Workouts week of May 6
Well no one other than Bruce and William seem to be posting anymore but I will continue for this week and next until the TTT. Another nutty week at work so hopefully I can get in most of my workouts!
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1. Ran to the pool, 27'
2. Did the assigned 2800 yd swim
3. Ran home from the pool, 27'
I did both of the runs pretty hard overall (while carrying my swimsuit and cap and goggles), and during each of the run I ran about an 8' portion at z4. So it was a good workout. I actually felt pretty good throughout, including during the second run which ended up a lot faster than I expected. And no muscle cramps going from the run right into the pool!!
Run #1 – overall 4.12 miles in 27:01, avg pace 6:33, avg HR 161 / max 175
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309019843
Split.....Time.....Distance.....Avg Pace
1..... 8:20.9 ..... 1.25..... 6:40
2..... 1:39.7 ..... 0.24..... 6:54
3..... 8:12.0 ..... 1.30..... 6:20
4..... 8:48.3 ..... 1.34..... 6:35
Swim – overall 2800 SCY, avg pace 1:36/100. Avg efficiency 37, 10 strokes/length. Took 1:00 rest between W/U and MS and MS and C/D.
Paces:
Warmup 300 – 1:39
MS:
- 8x100(15), as 50 sprint / 50 easy – 1:30, 1:32, 1:32, 1:32, 1:32, 1:33, 1:33, 1:33
- 4x200(30), negative split – 1:37, 1:36, 1:35, 1:34
- 2x300(30), last 100 hard – 1:38, 1:38
C/D 300 – 1:38
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309019830
Run #2 – overall 4.10 miles in 27:02, avg pace 6:35, avg HR 164 / max 178
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309019822
Split.....Time.....Distance.....Avg Pace
1..... 8:55.7 ..... 1.32 ..... 6:44
2..... 8:44.8 ..... 1.32 ..... 6:37
3..... 1:39.6 ..... 0.24 ..... 6:54
4..... 7:42.1 ..... 1.22 ..... 6:20
I have a business trip this weekend that makes me completely screw around with my schedule.
Yesterday was one of those days with way too many appointments, and I ended up with only a 45 min swim period. In the morning, I was pretty physically tired, so I went with a drill-centered swim workout with some rested quality stuff, rather than just drone swimming for the day.
Warmup = 5 x 100 with last 25 Tarzan Times 1:40 ± 3! All over the place!
4 x 100 as 50 hard/50 easy 1:35 overall, with fast parts about 43 s
4 x 50 as one-armed drill with board
4 x 100 descending: 1:37, 1:33, 1:29: 1:26
100 as one-armed drill with board
3 x 100 descending: 1:35, 1:31, 1:27
100 easy @ 1:32
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309168697
Run was even worse. I had only 45 minutes completely. Bottom line was that I changed, ran a quick warmup, and then 3 x 1 mile at TP as quickly as I could...which was in 33 minutes. Threw my clothes back on (no shower) then hopped into the car to sweat and run the AC until I got to the next event of the day....
6:36 slightly up net
6:23 slightly down net
6:30 pretty flat
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309168711
Both of you keep posting, you have audience
. I read your stuff regularly, just refrain from showing you how good this all looks from both as I am not racing your races so feel I should not post anything. But you are being followed
and I enjoy it very much. Keep it up.
Swim – overall 2800 SCY, avg pace 1:37/100. Avg efficiency 37, 10 strokes/length. Took 1:00 rest between W/U and MS and between each MS.
Paces:
Warmup 200 – 1:36
MS1: 3x400(30) – 1:37, 1:36, 1:37
MS1: 3x400(30) – 1:37, 1:37, 1:37
C/D 50 – 1:32
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309492157
But it turned out ok. 15 min warmup and then the whole rest of the ride at 210 W like a RR. No breaks except stop signs. Knowing how long it usually takes me on this route, I decided to play it by ear to see if I could sneak in 56 mi. That usually takes me just short of 3hrs. Today the weather was cooperative and my legs held out and I made the whole 56 in 2:38 I'm not sure what my record was, but I guarantee this is a record. Pretty psyched. Not even very traumatized afterward, though it was getting pretty hard in the last several miles. To be fair, I was using some aero gear, but this was a Great result.
Home internet is down, so I can't post the data. Will do tomorrow.
Note added: Here is the file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309640142
I will get in an FTP ride (equiv to the normal Tuesday ride) tonight (I hope), then the Sunday ride on Friday. Saturday and Sunday will be a run and a long run.
