Having reflected back on the past month of training, I’ve had some great steps forward, but those steps are possibly negated by some of my errors.  Triathlon can be tough sometimes because it tends to consume you if you let it.  It takes up a lot of your time physically, but mentally too.  If you’re walking around the office and your legs are aching from the morning workout, you begin thinking about proper recovery, the evening workout, am I training too hard or hard enough and so on and so forth.   I’m sure a coach could help with much of this, but I’m stubborn and convinced I can figure this out on my own.  To get to my point, as great a race that I had at Copper Creek, I shouldn’t have participated.  My primary goal is to set a new PR (personal record) at the Hy-Vee Triathlon by going sub 2:20.  My best is 2:22 right now, which for me is a painful effort, but I know I can beat it.  It’s what I’ve been working toward and I lost a lot of “Hy-Vee Tri” oriented training by committing to Copper Creek.  I also had one of my dear friends and his wonderful family come into town Monday night which kept me away from workouts. (Love ya DJ!)  For me, training has a rhythm and when that rhythm is lost, it takes time and effort to get it back.   I have to rebuild the mindset before I can start having solid worthwhile workouts again.

   So, in light of my needing to get my rhythm back, I decided to “kick my own arse” with hill repeats on a nearby favorite of mine.  It’s probably 0.15 mile ( I need to measure it), but it’s pretty damn steep.  I started coming to this hill in July of 2008 after Doug Reichardt gave me some tips on getting faster and will now officially testify to the benefits of hill training.  I noticed a significant improvement within3-4 weeks of just one session a week.   Living in Iowa, we don’t have any major climbs, but we do have short steep hills all over.  Since July of last year, I’ve tried to dedicate 100% of my Tuesday training to hill repeats.  Since then, I’ve gone from avoiding hills at all costs to an absolute love affair.   Here are some of my tips for incorporating hill training into your workouts:

  • Keep your butt in the saddle for at least 80-90% of your repeats.  Don’t come out of the saddle unless you have no other way of getting to the top.  For example, if you’re doing 10 repeats, do 4 in the saddle, 1 out, 4 in the saddle, 1 out.
  • Start your repeats on the big ring with the biggest gear you can successfully push and make it to the top and do it at least twice.  After your you’ve completed those 2 repeats, you can slowly start to gear down to allow yourself to get in more repeats.  NOTE:  Don’t gear down if you can still push the gear your on, up the hill.  Don’t be a wimp… you’re doing hill repeats to get stronger, right?  Otherwise, go ride an easy 20.
  • Try to give yourself only 2-3 minutes of high-cadence spinning between repeats to shake out your legs.  Take in some HUGE breaths of air while doing this and you should try to get your HR (hear rate) down below 120BPM.  If you can’t initially, that’s okay, you now know you have some conditioning ahead of you.  It will get better.
  • If you have any sense in you… .  find an easier hill to begin with and work your way up.  Everything in moderation, right? You won’t become a speed demon overnight.  I’m still working this and haven’t gotten as fast as I want to.  Have patience.

Okay…. now that I”m done with that, would you like to actually see a repeat I capture the other day?  I filmed this with my phone and did it in the easiest gear I had, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to film this while properly performing these types of repeats.  I’ve also included my Garmin report from the workout too.  If you count them right, there are 10 repeats in there.  I actually go down a smaller hill on the other side of the main climb, turn around and head back up and over to repeat all over again.  It’s a bruiser and here it is below!

Hill Repeats

Hill Repeats