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.