June - By the Numbers

June 2011
Swim: 29,650 yards
Bike: 425.65 miles
Run: 80 miles + 16 hiking/walking/shuffle recovering
Weights/Core: 4 sessions
Total Time: 50 hours 36 minutes

Not sure exactly what to say about June. It started off with taper into Mooseman, followed by recovering from Mooseman. Physically my body seemed to recovery better after this 70.3 effort than FirmMan last September. That being said, for around 2 weeks (maybe more, maybe less, I can't seem to recall) after the race I just felt blah. Slow swims, slow runs, not great energy. I would have these surprisingly good rides and get psyched that I was back, only to wake up the next day with a crappy attitude and then have a not so stellar workout. This went on for quite a while it seemed. Two weeks out from the race, James and I decided to do a 5k. I think I may have found a little bit of mojo during (or following) the race. Slowly put together the realization that when I don't do speed work (especially on the run), I get very flat. All my runs turn into moderate tempo efforts but on this neverending plateau. I need to move back into slow runs (long), fast runs (track), and only one tempo run (at a harder tempo) per week. If I am able to get into the habit of a fourth run per week then that one should be easy (slow) or a transition run. The latter portion of the month was uneventful (besides the untimely destruction of my beloved garmin forerunner, Minny). As my body came back to me I was somehow able to put in some relatively solid hours and pull my month total up over 50 hours. Initially many of those hours were slow, recovery, easy, or surprisingly hard while going at an easy pace, but things started coming back into focus toward the end.

As a belated birthday gift, my parents got me a bike fitting. I've had my bike since last August and this was the first fitting. The guy was totally great and I had a blast talking with him. I learned more about my bike in that hour than I think I have all year. He massively changed just about everything. Pushed the cleat on my shoe forward, moved my saddle back (a lot, 10-15mm?), raised the saddle (1.5-2 inches?), replaced my stem (80mm for the 110mm it came with), dropped my bars (removed about 1-2cm of washers from the stem), and raised the pads of my aerobars.  I gave the new setup 4 rides before an initial assessment of the fit. The shorter stem and raised aerobar rests are great. Ultimately I decided the saddle was just too high. I couldn't get any power and felt like I was reaching all the time. I brought it down about half an inch and things were better. After a few rides where my lady parts were not happy with me I realized that my saddle had a growing split in the middle of the nose. Time to upgrade -- so further setup changes were going to wait until I could see the impact of the new saddle. Will let you know how this goes...

June 30 was also the last day of my internship year. At the end of the day I was addressed by many as Dr. Wasserman for the first (official) time. My new job/fellowship doesn't start until August 30, so I have a summer free to play!