Is the Garmin Varia RearVue worth the $150 price increase over the basic Varia?
Nah.
Got my new wetsuit after all, a Roka Maverick Comp.3, their entry-level one, one size up from the one I have. It’s definitely more comfortable than the one I had; I think maybe it was the wrong size for me all along. Took it out for a very short spin, swam less than five minutes before a thunderstorm started rolling in and I got the hell out of there…
52ºF air and 59ºF water, though, pretty close to conditions in San Francisco Bay, so despite the short swim, I’m less worried about the cold now. That said, I built a little dashboard with publicly-available NOAA data to keep an eye on the water temps leading up to race day:
As for the rest of May:
| Sport | Activities | Time | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swim | 15 | 9:26:12 | 19.8 km |
| Bike | 20 | 33:58:33 | 1,136.4 km |
| Run | 13 | 14:05:54 | 150.7 km |
| Total | 48 | 57:30:39 | 1,306.9 km |
Probably the best swim month I’ve had in a while so I think I’m as ready as I’ll be for Escape from Alcatraz on Sunday.
How’s everyone else’s training going?
May started badly, 6 days travelling and then I caught a cold which meant a total of 10 days without any training, TSS fell from 61 to 48. I eased back into it and TSS stabilised around 48. I couldn’t build it back as I had the half-ironman on 24th and didn’t want to go into that carrying a load of fatigue.
Anyway, totals for the month were 13.75 hours cycling, 8 hours running and 1.75 hours swimming. Way down on April, but then travel, sickness and recovery after the race took up most of the month.
First ever stand-alone half-marathon this coming Sunday.
Enjoyed first tri in a long time, local standard distance. Would’ve been second in AG but got fourth.
Forgot goggles but 800m pool swim was okay, done in 14:00, caught a puncture in T1 so as I rolled into what was a neutral zone I was told to take my time “it doesn’t count”. 8 mins later I was rolling again and crushing the first of four loops 
. It felt good to hammer it and watch the tarmac fly by, encourage the newbies and generally have fun. Legs were hurting and power meter cutting out, so I went by heart rate and it stayed low throughout sadly. 
Bike was a long way of what I thought were reasonab le estimates but I tried not to let it get me down - I had paced my effort evenly so a minor win. Run course is a twisty hilly wooded trickster but again I paced it pretty well and this time hit my target.bit of back pain which was unusual probably due to using a roadie.
A nice way to spend 2,200 kcal 
Escape from Alcatraz was awesome, it absolutely lives up to the hype. Here’s my race report:
Hi all. Long time no chat life has been busy but I’m back with an essay. Like others here. I’m trying to make a come back to tri after 4-5 years off targeting IM Chattanooga this fall. I did white lake 70.3 in May that was shortened to 42.3 with half the bike being canceled due to weather and boy was it eye opening (but was overall super awesome. Had a great time really recommend). Panicked in the swim but once I found my rhythm had a really good swim considering the panic and minimal training. Run went really well after the first .5 mile and got my legs under me. Need to do more bricks. But the bike was a significant struggle and I’m trying to understand why. I primarily train indoors and going into this event I feel like I was decently consistent and completed multiple 2h and 3h endurance rides on the trainer that felt easy with avg powers of 150-160ish. But when I try to hold that power on the road it feels significantly more difficult. I’ve now done multiple rides outside trying to hold that wattage and it just feels like such a challenge compared to what is so much easier when I’m riding inside. Which brings me to q1.
How does your indoor training/numbers relate to your outside abilities and is there anything specific that you do during indoor training that makes you more durable and capable outside ?
Bonus Q2. I’m contemplating a new saddle and seeing lots of recommendations for the fizik aeris long distance adaptive r1/r3, gebiomized stride, and prologo dimension tri cpc. What saddles are everyone riding and how are you liking them? There are some decent price jumps between those saddles so like to get some opinions before I blast off some money and have my wife hit me with the bruh cmon.
Thanks for reading my essay. Happy Monday 
Congrats on returning to the tri world. What indoor trainer setup do you have? Is it calibrated or needs to be calibrated every ride, etc? Are you in aero on the trainer as much as you are outdoors (assuming you are racing a tri bike)?
These are great questions!. I have my tri bike on a Wahoo Kickr that i calibrate at the end of every ride. I do a very significant portion of the endurance rides in the tt position to try and make sure i am as accustomed to the position as possible which is why i am so surprised to be feeling such a difference in rpe.
I never had an outdoor power meter prior to this year so i am thinking maybe it is just something that I need to get out and ride outside more and get used to it and just htfu.
You are addressing the two obvious things that i thought of first. The other thing is maybe your outdoor power meter doesn’t match your Wahoo (do you calibrate it every ride?). You could start 10-15 watts under your indoor watt targets on your next outdoor ride, see if that feels more in-line with RPE at first, then sneak up on it a bit from there. Most folks struggle the OTHER direction - finding indoor watts harder to produce than outdoor watts.
Power meter pedals and power matching to your trainer solve that.
For tri where courses are relatively flat it’s really useful, I’m not so sure on the value for group rides though.
I raced Coeur d’Alene, my A race for the year, last weekend. Tough day, not my best race, but not my worst result either at least. I took this past week easy to recover, but I’m gonna try to nail this next training block and see if I can do better in Boise next month.
