2014 IMMT Week 15
Thanks Sue for starting this series of forums up last week. The discussions from last week were just what I needed to start my Zen-like race preparation and am starting to see the race in my head. So, anyone with pictures from the 70.3, MT Camp, and/or previous MT races is encouraged to post them here or share a link. Thanks in advance.
This is our first race rehearsal week. You can click here for more resources on the race like the EN race talk. I have not watched it yet but this week seems like a good time to start dialing in race details.
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Hi all,
I'm going to miss you that weekend but I'll be looking in and cheering from my laptop. I am in no shape to race IMMT after my crash in May. I am happy to say that I'm walking much steadier now and I was allowed to go to the lap pool this week. Right now my stretch goal is finishing a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot before they close the course. Annnnyway, I have this reservation at the Westin on Chemin Kandahar right in the town to give up. I was mistaken earlier and now have the right details. It is a great hotel and very convenient!
The reservation was booked last September and has been pre-paid. If anyone would like to take over the reservation please let me know. I do not know if I will be able to get any sort of refund from the hotel. I was just on the phone with them and this is what they suggested I try. Who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky and find a sympathetic soul who will make an exception. The rate is $231/night plus tax so this stay would cost somewhere north of $1600 .
Confirmation number : 54135Name : Peter Wick
Arrival date : 13-AUG-2014
Departure date : 19-AUG-2014
Adults/Children : 2 / 0
Unit description : Traditional/Chambre D'hotel
Front desk : Le Westin Resort & Spa
Arrival time : after 4:00pm
Departure time : before 11:00am
Keep up the great mojo here, everybody. I'd love to go up there with you. Just being there without even racing would be just fine with me but this whole Humpty-Dumpty routine ain't cheap. All the king's horses and all the king's men keep wanting to get paid.
Train well and keep bold yet calm,
Peter
Week 15 ... Camp Week ... gulp! Calling on my inner Jens for focus! I got all of my workouts in last week - although the Saturday ride was done on Friday to a cottage in the middle of Wisconsin. I hadn't ridden in that part of my state before and didn't realize that there weren't any gas stations on the back roads between mile 35 and mile 75 and didn't plan nutrition well at all. At about mile 60, I said to myself, hmm I'm getting hungry ... oh here, have a tums and your last bit of water! Yikes - that can't happen again!
@Brenda, great RR - way to nail it! What are you doing differently to prepare for the bike portion?
@Peter - keep healing and we're sending you good mojo as well!
@ Brenda - VERY nice RR...good luck @ Musselman...lots of my local buddies will be there (Ionraic - a big Buffalo on the jersey) ....I did it a few years ago....96F in the shade @ the finish...yuk
@ George I hear your PF is subsiding and the run is progressing :-)
@Jeff, Yup, my fingers are crossed. Just had another "needling" tx Monday which hurt like the devil but these are desperate times. zRight now my foot feels much better. This weeks long run should give me a good measure of progress.
I've just posted this message in all the various places I had been in contact with someone looking at taking over the reservation. My wife managed to get them to refund it for us. That's enough for about a month of various therapy appointments.
Call or text when you have your Saturday plans set 608-513-9243 - or I'll ping you.
RR swim in the pool today - couldn't make an OWS happen.
So glad to see many of us are planning on doing a camp of some sort. I have to modify mine as I am working this Saturday (ugh!).
So, I will do my RR swim tonight (pool), and then an 82 mile ride followed by an hour run tomorrow. Saturday work. Sunday I signed up for the Gold Coast Century on L.I. NY. I am hoping this will suffice.
Good luck everyone!
Camp Week ... Done!
Swim RR was only 70 laps (ugh, that just sounds awful) before my right calf seized up. Tried stretching and used a pull buoy for another 6 laps and called it good. Need more electrolytes before getting in the water I think. 96 miles on Friday (on IMWI course) and a 6 mile run - which felt great - even at 8:00 pm (didn't start until mid-afternoon due to work meetings). 80 miles on Saturday and then some TdF viewing in the compression tights. 14 miles today - hot and humid - even early in the morning. Relaxing now and massage tomorrow. Ran into Bruce Thompson and David Salzman on the IMWI course on Saturday - they were riding it backwards (in reverse, not really backwards
)! Thanks for the thoughts on the bike set-up/wheels etc.- I'm looking into options!
