CTC Valentine's Indoor Triathlon

This weekend I participated in my first ever indoor triathlon at Twinsburg Fitness Center.  It seemed strange that after volunteering and being around several of these, that I had never actually participated but I decided to shake things up a bit!

Twinsburg had reached out to CTC awhile back about hosting an indoor triathlon.  This was fabulous because at times securing venues has been difficult.  Twinsburg Fitness Center really seems to go above and beyond in what they do for the community.  They put on a duathlon in the summer, a turkey trot, provide CTC space for indoor cycling and now this!  They really have been so good to us!

So that morning I show up and things quickly get busy as it was the best indoor tri turnout that CTC has hosted with 36 participants.  I was planning to go in the last wave so that I could check in any last minute arrivals and get the sports drink mixed and food out while the other volunteers got the show on the road!

Personally I was not feeling super race ready as I have been fighting a cold over the past week and worked pretty hard cycling the day before and my legs felt far from fresh.  On the running front, I have been following the Lydiard Running Principles and have not been doing any running speedwork so I was not quite sure how that would play out but coach said feel free to roll with however I felt.

So after some words from our leader for the day, I hopped in the pool to start my 20 minute swim.  I swam 41 lengths or 1025 yards which tied me for 2nd place OAF.  I should have tried to swim harder as 42 was the best.   I just took the swim at a nice medium pace.  All and all, I felt comfortable and the 20 minutes was not too bad, albeit I sure just don't swim very fast as some guys were over 60 lengths in the 25 yard pool.

We had 10 minutes to change before hopping on the spin bikes as I was just sipping on some delicious fruit punch FE EFS sports drink ready to go.  There were two awesome things about this venue vs. some of the others.  They had bikes set up with computers (so the bike would count) which they carefully calibrated that morning and they had the sound system out there (which just so happened to be playing my Ipod playlist).  With the bike start, I let my legs fly.  Resistance was pre-set and there was VERY little.  It was pretty much, let's see how fast these legs can spin which is hard for me as I think I naturally load a little more resistance and run a slightly lower cadence.  The funny thing is over 120 rpm, the computers just flash 120 and mine did the whole time.  Thank goodness I had grabbed my stinky mtn bike shoes to clip in or I bet I would have lost the pedals more than once!  While I would like to say I went 10.03 miles in 20 minutes, clearly I think 30 mph is a little generous for how fast I really went.  Either way, it was good enough for top female distance.  I was going about as fast as I could spin those pedals and I sure was a disgusting sweaty mess already!

Another 5 minute transition to switch shoes and then it was time to run on the indoor track.  We ran in the outside lane so some people said it was 8 laps to a mile (but it might have been 8.5 laps to a mile).  Regardless, with the siren, I was off.  Oh, how I loved the feel of the springy indoor track.  I was excited to run whatever pace I felt like and my first couple laps or so, I felt like I was just shot out of a cannon.  Then I realized my HR was sky high on the garmin and tried to reel in the pace a bit.  I felt like I stayed pretty well within my zone not pushing too hard and finished with 25 laps in the 20 minutes so we will call it around a 5K....not bad for no recent speedwork!  Not only that, it was the most laps for a female and I think tied with the highest male, who incidentally is my TTT teammate-to-be....so guess I may have a good comparable partner on my hands!  The best thing was it did not bother my leg at all!  I soooo enjoyed that run!

All in all, it was a fun different way to get in some harder training over the winter!  What a great 60 minutes of high quality exercise!  I think these indoor tris can be great for anyone as it is all about how much you want to put in!

Finally, these events are made possible by the many volunteers that count swim laps, run laps and help out where ever is needed.  Many thanks to all of them that came out that morning including my husband, who I twisted his arm as we were worried about being a little short!  What a fun morning and even managed to snag the 1st place OAF award!