Hi! The nervousness before my first IM just kicked in. 
One of many thoughts…
Read on several places that one should consider bringing extra pare of googles to the swim. have never had any issues with my googles in shorter races but I guess bringing an extra pair will avoid jinxing it. However, where to I store the extra pair? Around the ankle? Higher up on the leg or where? Or do I just drop them during line up? When is the biggest risk of needing an extra pair?
I’ve had goggles snap when putting them on (thankfully not during a race), so that’s what I’d consider the highest risk. I bring a second pair with me to transition and either leave them there after I’ve put on my wetsuit, goggles, and cap, or leave them in the morning clothes bag if available. If you have family/friends coming with you to the swim, you could give the second pair to them before getting in line. I guess you could also put them inside the wetsuit, but I’ve never tried that.
Thx! I also think a snap as the biggest risk. Good idea to take help from family/friend. Since start swim is a bit away from transition area.
Raced Ironman 70.3 Boise last weekend. After some air quality concerns the week before, the swim ended up being canceled at the last moment due to high winds at Lucky Peak Reservoir. Still, a decent result for me, with my fastest 70.3 bike split to date. Full recap here:
I don’t think we have anybody racing this month, but @bretzky and @timb34, how did your races go last month?
Here we go then.. Short race report : Altriman Olympic distance
Les Angles in the western Pyrenees is a small village not far from Font Romeu. It’s a ski station in winter and bike park in summer. It overlooks Lake Matemale, which seems to be where all the athletes who are staying at Font Romeu seem to come to run around the forest and back and forth on the dam, because it’s the flattest area for miles.
The Altriman triathlon has been going since 2009, and is best known for it’s punishing long-distance versions, which look incredible but would ned me to devote my whole life to for a number of years. I know the village and area quite well after many ski and walking trips, so this year I signed up for the slightly more reasonable Olympic distance, encouraged by a friend who wanted to do the Sprint distance as her first ever triathlon.
We had a good forecast, sunny and hot (but not as hot as most of the rest of France, suffering under heatwaves).
Swim : Lake Matemale is lovely. Not super clear water, but a great setting with the mountains all around. The swim went really badly, as happens to me in about half my races. My old wetsuit is now too small across the chest, the air at 1600m is thinner than I’m used to, goggles were impossible to see through and I was really thrown by how far the buoys seemed to be… I got round, and wasn’t quite the last out of the water, but it wasn’t pretty.
Bike : The main reason I was inspired by this race is the bike course. 45km and 1060m of ascent - it does a single long loop behind the hills opposite Les Angles, with great views over the Canigou, and the kind of tiny mountain road that is scarier in a car than on a bike. I’d slightly underestimated the long climb up the other side, but made it over without having to stop under a tree.
Run : Up from the lake to the village, along the lakeside and then up and through the forest. 10km and 327m of ascent, with most of that being one killer climb between 4 and 5 km. Started cramping about 300m after t2, but managed it ok, walked the climb and ran the rest. Really great trails through the woods and great crowds when finishing in the village. Finished completely emptied but really happy.
My friend did really well - also suffered on the swim but enjoyed every minute of the bike and run.
Really great event, with a fabulous course, super volunteers, great ethos where the emphasis is on the experience instead of the result for everyone… the Half and Full versions on the Satudaylook even better… but sooo much harder. Our apartment overlooked the road that leads back to the village on the run course… and there were people suffering along there until 3 in the morning
Really glad I did it, and tempted to do the same distance next year with a new wetsuit and better adaptation to the altitude - I think I could enjoy it a lot more.
I did a middle distance (70.3) two weeks ago, swim was cancelled though. Replaced with a run.
I’m very late in adding my name to the list but I’m doing Michigan 70.3 on September 20. It will be my first IM event since 2024 when I did Des Moines 70.3 and IM Florida. I waited to sign up until the next year’s 70.3 WC venue was announced, and I’m going to take a shot at qualifying. I’m in the 50-54 AG and I think it will be competitive.
I’m currently in the build phase of a high-volume 70.3 plan. There are a couple aspects that are surprising to me. First, TR has kept my FTP low. It has assessed me in the high 220s/ low 230s for most of the plan. Two weeks ago I just set it myself at 240 and have not had any problem completing the workouts. It still predicts I will jump from 229 (it’s assessment two weeks ago) to 233 in two weeks. Not sure how it’s missing the fact that I’m completing workouts at a higher level and still predicting 233.
The second surprising element for me is the long ride. On this weekend’s calendar I have a ride of 4 hours and a couple weeks later one of 5 hours. Both are followed by race pace runs. The power for those rides is low (55% FTP). I followed TR plans in the past and don’t recall rides of that length.
Sorry for the long post. Good luck to everyone training and racing an IM this year!
Nice race and writeup. I caught the end of the pro mens on the youtube feed. Cool to see Ari making up some places on the run as he’s from Seattle. It was hard to tell how hot it was from the video but you could see in peoples faces they were struggling with the heat.
If you plan to keep racing these super hot races, it might be time to consider a not black trisuit and helmet! Do you think your bike/run would have been similar timing if you’d done the swim? Bummer you only get to do 2/3 things you train and sign up for.
What race is next for you?