David Salzman and I did our mini camp in madison. it was great to have another experienced ENer with me since we both knew what we needed to do. On Friday we rode 110 (stick, 2 loops, stick) then ran 6. I had a solid ride, but David was feeling the fatigue. My run was good with each mile faster than the previous wih mile 6 at 7:27 pace. On Saturday we rode the IMWI course loops in reverse. Wow, that route is much harder than the race route as the hills are harder (no gradual climb like the normal route in Mt Hoeb). Even the guys in the LBS confirmed reverse is harder. But the interesting thing is that you gain a completely new perspective on the course. there are spots on the normal route that I thougth were "flat" but are really downhill. I found numerous places to gain time if I ever do that race again. for anyone serious about going fast on that course, I strongly encourage you to ride it at least once in reverse.
Today, I ran 13 with Claudia Langarica. It was really humid and got up to 80 by the time we finished. We ran 1:45, or 8:07 avg pace with the last 2 miles in 7:27 and 7:14. My legs felt surprisingly good after the two days of climbing in Madison. After a nap, I swam for an hour late this afternoon. Didn't count the laps, just swam until the clock said 1 hour. Looking forward to resting tomorrow.
Finally got RR#1 done. Sat evening 2.4 mil OWS (1:07) in the river with legitimate current. Sun 113 mile ride (5:51), Almost everything went wrong. Flat tire, wrong tools to fix a Zipp wheel flat, front derailleur gone wonky, and back spasm. 1hr Water Run (I could barely walk getting off the bike so I water ran). Strava details click here.
Thursday: OWS 2.5 miles - 1:18:04 - Water was a little choppy, not bad, felt very relaxed, never felt as if I was pushing the pace, definitely could have swam harder, but I had the even paced, consistent swim that I wanted.
Friday: Bruce Thompson and I had our own Mini-Camp in Madison. Neither of us had the time to make the journey to Tremblant, but really wanted to get in a dedicated weekend - especially for the rides so we drove to madison where we both knew the course, had raced the year before, and could force ourselves to ride something other than the flatlands of Chicago Ride: 106 miles 6:30. Run 6 miles 54:41. This day hurt. I felt ok for the stick and the first loop, but then I think the cumulative fatigue from the previous weeks of training just completely took over. My legs just did not feel as if they had any spark to them. I also noticed a nice gap between HR (too low) and power - generally where I wanted it to be...This became even more pronounced on Saturday - I have always viewed this disconnect as pure fatigue. I will say - this is the first time that I have ridden the IMMOO course with a compact and it sure made a huge difference on the hills. Despite feeling demoralized on the bike, I still held it together and ran the paces that I wanted for the run - so that was uplifting.
Saturday: 80 miles 5:06 - Bruce and I wanted to get in more riding, but after having ridden the madison loops countless times over the past many years wanted to do something a little different, so we decided to ride the loops in the reverse direction. Despite the fact that my legs still felt toasted from the day before, they loosened up and started to feel a little better. There were definitely points during the ride that I felt as if the spark was returning and the engine was firing a little more efficiently. As Bruce mentioned, we road to the course in the reverse direction - it was fun to ride and see the course from a different perspective. It felt like a new course, hills were completely different, some very steep and some much longer climbs. Ran into several other EN'ers as well which made the ride fun as well. After the ride, we grabbed food and then I continued my journey to northern wisconsin for a few days away.
Sunday: 13.1 miles 1:54. So, if the start of the camp started off on a good foot with the swim - the camp ended with a great note as well with the run. I woke up and ran just early in the morning today. I saw 8 deer and 3 cars over the course of the entire run. Needless to say, not much to focus on other than pacing and running. After about a mile the legs started to loosen up and then I followed my plan to start off steady and then slowly start to drop the pace which resulted in one of the best paced runs with negative splits that I have had in a long time. This was a huge confidence booster, especially with the fact that there were two poorly placed hills in the last mile of the run and I managed a sub-8 min mile for mile 13.
