56 mi TT intensity?
In a couple of weeks, I'm going to do the bike leg for a HIM team. Just a fun"C" event as I am done with my A races for the year, but obviously want to do the best I can on the day. Anybody have any thoughts on an appropriate IF for such a ride and/or any other deviation from normal biking guidance?
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I bet it'll be tough to go above 0.9 IF. You may be able to go 2-5% faster/harder than Steelhead time. Do the first 3-4 miles @ 0.85 and slowly build from there?
I would target .85 as Al suggested and then try to build on that for the second half. Going out and trying to "crush it" cause you do not have to run will likely end up in a slower split than if you paced it correctly. A HIM ride at .85 is a very hard effort in and of itself. If you manage to hold .9 I think that your FTP is set too low. But then I never manage to hold .85 in a HIM so take my advice with a grain of salt.
William,
That actually sounds like a lot of fun ... I've always wanted to try a 56 tt once the season is over, but it would otherwise interfere with my strict pre-outseason McFlurry protocol.
I would agree with the others on execution points. Get yourself to 85%, and at about 90 mins, turn your mind to 'don't back off," or "push incrementally harder." I think one of the major elements of this session will be mental toughness ... this is just going to hurt, and not in a "well, at least I only have 10' left in this interval,' way, but in a "I can' believe I have to keep doing this for an hour +." Think about the kind of suffering that a properly executed half-marathon (or marathon) entails, and you're getting there.
That said, I'd add a few sessions of ABP, mental toughness -oriented bikes as you're building towards the race. 60 tts, 90 tts, that kind of thing. The recovery cost isn't too tremendous, and these can give you some new perspective on hurt.
Last point - a member posted about her (succesful) experiences with a 2h tt last year, and you might be able to find it via a 3.0 search. I'm foggy in details, but it was a woman in the UK who had KQed in Lake Placid in '09. Marijka, maybe? Anyhow, maybe another member can refresh my memory.
Dave
Tear it up!
Your memory is darn good Dave!! It was Maryka. Here's the thread:
50 Mile TT- AKA the most painful 2 hours I've ever had on a bike
But don't let the title scare you!
@Dave Unfortunately, a lot of buildup training isn't practical. My A-race was 8-9 days ago, and I am now on vacation for the rest of this week. I have access to a bike that fits, but not MY bike, and not a tri bike, and besides, crushing myself this week probably isn't good for the long run. (Hate to sound like a wuss, but I know I do better with real recovery.) Anyway, I'll get out and ride, and do a couple FTP sessions early in the week of Aug 16, and the race is Aug 22. It'll be an exercise in using what I have, not something I can prepare for.
I guess I didn't mention the other fun part of this.... the rest of the "team" is my 15-year-old son. He will crush the swim - may be right up among the amateur race leaders. He's a CC runner (and triathlete in his own right) whose best 5K last year was under 18:00 (much faster than me). He has done a couple half-mary races, but nothing that long this season, so this might be the distance at which we would run about the same time. But he'll clearly have plenty of time to recover and we're hoping to be podium competitive. Should be fun!
Count on Nemo to find the thread!
snipped from the conversation:
Re. the watts, according to an interesting thread on the wattage list, ~92-95% of FTP should be possible for 2 hours, ~88% for 3 hours, ~85% for 4 hours and ~78-80% for 5 hours (if you don't need to run afterwards of course
). So my 90-95%, though it sounds intimidating, isn't actually that high. Try it for yourself... it's tough to maintain that wattage, but definitely do-able
Wish I could put my hands on the original conversation from the Wattage forum!
I've been following this thread with great interest until I got to the part about your partner in crime; WOW! Have fun with your son.
Hmmmm... not sure what happened to the picture posting facility here. Oh well
Here's a pic of the two of us. It's not great, but it's what we have. :-)
This is just him, after he finished the run.
Anyway, we had a great day together. It was extremely fun and a great bonding experience. We came in second among all teams. He swam 29+, I biked 2:30+, and he ran 1:32+ with weather in the 80s. I was really excited for him on that 1:32 run because he hadn't really trained up for that distance - just run over the summer with his cross country group. His was the 6th fastest run at the whole race. (...although he obviously didn't have to ride)
I had a decent learning experience on the bike. This course is harder (more rolling) than the one I did 3 weeks ago. I raced an average of 17 watts higher and about 17 bpm faster HR but had the same total time! But here's what I learned:
I raced this distance at 7-8% higher watts than I did my (very good) HIM from 3 weeks ago. The HR was elevated from that, probably a bit from temp, and probably from some detraining (2 weeks "off" and 1 week on since that A race),
I rationalized that since I didn't have to run after the bike that I could be a bit sloppier about my high end power than usual. I let myself get higher power than I would have for a tri - even accounting for the higher target power. My VI wasn't large (1.04), but the power distribution was definitely wider on the high side than I usually do. I can't prove that it was this (as opposed to the higher average power) that caused me to fade in the last 20 minutes or so, but I am pretty sure of it. It's hard for me to give a true scientific justification for it, but my conclusion is:
- The 7-8% increase over the HIM target power is probably fine
- If you're going to do that, make sure not to burn many matches by going over FTP; in other words, still do the ride in standard EN fashion...just harder.
Oh yeah, and I learned I have more work to do on the bike over the winter. :-)
Great follow-up, and learnings on the bike. Is that a wading pool of ice water he's sitting in?
The picture function seemed to go the way of the text formatting when EN got its 4.1 makeover recently. There's an alternative way to post pics, outlined below:
1. Down below the reply box (not the Quick Reply one), there are two pop down boxes: Attachments and Topic Review.
2. Select "Attachments"
3. Click on "Browse..." button.
4. Select a picture from your hard drive or other source connected to your computer.
5. Select "Upload" (to the right ot Browse button)
6. More choices appear; select "Insert".
Advantage: these are stored on same server as this forum, and you can then select "My Files" to add the same pic to another post.
Little known fact: Selma Hayek used to frequent our little town of Gig Harbor a few years back, when she was romantically linked to actor Josh Lucas, whose mom (a midwife who delivered our oldest daughter) still lives here. The best sighting was "Hayek in a kayak", when the two would go out paddling in the harbor on sunny days.
William- what a wonderful experience!! Great ride, and some good lessons there too for sure. But the opportunity to share such a cool experience with your son is just precious! I'm sure you'll both treasure those memories for a long time. Next year you guys have to try for first! Oh- was there any prize for 2nd?
Thanks Nemo. It was a great day. We were done in by an über-runner who put in a 1:21 half marathon for the first place team, and they beat us by 7 minutes. I understand that guy is a college cross country coach in his late 20s or early 30s. Nothing we could do about that without me getting a lot faster on the bike.
Next year is an interesting subject for Chris. He "ages up" into the next group for the draft-legal racing (16-19), and as such will not be competitive as far as placing. So he's talked about wanting to do a "long" summer next year instead of a "short fast" summer. On the other hand, I tend to think that the path to relative success is more likely that he do everything you can to become fast when he's young, and just not worry about placement for a year or two. As far as longer events than the sprint-type distances of the draft-legal racing, an Oly distance race or a team half like this won't be a big deal given that he's older and has a lot of that under his belt already... Or if he just wants to do a half at the "participate" level in the EARLY summer so he has time to come back and do the late summer short stuff and get ready for cross country... Anyway, we'll see.
Yes, we did get a prize - a set of beer (oops, I mean root beer float) mugs with the race logo. :-) I kind of like the recent trend of races having glasses/mugs as prizes or inexpensive souvenirs.