Big Day 1 review
First things first--happy father's day to all.
Right--this was the first big day in the HIM plan, and had to be broken up due to last kids' soccer game of the season. So the swim was Firday night, and the bike and run went on Sat. T1=over 8 hours, plus pizza. :-) Still, posting some of this might be useful for feedback. Overall, I'd say the exercise definitely exposed some weaknesses and areas for improvement.
Swim:
Calls for w/up, followed by 1000 meter time trial. Have only had a few outings in the pool, but even allowing for the SCY/LCY conversion (50m lanes), I am glacially slow. And I think I know why, I just can't fix it. To wit... when "climbing the ladder" my head goes down, the strokes are shorter, smoother and I seem to go faster. The problem is that I can't seem to breathe properly. In order to do that, I have to go back to the "low elbow" catch and it's much slower. Not sure why this is. In any event, followed the instructions. Got out of the pool feeling more beat up than I would want to. TT Time: 24 min. A LOT of free speed to be picked up here, fitness issues aside. Thoughts on drills welcome; maybe I should just post some film. (this is a lot slower than I remember my times being from last season, which were about 1:50 per 100yds. Not blazing, but acceptable.
Bike
No power, just HR. Always kept HR under 156, which is two beats before LTHR. Spent most of my time between 140-151, and tried to stay aero and keep a steady pressure.. Route has lights on it, etc, but results were by and large good; managed to flatten the uphills. Need practice descending--I am a bit of a wuss when the speed tops 28 mph. Nutrition--needs work. 2 shotblok, 2 bottles of gatorade mixed with H2O and I was still hungry. Stopped at daughter's soccer game, watched game (1hr), pedaled home. Here's the quirk--by the time I got home, I was really hungry. And on the way home, I paid no attention to the "stay in zone" rule and just hammered uphill (it was mostly uphill).
I now understand the penalty that one would pay for that on race day. Even just having 2 or three surges made the run (esp the opening mile or so) noticeably harder.
T2: quick change, grab the dog, power bar gumdrops (200cal), glass of H20, and off I went.
Run
No real plan; just do the time. Took first mile easy; ramped effort up over the course of it. HR in target zones, I think, but still more work to do. Overall pace was comfortable, but slow--mostly high z1 and cracked z3 a couple of times going downhill, but had to stop for lights etc. And I was hungry--"bring me a meatball sandwich" type hungry--till about the third mile. This may be due to the break for the game. In any event, finished relatively comfortably. Could have easily run farther. How much farther I am not sure and don't want to find out (yet).
Overall thoughts:
Two main concerns: more work on nutrition (better plan) and swim. I made Allen Lin (Lim?)'s homemade power bars a couple of weeks ago (chocolate, rice, peanuts and honey) and I was craving them. In any event, I've got to get better about fueling or when I string all of these events together over 6 hours there's gonna be a real problem. W/r/t swim: I know that through simple application of brute force and yards, I can get to a point where the swim will be a "warmup" for the next two events. But those times are way too slow.