I have also been following along this forum with a lot of interest watching 'how the pros do it' ! Keep it up!
If I may ask a question? @WJ, I saw you did a half marathon a few weeks back and it took about a week to recover. I have a chance to do a half marathon at the end of week 15 of the HIM plan (so 5 weeks from my goal HIM race). I was going to do it in place of the long run that week and basically just do the long run workout in the context of the race (i.e intervals and rest etc etc). Now that I think about it I am wondering about just doing the race as a race. My plan is also to do week 16 as a sort of a big tri week, so there would be less running anyway (but a lot of biking). I have posed the question to Patrick but was wondering what your input would be based on your recent experience. For what it's worth I'm 43 and I would be targeting about 1:31-1:34 for the race if I did it all out, and my previous half marathon was a couple of years ago during a marathon build up and I went straight into the next week's workouts with minimal downtime iirc. Thanks, and sorry about the off topic post.
I really think the question you want to ask yourself is whether the experience you get from doing the race hard is worth the opportunity cost of the next few days. I do not recover particularly quickly (but I almost never get injured...go figure). If you want/need to find out what your half-marathon time is for purposes of your A-race, you certainly have plenty of time to recover. But if you are like me, you wouldn't be able to bike hard for 3-4 days minimally. You could get out there, but it would be easy biking that you'd be doing. If you are already doing a big week in front of the half marathon, my guess is that you won't be in PR shape for it anyway. In that case, maybe there is less value in racing it hard.
Clearly enough, you understand the issues. I just think you need to make a choice about whether the intentional big hole of a Big Week and a Race and its training benefits outweigh the potentially several days of recovery time.
Thanks for the reply. I'm going to have to mull this over. Definitely don't want to dig a big hole 5 weeks out (or get injured).
@Matt thanks for the input. I think you're right. Its a little too close to the HIM. I think I will run in the race but do the long run workout. I am also rethinking the idea of the big week in week 16 as there would only be 4 more weeks to go afterwards.
I'm sure Patrick would have something very useful to say about how far out is appropriate for a Big Week.
Actually the race will be prior to the beginning of a big week. Since I will not be able to do RR1 on this Saturday I was planning to do the RR1 swim next thursday night, RR1 bike and run Friday, day off Saturday, Race (Thursday's original long run) Sunday, day off (or easy swim) Monday then begin the big week (week 16) Tuesday or Wednesday. I asked Rich about the big week a while ago and he seemed to think it would be ok, but in the wiki it says not to do it closer than 8 weeks from the race. I think that may only apply to full distance training however?
Thanks for the input guys, this being my first season of 'formal' training for a triathlon the learning curve is steeeeep.
First off, my real job made my swim short again. I shouldn't complain. Without a real job I couldn't afford to swim anyway. :-)
Again, I wasn't going to be setting any great distance records with only 45 min, so I went for the more technical workout
300 wu at 1:43. Yeah, ok, that's slow. It's warmup. :-)
- wu was supposed to be done with super-deep catch, but I was in the so-shall-you-touch-if-you-try lane. Fortunately, I was able to move after that.
The following set was done 3 times:
- 4 x 25 no breath
- 200 as middle 50 Tarzan. (50 Tarzan is hard!)
- 100 as 50 hard/50 easy. These came out at 1:36, 1:35, 1:34
400 pull at 1:28
400 swim at 1:36
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309767869
Bike was an hour. 40 min of FTP on the books. During warmup it was pretty obvious that the legs weren't going to be really thrilled about doing this after yesterday's ride, so for better or worse, I let myself sit up as needed and did it as 4 x 10. I wanted it to be hard, but not break-me-for-the-rest-of-the-week hard. I decided to ride inside. This turned out to be a very fortunate decision. In between sets number 2 and 3, My glasses (plastic frame) just split right down the middle of the nose bridge. All the way through, for no reason...just like that! Obviously, I couldn't wear them like that, and it was lucky I wasn't 10-12 miles from home. Ended up taking a couple of minutes to take off those glasses and put on my sunglasses to ride in the basement. :-)
10 minute averages: 252, 258, 257, 255 (FTP = 248)
0.97 IF over 57 min. 239 NP, 88 TSS.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309912647
Had a really rewarding and good-feeling swim today, even though the numbers aren't that impressive. Bottom line is that it was a workout like we saw a couple years ago, but I have seen less of recently, with a fair amount of moderate paced stuff and some sprints at the end.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/310298317
WU:
then the fun part:
Frees were around 18.x on the clock. close to 20 by time I hit the lap button.
