Weekend Full of Ups and a Down

One thing I've learned from Triathlons and enjoy doing is getting there the day before a competition. It makes the morning before the event less stressful in a big way and I'm glad I've adopted this strategy to DJ's dance competitions.

wish I was this flexible

DJ did great and as I said in the past, dancing in her first year of competition she is doing awesome. In both the Freestyle and Slow dance divisions she reached the semi-finals in her age group and the competition was again one where everyone danced together, no matter what experience level.

can you spot nr152

Dancing against girls who's been dancing for years and still doing that well is just awesome. What I liked about the competition poster is, it said: "The best dancers of South Africa will be competing". If you look at the poster the guy on it, is DJ's coach.

Wouldn't it be awesome if a Triathlon or Ironman flyer's says: "The best Triathletes of the country will be competing". I am sure that will give a lot of athletes a boost.
With her doing so well it was quite a rush getting to the Parlotones concert after the dance competition. The concert started at 8pm and we arrived 30 minutes late but luckily it was still the supporting bands playing and we didn't miss out on the main act, which was just amazing

With the concert finishing at 11h30pm and with us still to drive back home, which is a two hour drive, we arrived back home in the early hours of this morning.

Amazing how many cars are on the road that time of night. I said to Kim I think more than half the people on the road at that time of night must be drunk as they were just flying past me and I am not a slow driver. Where do they need to be in such a rush after 12 at night?

This morning I enjoyed my maiden ride on my new bike and it was actually scary at first. Amazing what three weeks on a road bike can do and then suddenly riding in the aero position with cars passing by. It took me a good hour before I was comfortable again on the TT bike.

But I'm glad to report back that Roxy did just great with no hick ups and everything worked 100%. One thing about those Zipp R2C shifters, they are just awesome.

The training session was a 3 hour ride with 4x20 minutes intervals. Two at Tempo pace and the next two at Steady State pace. With my new power zones and with me getting somewhat confused last week about the zones, I decided to give myself a visual reminder.
One thing of having a coach and something I am so thankful for, is that coach pick up on things I don't. She picked up that I was pedalling at a lower cadence with each session.

I didn't notice it but I used to pedal at 90+ rpm but lately as I am pushing it to maintain my power output, my cadence has dropped. You don't realize it but you go from 90+ to high 80's, Then as time goes on you drop to the mid 80's and before you know it you are pedalling at high 70's to maintain the power.

The bad thing about pedalling at a low cadence is it will bite you big time during the run after the bike.

So the instruction from coach for my next block of training is to maintain 90+ rpm no matter what, even if I have to loose some of the power.
I am glad to say, I could manage my power range and my cadence is back up for the intervals today, just focus.

The only sad thing about this weekend as everything else was so great was Kim losing her ring at the dance competition. It's a very expensive ring I bought her for her 40th birthday and needless to say she is very sad about it.

To cut a long story short, how did she loose it: stupidity, and that's her words not mine.

Bike session:
3hrs, 95.8km, 89rpm, 32.3kph, 139bpm, 246 watts