No Real Improvement

This morning I got up and met Drew for a nice bike ride in the park. He had already done 3/4 of the loop before we met and told me that he averaged 18 MPH. I knew there was no way that I'd be able to do that, and I was 100% correct in that assessment.

The first loop was 6.15 miles and I finished that in 24:41 (14.95 MPH average) and second loop was 6.08 miles and was completed in 24:36 (14.83 MPH average). The total time was 49:17 and the total distance was 12.23 miles. I guess the good news is that I'm fairly consistent from the first loop to the second loop and I'm not losing a lot of speed. I guess I'm just getting a little frustrated that I'm not getting any better.

When I started this whole triathlon training process, I had no idea that I would find the bike to be the hardest part. Or at least the most frustrating part. Maybe part of that is that I only went on one bike ride last summer when Drew and I rented bikes so I don't have as much prior experience to compare to. Although, thinking about it now, I only completed one loop in the park, so maybe I am improving from last year. I know I'm a lot stronger and definitely in better cardio shape than I was then. If only my legs could magically get even stronger I'd be happy!

Also, this morning I took a water bottle full of Gatorade so that I could try to get myself to drink more on the bike as practice for the triathlon. I did pretty well the first loop and drank about half of the bottle. The second loop I sort-of forgot, but did take about 2 drink breaks. However, when I got home, I still had about a third of the bottle left. At this point I think that any practice with drinking on the bike will still benefit me later, I was just hoping to be able to drink the whole thing within the 12 miles.