It was hard to really sprint the fly, but I did my best. Mostly about 23.
Good posts guys. Keep up the good work.
I've been struggling with fatigue this week. Took Monday off completely. Tuesday did a 60' bike with 15' WU, 3 x 6' (4') @270 w (160w) + 11' @ 210w , followed by ez 2 mile run. I felt ok during the wko, but really tired later at work. Went to my masters swim class Tuesday night and it was a complete bust. Felt like crap, swam slow, had to stop several times in the middle of a simple 3 x 300m set. So I just bagged it and got out of the pool. Slept in on Weds am and still felt tired. On Weds night I did my last long run before the TTT. I ran 10 miles in 84'. Ran mile splits of 9:17, 8:43, 8:35, 8:33, 8:31, 8:00, 7:55, 7;33, 7:35, and a final cool down mile of 8:49. The 5th & 6th miles also included 6 steep hills. Net, I felt pretty darn good and my HR was low the entire run. Woke up this am and felt like I never slept at all, so I took today completely off too. Gonna swim tomorrow and see how I fell. I'm too close to the TTT to do any more hard workouts, and I sure don't want to get injured. My fitness is going to be what it's going to be for this event.
But to answer your question more usefully, the answer is "because I know exactly what the EN workouts will do for me." Before I joined EN, I was doing pretty much the EN type swims (6 x 400 was a very common workout), and I had plateaued in my swim at a place beneath where I wanted to be. Last year, you may recall, I did masters swimming to try to break that. I had a bad experience at KS, but that had nothing to do with my training. I had a great swim at LV...which I think did have to do with the effort I put in. But the Masters Swimming isn't available to me this year, and regardless, it was both time consuming and a bit hard on my biking (in part because of when it was). I've been taking a different tack to try to keep out of the rut this year. Lower volume than last year (just 3 swims/week...none more than 90 min or so, most 50-60 min), but focusing on catch/pull/strength. Same set of coaches as the masters group (and my kids) set me on that general path through some lessons. If you think back on my reported wko's in recent weeks, there's been a lot of Tarzan, fly, etc. I've also been taking 10 min frequently to do some band work when at the gym.
The point of this wko wasn't the first 45 min (or whatever it was) other than to swim them in good form...the 200s only had 10-20 sec rest (enough to deal with crowded lane conditions), but that first 50 even after a very short rest is usually better form than any of the rest of it...an advantage to shorter intervals sometimes. But it really wouldn't have mattered if it was 4 x 400 or 8 x 200. It was like "Z2" swimming. (The IMs net out much closer to "Z4" for me, just because my fly and breast aren't that great.) The bigger difference is that most of Rich's sets with 300-400 ints are "z3" swimming.
The final strength/power sets were the focus of the workout. In the other order, the long part would tend to be garbage yards in poorer form because of the muscular fatigue. Here, the fatigue during the sprints helped me focus and made me dig a little deeper, even if the times look about the same as fresh sprint times would be.
If you go back to wkos from 2010, you'll see sets Rich wrote that look similar to this. Maybe 300s instead of 200s or whatever, but some moderate work with a bit of real work in it...and some sprint sets at the end. Usually as 50 easy 50 hard as I remember. There was a lot of MS1, MS2, MS3. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with what he's written, but they are structurally simpler, partly in response to feedback from the team. And that's consistent with the whole ROI concept on swimming...which I admit to stepping out of a bit.
The sets that are more like 10 or 20 x 100 with short rest are threshold sets in the swimming world equivalent to the 2 x 20s on the bike. Several weeks ago, I was doing more of those, and undoubtedly, I will do them again as we approach the race. This is more like the VO2 sets. And quite opposite to the bike, I think right now, I AM "roof" limited in my swimming.
I am not advocating that this is for everyone, and I got myself back into base swimming shape a few months ago using more standard EN type workouts. I am changing things up to see if I can get to the same place I was last year with less time...another piece of advice I got from the coaches here...if you're stuck at a plateau swimming, sometimes changing things up is the most effective short term tactic. And the change I'm trying involves more strength drills, sprinting, etc.
A final piece of trivia...the coach I've been talking to the most is the one working with my twins for the last few seasons who never coached my older boy. But he went to a few of the HS swim meets, and picked Chris out of the pool not from looking at his face but by watching him swim. :-)
William- I think the type of swim work selected and conducted is compatible with reasoning and objective you have. That is what I do as well. Again, not advocated for others. It will bring you the desired outcome. Logic is very consistent with swim world coaching. The key will be finding the balance of that type work with cycling/running to the point it does not interfere, but I think you got that figured out too. Just my 2c.
