Indoor Sprint Triathlon Simulation

Before NASA sends their astronauts into space, they conduct extremely realistic simulations so the astronauts have some practice and experience, and know exactly what to do in any given situation that could potentially pop up. Yesterday I did something a little different upon my visit to the gym. No, unfortunately they don’t have an NASA rocket ship simulator otherwise I would still be there, 24 hours later. I didn’t go to space either, I just wanted to talk about astronauts, because whenever I excitedly bring up the topic at the dinner table it usually gets brushed away pretty quickly. And because astronauts are freaking cool. Anyway…

On the treadmill. I mean, cool picture, huh!

 

A few weeks back I mentioned I wanted to race in a triathlon in the near future, (hoping for one next year) so I thought I’d squeeze every dollar out of my two month gym membership and jump in the pool a little more (which was pretty easy since I have barely ever swum laps, and certainly not in the past two years).

A week or so ago, I came up with an idea that got me a little excited. Not so excited that a little bit of pee came out, (but even if it did, I was in the pool, so it wouldn’t have been so embarrassing), but excited nonetheless. I would do my own triathlon, right here in the gym! Just like an astronaut simulation! You beauty!

I knew the distances for a Sprint Triathlon were 750m swim, 20k ride and 5k run. So my immediate goal was to use the next week to be able to actually swim that distance in one go without floaties without taking a rest. I knew I could wing it on the bike, and wing it on the run, but the swim I couldn’t fake. I managed a 750m swim on the Monday, and in my next session that Friday, upped it to 1km. I was set!

The YMCA pool. Although very tempting, I haven't used the waterslide yet.

 

Now I know this “indoor simulation” is far from a realistic triathlon experience, but that’s not the point. The point was to get my confidence up and know how my body reacts after doing all three disciplines back to back (to back)…which I found out pretty quickly! I wasn’t going for broke or pushing my absolute limits-just by completing it I’d have a (training) PB. I was just looking forward to having a bit of fun with a different training method. If you were to ask any triathlete which has more favourable conditions, Indoor v Outdoor, I have no doubt they’d say indoor. But I thought about the advantages and disadvantages for my experience anyway:

Swim:
Advantages- Not open or rough water. It would be as calm as an Enya soundtrack on repeat, and I’d get to push off the wall every lap. No traffic-meaning I won’t get kicked in the face by a stray foot. And it’s consistently consistent-just follow that black line until 30 laps are done, straight as an arrow!

Transition 1:
Disadvantages- Countless, adding on wasteful minutes, as described below.

Bike:
Advantages- No hills, no traffic, no risk of a flat tyre, no risk of collision (I can even close my eyes or read a book if I wanted to).

Disadvantages- Not a tailored bike to suit me, and no gears (only effort level). I can’t use my Garmin watch to record data, and the TV screen does not show current pace, and shows distance in miles (that’s a mental kick in the nuts trying to do sums to work out how fast you are going).
And correct me if wrong but I don’t think you can “coast” on stationary bikes-meaning once you stop pedalling and the power meter reads “0”, your distance won’t increase-stationary bikes don’t “roll”.

Transition 2:Advantages and disadvantages fairly minimal

Run:
Advantages- Like the bike, no hills, no crowds, no suprises. A perfectly flat 5k.

Disadvantages-Treadmill running is different. The fact I have to manually enter what speed I want to go rather than naturally listen to how my body is behaving and react accordingly-this could leave me more fatigued if I accidentally have a speed set too high, or I could not push hard enough and get complacent. (Yes I can manually adjust speed during run but it’s not the same). However, this could be seen as an advantage, as even if I’m super tired, instead of the legs slowly down, they have no choice but to keep up otherwise I’ll get kicked off the back of the treadmill!
Like the bike, no Garmin for recording pace, and Treadmill monitor is also in miles.

In general:Advantages- Perfect weather, regulated temperature. It’s FREEEEEEEEE!!!! I will most definitely win.
Disadvantages- No medal for motivation, and no one to scream “hurry up you board short wearing bearded slacker!!” or similar which would be motivational (and depressing at the same time). I will most definitely come last.

