Oia'i'o

I'm in LOVE.

I could go on and on about how awesome my husband is (seriously I am fairly certain he should win some sort of award for Most Patient/Understanding Man On The Planet) or about how incredibly awesome my little 3yo is (she seems so grown up these days and is the sweetest, smartest, most enthusiastic kid around- she just picked a flower and brought it to me and said Congratulations! I don't know what I did to deserve that but I'll take it!)... but since this is mostly a Triathlon Blog, I'll focus on my newest love, my Power Meter. :)

I went out playing with it again this morning (I've never named my bikes- just never got into that- but seems like maybe I should name this Power Meter? Maybe I'll call her Oia'i'o? That's the Hawaiian word for truth. There you go. I just decided that. Now Oia'i'o is not an "it", she is a "she".... ta-dah!) Anyway, Oia'i'o is teaching me a lot about myself... like that I should ease up/slow down more when warming up... and that when I stop focusing I tend to ease up and relax... but when I want to focus I can indeed create some watts and hold onto them!

I didn't have a solid plan starting out this morning. In all honesty I was just a bit on the hungover side (hot date with my hot husband last night and a fairly significant amount of wine will do that to a girl but you should have seen my hot new dress!) so I wasn't sure how the ride would go... consequently I didn't want to ride with anyone (Oia'i'o has replaced my desire for any riding partners, at least temporarily) and figured I'd just play it by ear and ride how I felt.

Fairly early on I saw a rider on the side of the road changing a flat... turns out it was one of my athletes so I stopped to help him... while on the side I saw a trio of roadies ride by... 2 gals who I've raced against for years being pulled by a strong guy... a few minutes later I was back on the road doing my thing and 20' later I had caught that trio. Crap. Obviously they were riding really easy if I caught them but you know how roadies are... My fear was that if I passed them I'd end up with some passengers and then involved in some sort of cat-n-mouse chase game... but sitting 25 meters behind them stalking watching I could see my power was way lower than I wanted it to be (I didn't want to go *that* easy today) so I had no choice but to pass and hope that they would stick to their own plan and not jump on. I was afraid that the fact that I was wearing my I Drop Boys kit that Julie gave me might not help my cause...

Now is as good a time as any to see what a longish interval of ~220W feels like I rationalized... So I made the pass and waved hello and then just hung on in the hopes that it would stick... several minutes later I glanced behind me and the road was clear so phew, I settled back into my steady effort/pace and continued on my merry way. Turns out, I sort of enjoyed that harder effort so I threw in another interval like that prior to turning around... then coming home I had a wicked headwind the nice opportunity to increase my avg power so I did a couple of 30' intervals w/ 3' rest that were 20-30W higher than what I was doing on that same stretch of road last week (to be fair this ride was only maybe 60% of that ride distance, but still, that was fun!)

It's interesting to watch HR and how that correlates with power... last week I put myself through a bit of an overload week and I could 'see' the fatigue I'd created in the form of HR numbers that were a bit depressed earlier this week... no real cause for alarm there as long as you back off a bit and allow a couple easy days for it to bounce back to normal. This morning my HR was responsive and I felt fairly strong which was a sign that I was good to go so this is why I was unafraid to give it a little push today. (Lesson there is that it's key to know what is 'normal' for your own HR numbers so you can tell when they are elevated or depressed and alter your training accordingly.)

So there you go. Oia'i'o and I are starting a wonderful new relationship! I love knowing the truth.