Overall Thoughts: The 4 days of training were challenging but really eye opening. I gained 15:44 hours of training covering 207.6 miles and 9883 feet of elevation. This resulted in a total training time of just under 19 hours. I was rather pleased with the overall times and pacing, even if I did feel completely flat for most of the rides. I probably have to get one more bottle of perform in during the ride. I suspect I was a little more dehydrated going into the first ride than I expected. And most importantly, I think I really need to do a better job focusing on sleep for the remainder of the training cycle as the fatigue really sets in. As I finish this and am cycling through the channels on TV, I noticed that IM MT is on NBC Sports Network....It must be a sign....5 weeks to go folks!
Good work team! George, sorry to hear about your day. Glad to see your back is feeling better. May this week go smoother for you.
I did my swim Thursday night, 3025 meters in 90 minutes. Right on target and felt good. Friday I rode 82 miles with close to 6000 ft of climbing in 5:57 minutes. Did okay. I rode with others so I wouldn't be alone but my nutrition got a bit behind because of disagreements on where to stop (and I didn't carry enough planning to rely on delis to get me through). It will still really good training. Saturday I had to work so took the day off to recover from Friday. Sunday I did a local Century ride. It too was hilly with over 5000 ft of gain. Although my pace was no faster than Friday I felt much better as I came totally prepared nutrition-wise.
I accomplished over 17 hours of training last week. A record for me, I think.
As for me here in VA, on Sunday, I completed my first RR in 90degree heat and 70% humidity. To say it was challenging is an understatement. I went through 5 bottles of Perform on the bike before I had to ease off due to burping it up. I was thirsty but my belly couldn't handle anymore. This was very much the case when I got off the bike to run and felt the sloshing in the tummy
Keep up the great effort everyone!!! We're almost there
Yesterday I was able to start running on the AlterG treadmill (yay – my attitude is improving now) and I have put together a plan to get to IMMT. The Bike is as follows, (I will continue the 2-3 days open water swimming):
Wk 16: Light ride Tu, Test Th, Normal Sa, Su
Wk 17: Ride the wk 15 schedule (I want the building of the Big Fr/Sa rides)
Wk 18: Ride the wk 18 RR on a flat/easy course
Wk 19: as scheduled
Wk 20: as scheduled
Running is still a question mark. For those of you that Have not ever needed / used an AlterG treadmill (http://www.alterg.com/) – they ROCK! Essentially you run on a treadmill while zipped into a plastic apron that envelopes the treadmill. Air pressure is increased in the apron to reduce weight on your feet.
I thought I was slow because I am old… after the AlterG, I realize that I am slow because I weigh too much! So – added to ToDo list – drop 10# by game day!
We will see how far the running progresses… My primary goal is to get to 8/17 as healthy as possible with as much run fitness as is possible. I will spend weeks 16 & 17 on the AlterG, using the bone growth stimulator (did I mention that my Doc ROCKS?) and focussing on regaining flexibility, balance strength and technical running form / foot speed. Ideally, I will start stretching that into runs unto about 2 hours week 18. If all is going well, I will continue to run week 19 - thinking that the running recovery benefit will outweigh the taper this week, but will taper the bike as planned.
Or – if none of this works, I will swim as fast as I can, bike as fast as I can and put on a cast/boot and hobble my sorry carcass around the course. If I thought that would make me faster, I’d consider it anyway! ;-)
I’m encouraged by all the plans / execution that you all are sharing. I don’t like to whine, so was reluctant to post this. In the end, I thought that maybe someone else is struggling through something similar, trying to piece together a recovery plan that gets them to the finish line so I thought I’d share.
Lol – this is really what Ironman seems to be all about. Unexpected crap happens and we figure out a way to get it done.