Arriving at the gym on Tuesday I decided I’d give it a crack. I sure as hell didn’t look prepared, let alone like a triathlete. I was wearing my trusty Rip Curl boardies from Year 9, my mop hair flopping around without a swim cap on, with my fuzzy beard in the “Alan from the Hangover” stage and fast approaching the “Gimli from Lord of the Rings stage”. I was going to be about as streamline as an unshaved donkey in the pool.

Surprisingly, I somehow don't give off a "real swimmer vibe" in my Rip Curl boardies...but at least I have googles now! (Learnt that the hard way after two eyefuls of chlorine after my first attempt).

 

I hopped in the pool, dodging the lanes filled with seniors waiting for their aqua-aerobics class and checked the clock on the wall. 8.28am. Off I went. Considering I’d only swam this distance non-stop twice before, I didn’t start out extremely hard, for fear I’d end up on the bottom of the pool after two laps and have to be saved by the male lifeguard-who, judging from our lenghty conversations I can’t avoid each time, probably wouldn’t have enjoyed. I counted the laps in my head, while repeating my personal mantra I’d developed for my technique (please don’t drown, please don’t drown, please don’t drown), and before I knew it, 30 laps and 750 metres were behind me. I checked the clock. 8.45am. Swim done and dusted in a respectable (for me) 17 minutes.

Out I hopped and had to scurry past the lifeguard with only a quick wave rather than listening to a life story, and was onto the next discipline. But not so fast…

Instead of in triathlon conditions where I could jump straight from the water on to the bike in under 60 seconds, I’d have to go through the following painful process: Get out of pool, have a mandatory shower before entering locker room, it’s then mandatory to completely dry off before entering locker room, unlock locker, fumble around for clothes and swap into gym clothes, (optional: dry off boardies in the sweet drying machine in the hallway), lock locker, walk down the hallway and up the stairs to the gym and hope there is one of the three stationary bikes free for me to use. If it doesn’t sound like a long time, it is when you’re timing yourself. By the time I’d hurriedly scrubbed up and completely dried off it’d been a good 5 minutes. After quickly getting dressed, darting upstairs and looked for a bike, it’d been 8 minutes. I’m sure this would be dead last in any triathlon and about eight times longer than average, but I was working with what I had! Rules are rules.

The bike started out average. I fumbled around with my Ipod trying to connect it to the computer system mounted in front of me, but with no luck. I persevered for a minute or two, but realised I was hardly spinning the legs at all and decided to forget it all together. I expected to cover the 20k stationary ride in somewhere around the 45-55 minute mark, considering I hadn’t jumped on a real bike since June. And when I say “real bike” I mean my girlfriends commuter bike she bought from Walmart for $200…so a professional tri bike it was not. It’s like training for a hot dog eating contest by eating hamburgers every night. (Which I was doing that too).

My view during the ride. NFL on the screen and "motivational" whiteboard by the stairs

 

Although it was only a short 20k ride, to be honest, after only ten minutes I could feel the burn and knew that with no specific bike training this was not going to be smooth sailing, especially after a stint in the pool. I kept checking my time, and the miles covered, then converting them into kilometres, then trying to figure out my pace-all things that would be done for me if I could have use my GPS Garmin watch. I’m sure that slowed me down, as well as the fact my mounted TV screen was showing NFL highlights from the weekend making my concentration drift elsewhere. This “simulation” was starting to get farther from realistic with each minute.

