Is the third time going to be a charm???

For the past month I've felt like I'm losing muscle mass and strength and didn't know why. I've been doing all the same workouts but I've still been feeling soft and weaker, although my racing has been faster. Go figure. Then it dawned on me what had changed. For the past 6 weeks I haven't been taking my protein smoothies everyday. Could that be the cause? I don't know why I stopped, I just broke the habit after we went to Winnipeg.

Needless to say, I started getting back to having my protein drink yesterday and had one this morning. I also decided to try and push more weight during today's weight training session. I was back to grunting through those last few reps. For the first time in a long time my arms and upper body were pumped with a healthy soreness. I was so pumped and sore that I decided to put my swim off until later this evening, just to give my upper body some time to recover.

This afternoon I went to get my bike refit for the third time since February. I specifically asked for Dan at Endrosport this time. He's one of the owners and certified in F.I.S.T. fitting. He did a good job fitting me on my Quintana Roo last year. He said I looked okay as I was but felt there was a few adjustments we could make to help resolve my issues. I told him my right shoulder and groin would get sore after a couple hours of riding, I got calluses on my hands from gripping the front aero bars and my left foot has a stress fracture and it hurts more when I bike than it does when I run.

He put on a new seat, I had him size me with my new shoes and speed play cleats, he put risers on my areo bars, he shortened the stem from 120mm to 110mm with a higher angle, he expanded the distance between the aerobars, adjusted them to be more parallel to the ground, lowered the seat and put my cleats farther back on my shoe. Other than that, he didn't do much, lol.

Immediately I felt that I was resting more on my elbows and wasn't too stretched out, relieving some of the pressure off my shoulder blade and neck area. Then the seat felt more comfortable and I now felt myself sitting properly on my sit bones. My pedal stroke also started to feel more natural. He looked at my new Shimano T-51 shoes, which I thought were too small, but he felt they were the right size. He also thought they may help relieve my foot pain because the carbon soles will better absorb the pressure across the entire foot.

The real test is going to be on my next long weekend ride. I really hope this fixes my problems. He did spend a lot of time with me, at least 90 minutes.

During tonight's swim I still felt sore when I started swimming. Surprisingly I was still able to maintain a fairly good pace and as time went on, I noticed the soreness less. I think it was because of the endorphins masking the pain. I really didn't feel motivated to do my swim tonight and decided to cut my swim a little short, but not before I put in a good 45 minutes.

Weights - 45:00

Swim - 45:05 / 2100 meters