P - Awesome work so far. Just keep in mind, you want to be at race weight when you are racing....not all season. Since you are doing texas it makes sense to get pretty light pretty soon. However, after texas you might want to let yourself go a *little* for a month or two before you starting working back to race weight for a later season IM.
I find that I have about 3-4 weeks at my race weight and then the body starts to break down. At 3-5 lbs heavier I can train light crazy and not have issues. It's kind of like trying to hold your peak fitness year round, which doesn't work so well either.... guess how I know both of these ;-)
P - Awesome work so far. Just keep in mind, you want to be at race weight when you are racing....not all season. Since you are doing texas it makes sense to get pretty light pretty soon. However, after texas you might want to let yourself go a *little* for a month or two before you starting working back to race weight for a later season IM.
I find that I have about 3-4 weeks at my race weight and then the body starts to break down. At 3-5 lbs heavier I can train light crazy and not have issues. It's kind of like trying to hold your peak fitness year round, which doesn't work so well either.... guess how I know both of these ;-)
+1 on that warning. Last year, I never could get my weight above 144, trained hard there for six months, and paid for it by breaking down six weeks before my final IM. Then, having raced too hard when I shouldn't have been out there at all, took another 3 months to get back in training weight/shape. Now, at my usual winter weight of 148, I feel great, and am healing and training just fine. It's true, I can't run quite as fast, but isn't that what the OS is for?
Are you doing anything to address heat acclimatization ? Getting there early?
I'm from NH and came to the Fla Keys for a short visit and the heat is knocking the stuffing out of my run paces and adding at least 5 to my average HR. 5k race done at 6:29 pace was hoping for 6:18 or better. Then today 20 mile Boston LR training done at 8:15pace (LRP 8:24) and up till now all my LR's in NH have been 7:40-7:50 pace.
@Al, I hear you. After last week's volume my weight is up to 180-182 and I am much happier. I will need to focus things in for the last 4 weeks, just going to try to stay stable here. Thanks for the reminder (and Matt)!
@Tim, not much I can do...I won't be going down super early. I will be overdressing here in the heat (80 degrees today!), and spending some time in the sauna in the final few weeks...but proper pacing and diligence will be my secret weapons. I can swim/ride with the best of them; it's finding the balance between speed / conservative pacing that will allow me to run to my potential that's the key...
Recap from my first volume week heading into Ironman Texas; a reminder that lots of work requires lots of rest! http://ow.ly/9Ob3B
Coach P, I just read your blog post. You are an awesome coach! You are very inspirational! You lead by example! You are a FREAKIN' IDIOT!!!
I know you know it, because you said it, but boy are you an idiot. There, I said it... How can you expect to train like a pro athlete, but sleep like a college kid during finals week? I really think you should treat sleep as part of your training and make it a priority. If your body can't absorb the work you are putting into it or if you get sick and blow a 1-2 week hole in your aggressive training plan, you are gonna be one pissed off skinny tri machine. I just feel like you already know this, but also need to hear it from somebody else for it to really sink in. Just imagine what you would tell one of us if we said we were planning to do the following week and only expected to get 5-6 hours of sleep per night.
Swim: 15,300 yds Bike: 234.5 miles Run: 40.25 miles Hours: 23.75 hours
Let me be very clear, I am totally inspired and impressed with what you are doing, I just think occasionally even crazy fast and fit work animals need a little slap every now and then when they are doing something that they already know and admit is stupid.
Coach P, I just read your blog post. You are an awesome coach! You are very inspirational! You lead by example! You are a FREAKIN' IDIOT!!!
I know you know it, because you said it, but boy are you an idiot. There, I said it... How can you expect to train like a pro athlete, but sleep like a college kid during finals week? I really think you should treat sleep as part of your training and make it a priority. If your body can't absorb the work you are putting into it or if you get sick and blow a 1-2 week hole in your aggressive training plan, you are gonna be one pissed off skinny tri machine. I just feel like you already know this, but also need to hear it from somebody else for it to really sink in. Just imagine what you would tell one of us if we said we were planning to do the following week and only expected to get 5-6 hours of sleep per night.
