Binbrook duathlon relay

This past Sunday June 13th the KW Fighting Koalas entered a duathlon relay team into the Binbrook event. It was an early 8am start on a cool, wet and slightly windy day but our team managed to win the duathlon relay event! Both of my teammates were racing for the first time this year and for one member first time ever, and we won! Everyone was very excited about having a good race, a good race experience, and winning! Having fun together as a team is awesome and I enjoyed biking hard for my mates! For a so-called flat course I was a little surprised that my average was not higher, 33.5km/h and the fastest bike was only 38.9? I can only surmise that the east wind was stronger than I thought and it being a little wet and muggy slowed us down as well. But, fun was had by our team and here are the pictures from yesterday.















Proud KW Fighting Koalas!

Open water swim practise!

Today at 10am was the KW Fighting Koalas first open water swim practise! The weather was little bit cooler than it has been with a light drizzle and east wind of less than 10km/h. We finally got into the water around 10:30am and went over some beach starts, then sighting and then rounding buoys. Then exiting the water running up the long hill and then getting the wetsuit off. All good stuff and the Koalas that came out learned a lot, especially the sighting and learning how to pace themselves at the start of the swim.

Then out for a 20km ride. Nothing like getting on the bike with tired swim legs! For some this was a new experience and one member commented on how tired they felt after just doing 20km ride! In a few weeks I will expand the practise to full on transitioning out of the water and unto the bike as quick as possible. The bike for the first 10kms was just to each stop sign. Then at the turnaround it wasget up to race speed back to the park. Still cool and drizzily and good experience for the ones who have not biked in the rain too much. We then packed up and changed into some dry clothes and that was it for today! Next up the Binbrook Du-relay tomorrow!!!

Good week of training for the KW Fighting Koalas

Yes it has been a very good week of training for the KW Fighting Koalas! All of them have been working really hard at practises and on there own. Tuesday night run practise they ran great as we did 2 laps hard including the hill, then 4 laps of progressively faster laps. You know that they are running hard when one of the members is dry heaving off to the side! Then Wednesday nights bike was a challenge for some of them as we did cruise intervals. Started off from Rim Park and heading to Conestogo, then to Crowsfoot road, then out to Maryhill and looped back to Crowsfoot and back home. While riding this route I lead and would increase the speed slowly for about 4 to 5 minutes while we rode in a line. Object was for them to ride faster than they normally do, take them out of their comfort zone, then slow down for a couple of minutes then ramp it back up! Tough workout for a couple of them until they started to realize that they could actually ride that fast. This was then followed by a 20 minute run off the bike, gotta get those legs used to running off the bike, no question.
Then tonight at 8pm was our swim practise. I love coaching on deck. So good to show them good form and do the drills and correct their strokes and to work them to build endurance and some speed! They all our doing really well in the water and up next is this Saturday's open water swim practise. Four to five months of training in the pool for some of them is now coming to fruition as we now get outside and do the open water swims! So much fun. I know they will love it as I truly love swimming in open water. After swimming we plan to go biking for a bit. I believe one of the underrated workouts is the swim/bike brick. I don't think a lot of triathletes really focus on doing this type of workout, but I do and here is why. It can be very difficult some days to ride hard after a swim. Sometimes I get out of the water and my legs feel like lead weights, other times not. So I have been doing alot of biking this year after I have swam. It is a bit harder to get going on the bike after swimming and a lot of races have you running from the water exit to the transition area, sometimes with a hill to climb, not easy.
One of the hardest thing to do for many, including myself, is to get my wetsuit off quickly. This needs to be practised. The more you do it the easier it becomes. Transitions are a key part of races.No need to spend a lot of time in transition. Get in get out!
Bike/run bricks are huge as well and we will be doing more intense brick workouts soon. I've already given them fair warning of what to expect soon. But, they are all doing great and can not wait for them to start racing! Oh yes, this Sunday we have a duathlon relay team entered in the Binbrook tri/du! Cant wait, it will be so much fun. I am doing the bike portion and two others are doing the first and second run. Results to be posted!

Feeling a little down today.

Yep, got dem blues. Feeling a little down right now for oh so many different reasons. None of them life threatening but all the same it does effect me. Went for my noon swim at WLU pool and one-by-one Koalas started to trickle into the pool! Four in total which just made my day! The KW Koalas really are a good bunch! Fun, enthusiastic and eager to learn whether it is in the pool, on the bike, or running.
In two weeks, Sunday the 13th, HSBC triathlon series is having a race at Binbrook conservation area. I put the word out, WORD, for the KW Koalas to form a relay team and so far we have one du-relay team with two others that may want to race. Need one more runner to make it officially two teams, one each in the tri-relay and du-relay! This will be so much fun:)
Then the following weekend is Guelph Lake 1 triathlon weekend. We have our group campsite and members confirming they are camping and racing! Me, I am doing the Olympic swim/cycle on Sunday morning. Still can not run yet but to see the surgeon tomorrow morning at 8:30am to find out what the deal is. I know there is a tear in the meniscus as per the MRI results, now a course of action to fix the problem. Hopefully I can run soon but not hopeful for doing any triathlons this summer.

