Mark M's Alaskaman Training Thread
Coach Patrick,
I’m doing the Alaskaman Extreme Triathlon on July 15th. I just loaded up the Full IM advanced plan to end that week. The swim is in Resurrection Bay with an average temp in July of 55 degrees. That’s the same temp as Puget Sound and I’ll be able to wear booties so I should be able to train for that. The bike is from Seward to north of Girdwood with about 4,100 feet of gain so it’s not too bad. Apparently the wind either blows from the north or the south so there’s a possibility that I might have a headwind (or tailwind 
) all the way, but I faced that at Kona and it was much hotter there. It’s self supported and my wife is my crew chief so unless she gets stuck behind traffic I should have all the food and drinks I need for the bike. My training strategy is to do at lease one cold water OWS per week and follow the bike workouts in the plan except for the first week in June when I’m doing the Al T’tude Camp with other EN rock stars followed by the Aspen Ragnar Relay. I’ll start off that week with the Elephant Rock century ride with my wife, daughter, and her boyfriend and then try to hang with the big boys and girls that Al has assembled. That will start 6 weeks out from the Alaskaman so it should set up my bike pretty well. Thus I’m not too concerned about the first two legs. HOWEVER, THE RUN IS A DIFFERENT BEAST, hence this post.
The first 20 miles is rather benign with the first 14 miles on a paved pedestrian trail. Miles 14-20 is on a XC Ski course and is gravel. I’ll change to trail shoes at mile 14. There is about 1,000 feet of climbing in the first 20 miles. The last 7 miles is where it gets extreme. That section accounts for 2 major climbs totaling over 4,200'. Here’s the profile for the entire run course.
Here’s a rendering of the run starting at mile 14, 14-20 is relatively flat compared to the last 7 miles.
I've been thinking about how to hack the training schedule to be ready for 2,000+ feet of climbing, followed by 2,000 feet of downhill (which I’m almost more concerned about than the uphill), and then another 2,000 feet of climbing in the last 7 miles. I know I won’t be running the uphill sections where the average grade is 19%. (As Coach Rich said, most people call those stairs.) I would like to pick up the pace on the downhill, but that depends a lot on how I feel at the time and my support crew who have to run the last 7 miles with me. So here’s what my current thinking about for training for that.
· At least 1 trail run a week with 1,000+ feet of climbing. I have some trails close to the house where I can gets a couple of hundred feet of climbing in 3-4 miles so I'll do those for my shorter runs.
· During the weeks that have split runs, doing the second run of the day on a stair stepper and getting a minimum of 200 floors (approximately 2,000’). When the run turns to one long run on Thursday do I do those as written or hack them somehow?
· I’ve been doing a stair stepper, run, stair stepper workout occasionally where I’ll climb 100+ floors, run 2 miles on the indoor track, and then another 100+ floors to simulate the last 7 miles (that takes about an hour). At first I was thinking of doing one of those a week and working up to 200 floors, 2 miles, and another 200 floors, but it’s a tough workout and I wonder about doing it every week especially with the long runs and bikes. Should I substitute that in for a Sunday bike occasionally or back off something else to get those in? How often?
· At some point within the last 6-4 weeks I’ll do a couple of long trail runs with some serious climbing and downhills. I did the Hillbilly Half Marathon in March with 2,300 feet of climbing and subsequent downhill. It’s close to my house so I can do that or longer for those runs. Again, this was a tough workout and took several days to recover.
Obviously the toughest part of this race is going to be the last 7 miles so it’s going to take some extra attention to the first 135 miles to have sufficient reserves to tackle it. But I’d appreciate your thoughts on what to do to help me prepare for that hurdle.
One last point, last year I seemed to do better with focusing on big training blocks, like the camp weeks, and hitting the high priority workouts in the advanced IM plan. When I looked back over the training season it was closer to the minimalist plan but keeping the long run on Thursday and often dropping the Sunday bike or making it a recovery ride. I dropped a lot of the low priority workouts in lieu of aiding recovery. I guess that’s one of the downsides of getting old. OTOH, my endurance and my base are stronger than ever so I know that if I pace myself I can keep going for a long time. The main goal for this race is to finish it. Having said that, my second goal is to put myself out there and do the best I can. There are no age group awards but there might be master's awards for the top 3. Double bonus if I snag one of those.
I'll post this to the training forums to get feedback from the rest of the crew but I wanted to get your feedback first and tweak it if necessary before throwing it out there.
Cheers,
Mark
Comments
I like the following modification:
This gets you two run options, Wed as planned, Sunday is bonus run / hike. Hills baby. If you wanted to swim MORE you could do that before Sat/Sun session?
Let me know.
~ Coach P
Ps dave's thread is here But I don't see a ton about the race. Maybe I am crazy.
I looked at @Dave Gardner s thread after I emailed you. He has some great opportunities to get some epic hikes in New Zealand. Susan and I hiked there a lot last year and we use or hike at Arthur's Pass as a reference for what we expect at Alaskaman.