Also my powermeter hasn't been behaving well recently. Since I got my drivetrain cleaned I'm convinced it's been reading low, and I put in a new battery and now am having some odd dropouts…although only when riding indoors.
In summary, I closed out last week (Wednesday-Sunday) with:
Wednesday – Bike 80' on the trainer. The z4 was 8/12/20 but I had to do the 20 as 14/6 because a strange powermeter dropout. Felt okay but HR was high. Missed the 20' brick run. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309926435
Thursday – Run 60' after coming home from a very long day at work. Did 2x15(4') @ 6:28 and 6:20 and averaged 6:42 for the whole run. So it was fast but not long. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/310394017
Friday – Missed all workouts due to work and having family in town and consequently evening activities
Saturday – Got outside for the second time this year. Andrew would go nuts since it was out at WFG with all of its traffic lights etc! Did 3 loops: one warmup gradually getting to z3, one at z4, and the last one at z3. Okay workout but didn't feel fresh and strong and power was quite low for the z4, and we truncated the workout down to 140': http://connect.garmin.com/activity/311094422. Brick run was okay and with a decent negative split: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/311096342. And, as I've done for the past few weeks, I did Friday's swim on Saturday while my kids were at swim lessons. It was 5x500(30) but due to some schedule issues we had to go early and I missed the last 500 and the cooldown: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/311252302
Sunday – Epic Mother's Day brunch and I couldn't run beforehand which was a bummer. I ended up doing ABP the ride in the evening on the trainer and had to cut to 80' due to the powermeter cutout that kept popping up. I actually felt great and my power numbers were back in the "normal" range (at the low end) for the first time in ages. It looks like my speed sensor was also cutting out a whole bunch so I'm wondering if there's some strange source of interference in my house due to renovation work going on upstairs. If this happens during the TTT I'll be a mighty unhappy camper… http://connect.garmin.com/activity/312013892
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DETAILS:
Wednesday bike – Overall 80', NP 225, IF 0.885. Full warmup of 10' easy/z1 then 3x3'(1')@z3. Main set:
8'(3') @z4 – NP: 253 (IF 0.998), VI 1.00, HR 151/158, cad 91
12'(3') @z4 – NP: 254 (IF 1.002), VI 1.00, HR 159/168, cad 91
14'(2') @z4 – NP: 254 (IF 0.999), VI 1.01, HR 166/173, cad 91
6'(2') @z4 – NP: 250 (IF 0.986), VI 1.02, HR 165/170, cad 90
---------------
8' @z3 – NP: 209 (IF 0.823), VI 1.00, HR 147/153, cad 89
Thursday run – Overall 8.95 miles in 1:00:02, 6:42 pace. Avg cadence 90spm. HR avg 166 / max 184. Current training VDOT 52 (z4 – 6:38, z3 – 6:45, z2 – 7:02).
Warmup: 15' @6:58
2x 15'(4') @ z4/HMP – 6:28, 6:20
(2x 4' recoveries 7:23, 7:27)
Remainder time 7' @ 6:53
Saturday bike – Overall 140', NP 225, IF 0.885, 20.8mph.
Loop 1, 47:46 – NP: 220 (IF 0.864), VI 1.05, HR 134/-, cad 83, 20.1mph
Loop 2, 44:03 – NP: 242 (IF 0.951), VI 1.01, HR 149/159, cad 87, 21.7mph
Loop 3, 45:42 – NP: 214 (IF 0.844), VI 1.01, HR 139/149, cad 85, 20.9mph
Saturday brick – overall 4.3 miles in 30:01, 6:59 pace. Avg cadence 88 spm, HR avg 159 / max 175.
- 15:22 @7:14
- 15:39 @6:44
Saturday swim – overall 2200 SCY, avg pace 1:35/100. Avg efficiency 37, 10 strokes/length. Took 1:00 rest between W/U and MS.
Paces:
Warmup 200 – 1:36
MS1: 4x500(30) – 1:36, 1:35, 1:36, 1:35
Sunday bike – Overall 80', NP 210, IF 0.828. Warmup of 10' easy/z1 then 2x1'(1')@z4. Main set:
45'(3') @z3 – NP: 218 (IF 0.859), VI 1.00, HR 146/152, cad 91
17' @z3 – NP: 217 (IF 0.855), VI 1.01, HR 140/146, cad 91