Cycling Speed

The memory of all those guys simply exploding past me on the bicycle at the New Zealand Ironman continues to haunt me.  I once considered myself to be reasonably strong on the bicycle.  That illusion continued through my first few triathlon efforts when I staggered out of the water in last place and invariably overtook at least a few overweight, enfeebled fellow participants.   

Over the past four months I ride hundreds and hundreds of kilometers but I am not convinced this will do anything to improve my speed in a triathlon competition.  According to my old teammate and cycling champ, Jim Weissman, one needs to do lots of intense speed drills to improve.  So today I chase after Keren along the Arakawa.  It is a good training session.  And yet... I am not going to turn into Lance anytime soon.

So I tell myself the real value of the cycling training is that at least I am in better condition upon completing my ride and starting the run.  When I rode 100-kilometers last December I could hardly walk afterwards.   Today after a hard 900-kilometers I felt relatively OK.