Week 10 Training Thread
Hello everyone! I hope your training is going well and i hope everyone is starting to get excited about race day. The 10 week countdown is on!!! Weather-wise Colorado has been unseasonably cold and wet. In fact last weekend we got about 6inches of snow. It's gone now, but the warm temps in the 70's and 80's that we had back in March have been replaced by 50s and 60's. I hate riding in the cold, so i have done more trainer work that i would like especially as weekend volume starts to ramp up. I was able to do my Saturday and Sunday rides outside this weekend so that was nice and it was a good reality check that i have more work to do in terms of being able to sustain power as rides start to get 4hrs and longer. Also, positional fitness needs some work, but that should work itself out with more time in the saddle.
Looking ahead to week 10, volume across S/B/R is starting to ramp up. If you must cut workouts pay attention to the priorities given to each workout. For me, i try to always hit my Tuesday TP run and my Thursday long run. The weekend bikes are super important as is the mid week FTP workout. And the Tue, Fri swim are the big workouts for me because of the volume. Feel free to comment, brag, complain about how your training is progressing. Chances are whatever challenges you are facing, others are in the same boat is you. Have a great week!
Comments
Hey Ed - Nice race in Texas. I was following you and the rest of the EN crew. Get used to that heat because in all likelihood it will be a scorcher in Boulder in early august. However, who knows given how much rain and cold weather we have received over the last 2 weeks. Keep me posted on your travel plans and maybe we can connect to ride/run the course.
Hi All,
Thought I would post a Big Day report from a few weeks ago and a bit of a Big Day plan for next weekend. Feedback is welcome please. I'm looking forward to meeting all of you in Boulder com Aug... We've had a lot of rain here so I've been riding in doors more than Normal... Anyway, the Big Day report...
My breakfast was 1.5 pieces of white bread with peanut butter and a piece of bacon, It was mother's day... :-)
Seems like this was ok but I need to get bagels instead of white bread. Enough cals though? I have since seen the CoreDiet webinre and I may try the breakfast recommended there.
Swim:
Swim was good but seemed slow, don't have a baseline for swim in neighborhood pool though. I think it's longer than 25 yards. Also my watch missed at least a 25... Anyway it felt good.
T1:
Walked T1 back to the house to get bike. (about a 5-10min walk) For a RR need new plan for this.
Bike:
I did a route around here known as the bridge to Damn loop, plus I added some miles in various places to get myself 4.5 hours or so.
I didn't keep up with gatorde. I think I was at least 48+24 ounces behind by the end based on my last sweat test. (My plan had me at 2 * 24ox bottles per hour) What do I need to do to make sure I keep up??? I think I should pay more attention to the 10min timer I have on my watch.
My watts were all over the place. Rolling hills on the course I biked. Very low watts on down hill despite being in the highest gear. Spike watts on uphill sometimes, tried to down shift but didn't always have anywhere to go. My Z2 is just very low power. Didn't seem like my HR was as spiked though... What do i do about this? Should I use a different route? Different gearing? (Note: on rides after this I think I have done a much better job shifting and Watts did not spike as much) I think I will leave the gearing alone for now... Chock this up to bad technique.
On the bike I also ate 1 cliff bar over time. I had it broken up in to pieces in a bag in my jersey pocket. I need to use a smaller bag next time, it was hard to get pieces out at times. I peed twice off the bike despite being behind on drinking.
Overall the bike felt pretty good though I would have liked to stay aero more... Since I drink from an aero bottle I wonder if not staying aero as much as I would have liked contributed to my not drinking enough.
T2:
Non event, just changed shoes and got my hydration belt... (do folks were a hydration belt on the IM course?) I was thinking about using mine...
Run:
Run felt good at the start, pace was too fast though, need to work on keeping it down.
I also should have stretched my calves in T2... Felt my plantar pain a bit at start of run, a few minutes to stretch could be very important on race day!
Once I was a few miles in to the run I had a side stitch pain, drinking and eating seemed to help it some. I wonder if this was caused by lack of sodium. I'm considering some sort of salt pills... What brand do folks use?
Last part of run was tuff, need to work on nutrition, I think my fitness is ok... It seems like it's about execution problems...
Should have re-aplied sunscreen in T1, only did it before I swam... Got kinda red on arms...
Anyway, I thought I would get this out there... Made me think about this too leading up to Big Day 2...
Rock on everyone!
Erik
@Ed - You are a plenty strong enough cyclist to be able to handle the hills on this course with your current setup. A a point of reference i rode most of the course with a 52/36 upfront and and an 11/25 in the back and i was fine. If you are nervous or want the security of having extra gears, maybe consider an 11/27 or 11/28. However, there are lots of rollers and false flats on this course so i personally like keeping my gear ratios as tight as possible to eliminate cadence gaps.
@Erik - A few comments. I'm a big proponent of the core diet approach. Pre-race be careful with bagels or any type of dense foods. If you have tested it and it works for you, great. But i'd cautious about having a bagel and making digestive system work any harder than it has to pre-race. I think that's one reason why applesauce is part of the core diet plan. On the bike, it sounds to me like it's just a matter of spending more time mastering the art of riding steady. Make no mistake, it's a skill and takes practice. On tip is to set your garmin to aautolap every 3 or 5 miles and then display lap power and lap normalized power and try to keep those two number as close together as possible. Taking this approach you are playing the game in a much narrower window and if you win enough of those intervals, your overall VI will take care itself. As for drinking, i'd be interested to hear how the weather was during your ride. Was it hot or cool. Personally, i know i don't drink as much when it's cooler. However, it sounds like it is something to focus on going forward. Some people set their garmin to beep every 10min as a reminder to drink - again something to consider. On the run, the biggest challenge for all us is to run as SLOW as we need to. It's very easy to over reach in the early miles and you'll pay the price for it at some point. Keep in mind, the race rehearsal run is all about feeling what it feels like to run as slow as we need to. It's not a test of fitness to see how fast we can run. Personally, i do use a fuel belt on the run, but i'm debating changes this year. I use salt stick salt tabs. Overall, very well done. The purpose of the RR is about fine tuning things so as to eliminate mistakes on race day. It sounds like you learned a lot and you'll have another opportunity in a few weeks to build upon this experience. Any follow-up questions just ask!
I had a huge training week, this past week. I racked up over 200 TSS points these last 3 days and managed to get 2 long rides in despite the rainy weather. Running mileage is also starting to ramp up and as a result i'm down to 4 quality swims per week with 1 short recovery swim. Need to also focus on recovery and sleep as the training load continues to build.
@eric... definitely doing the right thing by writing these race rehearsal plans up. Mark is a great source of advice... but you might thing about listing them in the race/training report thread as a lot of guys who are pretty smart respond to those. the more eyes the better and they might just not be lurking here. I used a lot of the Core webinar in my last build for IMTX... worked great. That stuff is gold...So much so I've went ahead and bought there full race plan advice. I think it's often overlooked just how important that stuff is.
Well... good luck with your big weeks... I'm still nursing some residual tenderness in my knee from my race and I think it'll be another week before I can really start getting into the meat of the build... I think it's better to get healthy now... then to push through and deal with stuff for the next two months...
Thanks so much for the feedback and information! Much appreciated. I'll let you know how the big day goes this weekend and i'll post to the training/report thread.
Thanks!
Erik