaded trainer. I have been on that thing for 8 straight days. And it's March, which means it has now been 5 full months since I have taken a single pedal stroke on the road. It is starting to shrivel my soul. And in a build week (I'll put in about 24 hours this week), there are days when I just can't push the watts on that thing. And don't get me started about how much my a$$ hurts. Well Thursday is always the day that I do my zone 4 workout and the thought of pushing zone 4 by myself was just inconceivable. Well, Roger and I have been doing a lot of training together lately because he has been trying to get in top shape for a 2-week hiking trip in Patagonia (he landed in Santiago today). Thankfully he was off work early on Thursday and agreed to hop on the bike with me (he has a really sweet Trek Madone that has been keeping my Cervelo company on their trainers). The plan was to do the workout that I put on the blog the other day which has 1,2 and 3 minute zone 4 intervals. Well after the first 3-minute interval he turned to me and said- I really enjoyed that one. Kinda wish it was longer. I wasn't sure whether to give him a big kiss or to strangle him, but we went on to do 4- minute AND 5-minute zone 4 intervals. When all was said and done we had a 100 minute workout that included 25 minutes of zone 3 and 25 minutes of zone 4 intervals. Peer pressure...

The Run...



My training buddy Lanny and I routinely kick the living crap out of each other in the pool and on the bike. That's what happens when you get two competitive people with equal skill level together. It's awesome. Well Lanny gave up running after doing the The Great Floridian Ironman in 2000. Like, didn't run a step in 8 years. Well, for some reason he decided to get back on the road this year and has slowly worked his way up to a long run of about 1:15. I had never run with him... until yesterday. He came over wanting to do 60 minutes. He told me that his usual Florida pace is about 7 mph. I was already a bit concerned since I've been such a baby this year and have held to about a 6.5 mph pace on all my runs over 50 min. As we took off Lanny set the pace and I'm pretty sure someone lit a fire under his a$$ because he was shot out of a cannon. When we got to the 10 minute mark and my HR was already in the 170's he said that I could set the pace. Oh great...

See I have this problem with setting the pace. It makes me feel responsible for the quality of the workout. And the last thing I want is to make someone run slower than they want. So I pushed on. The route we chose was hilly. REAL hilly. This is not your typical Florida run. As we are running (racing) breathless and speaking in single word phrases we were able to mime to one another that maybe we should hold that pace for 50 minutes and then do a cool down. Thankfully he agreed, and as my heart rate sailed into the 180's on the hills I knew it was practically a necessity.

Finishing that run was awesome. There is nothing really comparable to the feeling of that adrenaline kick after a really hard run. We managed to run just over 7.5 hilly miles in that hour, including that last 10 minutes of cool down, which makes the 50 minutes of tempo in the sub-8 range. I haven't run that fast since Steelhead. And since that's the pace I hope to hold at Oceanside (thankfully it's not hilly on that course), I need to train at that pace. Need to feel that pace. Need to not be afraid of it.

So now I'm headed to Florida on Wednesday to train with Lanny and the Florida crew. If it doesn't kill me, I guarantee it will make me stronger.


Some other notes

* Lanny would like me to point out that the smoothie recipe was indeed his personal recipe. I take no responsibility for it. However, I wanted to add that if you can afford powdered Glutamine, put some of that in your smoothies too.

**I am going to put my new Michelin Pro3Race tires on my bike right now. Know what that means? NO MORE TRAINER!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!! Temps predicted to be >50 today, tomorrow and Tuesday. So that trainer is history, at least until March 27th. Woot!