EDITOR’S NOTE: Meet Veronica McHugh, a participant in the locally-based Killer Tri Program. Veronica is using the Killer Tri Program to help prepare and train properly for her first triathlon — the Strawberry Fields short course in Oxnard on July 17.
After making the decision to do it, Veronica is currently attacking her training six days a week. We will be following her progress throughout her training so check back soon for more stories from Veronica as well as all relevant triathlon news in Santa Barbara throughout the summer.
Still over a month away from the big day, Veronica is currently getting to know her equipment while at the same time improving on fitness. Looks like right now she’s working with a new bike on San Marcos Hill. Soon it will be a new wetsuit and the scary ocean!!
Last week, I had my first outdoor cycling class with Bob. Our Killer Tri trainers decided to mix it up and have us take our road bikes outside for a group ride. I was nervous, especially since I had only been on two rides with my new bike. Most of my previous cycling training has been indoors on spin bikes; it wasn’t until recently that I invested in a road bike.
Those of us in Killer Tri going on the ride met at Killer B Fitness in Goleta and rode our bikes to Old San Marcos Road to warm up. Once we got to Old San Marcos, we rode up the hill and stopped about halfway up to re-group. Bob told us that we would be doing hill repeats up Old San Marcos. This, he explained, meant riding up the hill for five minutes as far as we could go, then turning around and riding back down to the starting point. From there, we would get a few minutes to recover, and then ride up the hill again.
I was told by Kyle that the purpose of this (torturous) workout is to improve muscular endurance. Muscular endurance training is key to being able to participate in a triathlon because it allows you to race at a moderately high heart rate and speed over a relatively long period of time. This would mean that the more muscular endurance training I do, the stronger I will become and thus be able to maintain a relatively quick pace for the duration of the event I am training for (The Strawberry Fields Triathlon).
We do a lot of muscular endurance workouts in Killer Tri, and Kyle was nice enough to send me the breakdown of the workout we did last Monday:
- Warm-up: 10-20 minutes of gradually increasing effort as we rode form Killer Tri to the base of Old San Marcos
- Main Set: 4 X 5 minute hill repeats at threshold Heart Rate (Top of Zone 4)
- Recoveries: The length of the descent (about 2-3 minutes)
- Cool-down: 10-20 minutes of decreasing effort as we rode back to killer Tri
As Kyle explained to me, the physiological benefits of this workout are as follows: improved aerobic endurance, force production (muscular strength), and power (at lactic threshold).
So, my first outdoor muscular endurance workout on the bike just happened to be riding up Old San Marcos (lucky me).
This wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been so windy that day. It’s tough enough to pedal up the hill, and the wind definitely made it more difficult.
Since I am a beginning cyclist, I haven’t become comfortable with the feeling of clipping my spinning shoes into the pedals on my bike. I have been riding with my regular running shoes as opposed to spin shoes. I am hoping to make the switch in the next week or so. Spin shoes allow you to be more efficient and use more muscles in your legs to push the pedal down as well as pull it back up.
I had given myself a bit of a disadvantage by being wary of clipping my spin shoes into my bike. The wind was working against me, and to top it all off, my bike wasn’t properly tuned-up, so I wasn’t able to use all of the gears I could have used.
All of this aside, the workout was awesome.
I really felt like I had to push hard to make it up that hill each time. There is a special satisfaction you feel when you really have to put the effort into your workout. When you finish, it’s rewarding to know that you tried and completed something new and difficult.
I am excited to see how much I improve the next time we do Old San Marcos hill repeats!
Previous Blogs by Veronica:
Attack of the Killer Tri, Part I
Attack of the Killer Tri, Part II