Good week of training

With the great hot weather that has set in, this past week or so has been great for training! Really nice to get out on the bike and not have to deal with 35km/h winds the whole time. Just hot sunshine and gentle winds, perfect! This weather saw some extremely fast times for this past Mondays Victorias Duathlon on the bike as well. One of the KW Koalas did his very first duathlon and did a respectable job indeed! His second run especially was very good and now up next will be his first ever triathlon!!
Great to see alot of the members coming out to the practises on a regular basis and seeing there improvements from week to week. Also nice to see some biking improvements for myself as well! I started off my training indoors and worked exclusively on aerobic threshold training only. This is not to be confused with going easy, zone 1 training because it's not. I rode indoors on my trainer and held my heart rate in a zone of 130 to 140 heart beats per minute and continued to do this outdoors. I have now started to do more strength training on the bike and today was a good workout. We went out to Milton and rode the Milton triathlon bike course first. This entails at about the 3km mark going up the 6th line hill. This hill is a little over 2km in total and in some parts kicks up to over 9% grade! I good test first thing in the morning, or anytime actually. Once over the hill we continued to do the rest of the route. Then I get to have a little fun going down the 6th line hill and hit 75km/h going downhill! Fun:) But then we decided to do two more hill repeats, which was good. Legs felt good and hours later still feel pretty good.
So the point I am trying to make is this; all the aerobic threshold training that I have done is starting to pay off. Because now I can add in big hill repeats and soon some speed work and my body and legs are ready for it. I am recovering quicker than before as well. My bike has a computer mounted with a HR readout and I watch it pretty close to see how quickly my HR deceases after maxing out on the big hill and I was happy that it did drop pretty quickly. I also am happy with how I am biking at point close to 40km/h and my heart rate is around the 140 to 145 range! Love it. This means I am generating lots of power, well more than in the past, and using less energy to do it because I am cycling at a lower heart rate!! Sweet. So if I continue on my training path on June 20th I will find out for sure how much faster I really am! And we shall see this summer how the rest of the KW Koalas make out in mostly their first year of racing.

Pictures from last nights bike workout!

Pictures from last nights bike workout. Here we are on the last of 3 hill repeats. For this repeat I started everyone off in a Grand Prix style start, starting every 10 seconds. It was a race to the top! I almost caught the Koala in front of me bu he biked hard to hold me off! One poor member flatted just before the climb started but still biked up the hill with a flat front tire! Good on ya mate!! Cheers to all for working hard.
Me, I just got back from the pool. Felt sluggish today so maybe a little tired from last night? Not sure but I will be finding out soon as I am off for a bike ride and meeting up with a friend. Way too nice out to sit around now isn't it!
Have a wonderful and safe May 2-4 long weekend and see you on Monday for the Victoria Day Duathlon!

Koalas practices this week!

This week the Koalas practices have gone really well. Tuesdays run practice was good, nicer weather does help for members to actually come out to run! But we did two loops warm up to start then 6 infield loops of build leading up to a small hill. So the idea was to start off easy, increasing your pace near the end of the loop which was also the start of the hill! Hit the hill hard, go around the building and cruise downhill and recover. Repeat 5 times then an easy loop no hill, then one last hard effort! They then did an easy big recovery loop then came back and had AM run us through some nice stretching.
Stretching is an interesting topic. It is beneficial and helps us to stay loose, but do we always do it? I know I am bad for not doing and definitely need to do wayyy more stretching.
Then last night the warm weather continues and it was our bike practice!! I got to our meeting spot a little early and managed to squeeze in an 18min warmup ride before the workout. Very windy from the north so I decided to reverse the loop so we were riding the backstretch of the loop into the wind. Started out with two loops of one-legged drills after our warm up ride, then four laps of build. So start off easy then build the pace til the backstretch with the wind going hard, no stopping so the first part of the lap is easy to recover, then a one lap recovery. We then did one lap of standing, out of the saddle and then into the hill repeats! Same idea as the build. Start out easy around the loop, increase your pace around the loop and then up hill! Then cycle easy back down the hill and start another loop easy still recovering, build, hill climb!
I then stopped them for the third repeat and sent them off Grand Prix style for the last hill climb from weakest to strongest climber every 10 seconds! Good for the stronger climbers going at the end to try and catch the ones in front, and the ones in front to try and not get caught!
Then a nice spin back to the parking lot and quick change into their running shoes and out for a quick 15 minute run. Funny to hear the comments when they first start to run..haha. But this is a key workout and one that is in all their training plans, or will be soon. After nearly every bike to do a 15 minute run along with a dedicated brick workout. Bricks can be some of the toughest triathlon workouts for many and I know some that just dont do them at all. But I have found them to be invaluable for racing. I actually enjoy doing them myself and did alot more bricks last summer than pure run workouts coming back from a leg injury.
Today it is off to the pool for a noon swim then back out for a good solid bike ride! Weather today is fantastic as it is going up into the high 20's, wind from NW is dropping to 10km's later on to make for ideal conditions!