I’m celebrating my one year anniversary with TrainerRoad this week. I’m 64 years old and I’ve been a runner for almost 40 years and triathlete for 18 years (Ironman too). My first FTP test was 192 and it’s now 244. When I started TR, I was recovering from my second achilles surgery (on the same one) in eighteen months and was looking for a structured approach to get me back on my bike and into triathlons again. My bike performance in 2019 improved significantly and I’m approaching almost 6,000 miles for the year. I’ve done 3 triathlons(Sprint/Olympic) and a duathlon this year as well.
A significant side benefit of TR to me has been the ability to maximize the fitness improvement on my bike to significantly help my return to running in getting my leg strength back without risking tearing up my achilles for the third time. I’ve been able to strategically plan my run/race activity while keeping my run mileage down. Two days ago, I raced in the Route 66 Half Marathon event in my town. I ran a 1:56:37 to finish 533 of 3,836 runners and 9 of 99 within my age group. While that’s not a fast time, I’ve never been able to run like this with so few miles of run training. TR continues to be my foundation for fitness. For 2020, I will continue to leverage the platform for training for the Race Across America event in June. I’m on a four person team and my training goal is to achieve the ability to ride the equivalent of nine days of 90 to 100 mile rides each.
That’s gonna be hard and that is why we do these things.
CJ