At the gym, by the stairs there is always a daily motivational message to get you going as you enter. The other day’s was- “Change ‘I can’t’ into ‘I can’ and pretty soon you’ll be saying ‘I did’”. I thought that one was pretty neat. Looking for some instant inspiration on the bike, I looked towards the whiteboard and read the message “Don’t strive for perfection, strive for improvement”. WTF! I was looking for inspiration-this was crap! Maybe only because I was struggling on the bike, I interpreted this negatively and thought they might as well write “meh, why bother trying to be the best, just be average, it’s fine, take a break!”. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

53 minutes and 16 seconds later I was finished with the bike. Not a fabulous result, with a 23kph average, but it would do for a first attempt back in the saddle for awhile. I wiped the bike down, and refilled my bottle, within two minutes, jumped on the closest treadmill I found and started a jog. Unfortunately it was one I’d never used before and couldn’t work out how to even show me my elapsed time or distance. (That is now two simple electronic devices I couldn’t work today-I thought you were immune from that cluelessness until you were at least 40!). Quickly hitting the “emergency stop” button, I bailed on it, and went to a more old school one, but this chewed up a bit more time and unnecessary running into the mix.
I set it to 8mph speed, guessing that was around 5min/k’s. This wasn’t blistering pace, certainly not for a quick 5k run, where I’d hope for like 4min/k’s, but I thought I’d settle in and see how I felt. Whether it was because the treadmill was displayed in miles or otherwise, the numbers ticked over painfully slowly, and instead of pumping the pace up like I’d expected, I often found myself nudging it down a few notches. Heck I even considered walking after ten minutes, especially after I felt the oncoming rush of a full fledged GINTEN brewing, but decided I wouldn’t have lived it down and pushed on. It was moments like these where I could see why having a crowd cheer you on in the race would be a massive boost, rather than in simulation mode, staring at a wall, with the thoughts going through your head that if you quit, no one would ever know. The unsympathetic wall didn’t motivate me to increase the speed, but my bowels and my pride did, and I finished the run in a decent enough 23.30. A time I would have been far less than happy with were it a stand alone run, but after a swim and a ride, was quite content with.

Couldn't find a good treadmill picture. So here's one of an astronaut rocking out

 

Stumbling down the stairs and back to the locker room I checked the time. 10.11. I’d just completed a Sprint Distance Triathlon training session, albeit in a little different circumstances, in around 1:43, and was quite happy with myself. Sure, it’s the baby distance of triathlons, and would be around back-of-the-pack effort on your average Sunday Triathlon, but knowing I could cover the distance gave me the confidence to actually enter one and give it a real shake, with 100% effort in a race environment.

Looking back at the result, I know I can improve on my swim time, as that was literally my seventh time in the pool in (just about) as many years, and am just getting back into it, let alone looking to improve speed.

The transition 1 time is something I’ll have to live with, being in a gym environment. It sucks having unnecessary minutes tacked on to your time showering/drying/changing because of the environment and rules, but I won’t complain since I have a perfectly flat bike and run course to follow-maybe it all evens out in the end?

The bike session didn’t throw me any surprises, although it was harder than I thought. I don’t enjoy the bike as much as I do running, and my lack of training (absolutely ZERO) shines through. With a weekly session or two on the bike, I’m sure I could drop this time by a good ten minutes.

The run was a lot tougher than any other 5k treadmill run that I’ve done, and if I think about how knackered I actually felt yesterday during it, I’m happy with that result (for the moment). It’s not my best distance (what am I talking about-I hardly ever do speed work or race-no distance is my best distance!), but I’ve gone sub 20 mins in 5k training runs before. That might be a tough ask initially, after a swim/ride, but I’d likely aim for around 22 mins next time.

Overall, it was clean, good ol’ fashioned fun on a Tuesday morning, considering it was -10 degrees outside. Perhaps I’ll repeat it, and try and beat my time next week. If I’m really committed, I might even shave the beard off and really give that swim a crack!

Swim	17:00	Approximate. From analogue clock on wall-could have been 16:XX, or 17:XX
T1	8:00	Approximate. From analogue clock, until I reach my  watch in my locker. 7:XX, or 8:XX
Bike	53:16
T2	2:16	The treadmill stuff up contributed here, but should be 60 seconds generally
Run	23:30
Total Net (w/out transitions)	1:32:46
Transitions	10:16
Total (Incl. transitions)	1:43:02