Swim: 15,300 yds
Bike: 234.5 miles
Run: 40.25 miles
Hours: 23.75 hours
Let me be very clear, I am totally inspired and impressed with what you are doing, I just think occasionally even crazy fast and fit work animals need a little slap every now and then when they are doing something that they already know and admit is stupid.
P, I admire your honesty. Very few coaches would admit to that, much less blog about it for the whole world to see. One of the hardest parts of leading from the front is admitting when you made a mistake.
Coach - to pile-on with what John and Mike said... You need to sleep.
I just listened to a Science Friday podcast from back in 2010 (what else are you going to do on the trainer??) and it discussed an initial study that indicated that people who were on a restricted calorie diet, and were sleep deprived, lost weight. BY LOSING MUSCLE MASS. (Yes, emphasis is intended). Granted the sample size is NOT statistically significant, but it is definitely food for thought.
A new study says people may be sabotaging their diets in an unexpected way - through too little sleep. In an article published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers describe their work with ten patients undergoing 14 days of moderate caloric restriction. Some of the patients got 8.5 hours of sleep during the study, while others got just 5.5 hours. The researchers found that the group with less sleep lost less weight, and shifted their metabolism towards less efficient fat-burning than the full-sleep patients. While the work is only on a few people for a limited time, the researchers say it may point towards interesting areas for further study. We'll find out more
1. My belief as a parent is that sleep is when kids grow - watch yours; when they go through growth spurts, they'll either sleep or be more tired.
You want to use your training to grow better body parts, you need the sleep during which to do it.
2. My belief as an obstetrician is that post-partum depression is almost always caused by a combination of insufficient and/or ineffective sleep (too many interruptions).
The brain is like any other part of the body; don't give it the fuel it needs (in this case, rest), and it will let you know with symptoms. The brain equivilent of over training is often signs we might call psychosis.
I tell my new moms when they leave the hospital that the #1 prescription I have for them is to develop a strategy for dealing with the chronic sleep deprivation they will inevitably face: reduce their workload, nap during the baby's down-time, trade off night time duties, whatever is needed to keep sleep up to snuff over the long haul during the first 4-6 months.
Same thing for athletes into heavy training - part of the training plan must be a strategy for getting the sleep time (not just feet-up-in-front-of-the-TV time) necessary for growth and maintainence. Scrimp on the sleep, you're wasting some of your training.
Good stuff Al. Sleep is definitely involved in depression and appetite. Years ago studies were showing that you could rapidly reduce depressive symptoms by sleep deprivation and during residency we tried this successfully in some patients. Certainly you can't keep this up indefinitely but clearly this is good evidence the two are interrelated.
Got to sleep to get better P. eventually it will catch up...
Patrick, you are an inspiration to us all and especially those with kids and all the extra juggling that takes. Blog entry was great. As you like to say, "rest is best".
it sounds backwards but by inducing sleep deprivation, you can reduce depressive symptoms overnight when it takes antidepressants roughly a month to work. of course you can't keep this up but it was more to show that sleep deprivation has major impacts on the body.
naturally as you'd expect, people who chronically sleep too little have MORE depression, not less but for one night lack of all sleep kind of resets the brain! weird I know!
Comments
I find that I have about 3-4 weeks at my race weight and then the body starts to break down. At 3-5 lbs heavier I can train light crazy and not have issues. It's kind of like trying to hold your peak fitness year round, which doesn't work so well either.... guess how I know both of these ;-)
+1 on that warning. Last year, I never could get my weight above 144, trained hard there for six months, and paid for it by breaking down six weeks before my final IM. Then, having raced too hard when I shouldn't have been out there at all, took another 3 months to get back in training weight/shape. Now, at my usual winter weight of 148, I feel great, and am healing and training just fine. It's true, I can't run quite as fast, but isn't that what the OS is for?
Are you doing anything to address heat acclimatization ? Getting there early?
I'm from NH and came to the Fla Keys for a short visit and the heat is knocking the stuffing out of my run paces and adding at least 5 to my average HR. 5k race done at 6:29 pace was hoping for 6:18 or better. Then today 20 mile Boston LR training done at 8:15pace (LRP 8:24) and up till now all my LR's in NH have been 7:40-7:50 pace.
@Al, I hear you. After last week's volume my weight is up to 180-182 and I am much happier. I will need to focus things in for the last 4 weeks, just going to try to stay stable here. Thanks for the reminder (and Matt)!
@Tim, not much I can do...I won't be going down super early. I will be overdressing here in the heat (80 degrees today!), and spending some time in the sauna in the final few weeks...but proper pacing and diligence will be my secret weapons. I can swim/ride with the best of them; it's finding the balance between speed / conservative pacing that will allow me to run to my potential that's the key...
Recap from my first volume week heading into Ironman Texas; a reminder that lots of work requires lots of rest! http://ow.ly/9Ob3B
I know you know it, because you said it, but boy are you an idiot. There, I said it... How can you expect to train like a pro athlete, but sleep like a college kid during finals week? I really think you should treat sleep as part of your training and make it a priority. If your body can't absorb the work you are putting into it or if you get sick and blow a 1-2 week hole in your aggressive training plan, you are gonna be one pissed off skinny tri machine. I just feel like you already know this, but also need to hear it from somebody else for it to really sink in. Just imagine what you would tell one of us if we said we were planning to do the following week and only expected to get 5-6 hours of sleep per night.
Swim: 15,300 yds
Bike: 234.5 miles
Run: 40.25 miles
Hours: 23.75 hours
Let me be very clear, I am totally inspired and impressed with what you are doing, I just think occasionally even crazy fast and fit work animals need a little slap every now and then when they are doing something that they already know and admit is stupid.
Yeah, what he said!
Now go take a nap!
I just listened to a Science Friday podcast from back in 2010 (what else are you going to do on the trainer??) and it discussed an initial study that indicated that people who were on a restricted calorie diet, and were sleep deprived, lost weight. BY LOSING MUSCLE MASS. (Yes, emphasis is intended). Granted the sample size is NOT statistically significant, but it is definitely food for thought.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201010086
A new study says people may be sabotaging their diets in an unexpected way - through too little sleep. In an article published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers describe their work with ten patients undergoing 14 days of moderate caloric restriction. Some of the patients got 8.5 hours of sleep during the study, while others got just 5.5 hours. The researchers found that the group with less sleep lost less weight, and shifted their metabolism towards less efficient fat-burning than the full-sleep patients. While the work is only on a few people for a limited time, the researchers say it may point towards interesting areas for further study. We'll find out more
Two sleep observations:
1. My belief as a parent is that sleep is when kids grow - watch yours; when they go through growth spurts, they'll either sleep or be more tired.
You want to use your training to grow better body parts, you need the sleep during which to do it.
2. My belief as an obstetrician is that post-partum depression is almost always caused by a combination of insufficient and/or ineffective sleep (too many interruptions).
The brain is like any other part of the body; don't give it the fuel it needs (in this case, rest), and it will let you know with symptoms. The brain equivilent of over training is often signs we might call psychosis.
I tell my new moms when they leave the hospital that the #1 prescription I have for them is to develop a strategy for dealing with the chronic sleep deprivation they will inevitably face: reduce their workload, nap during the baby's down-time, trade off night time duties, whatever is needed to keep sleep up to snuff over the long haul during the first 4-6 months.
Same thing for athletes into heavy training - part of the training plan must be a strategy for getting the sleep time (not just feet-up-in-front-of-the-TV time) necessary for growth and maintainence. Scrimp on the sleep, you're wasting some of your training.
Good stuff Al. Sleep is definitely involved in depression and appetite. Years ago studies were showing that you could rapidly reduce depressive symptoms by sleep deprivation and during residency we tried this successfully in some patients. Certainly you can't keep this up indefinitely but clearly this is good evidence the two are interrelated.
Got to sleep to get better P. eventually it will catch up...
Reduce depressive symptoms BY sleep deprivation? Or by reducing sleep deprivation?
P, don't be a self defeating whack job. You've worked too hard. Let sleep happen.
Blog entry was great. As you like to say, "rest is best".
it sounds backwards but by inducing sleep deprivation, you can reduce depressive symptoms overnight when it takes antidepressants roughly a month to work. of course you can't keep this up but it was more to show that sleep deprivation has major impacts on the body.
naturally as you'd expect, people who chronically sleep too little have MORE depression, not less but for one night lack of all sleep kind of resets the brain! weird I know!