Big Bike Week Report - Here's how it turned out...
Location: St. George (more specifically, Washington City, Hurricane and Zion NP).
Goal: Rack up tons of Zone 2 steady ride time/miles. Was shooting for 19 hours. I've never done anything like this before on the bike so this would be an interesting experiement. No swimming and no running.
Plan: Ride a pyramid 3, 4, 5, 4, 3 hours over the course of 5 days. Ride some ABP time on the 2nd half of the 3 hour rides. My logic was that building up the rides timewise would help me mentally and then knowing that Saturday & Sunday were 4 and 3 hour rides would give me hope that I could do it.
Equipment: Cervelo P2.
Riding Buddies: None.
Result: In summary, I did 18.5 hours. I cut the last 3 hour ride to 2.5 because I was trashed and I was getting "the look" from my wife and kids. Majority was Zone 2 riding. Negative split every ride. No flats and no mechanical issues. Joule had a brain fart but I fixed that.
Fuel: Pre-ride breakfast was PB on toast and a few Easter candy tidbits. On the bike, Infinit. Post-ride: In-N-Out Burger (2X), Five Guys Burgers, pizza (2X) and a shit-ton of Easter candy. Never felt better in terms of energy and light, fast and lean. Go figure....
What I learned:
- Zone 2 sounds easy on the surface...esp. when you've been locked into FTP and ABP work week after week. Don't be fooled. Zone 2 is like the Chinese Water Torture (it gets to you after a while and you have to really concentrate).
- Every ride I negative split quite well - would start in the 68-70% range and finish off with 72-74% effort.
- Warm-Up - each day the W/U time took longer - legs were trashed and so I'd have to be a little patient.
- Didn't miss swimming or running AT ALL. Never really had the urge to run.
- Played the minimalist game quite well - one bottle in the frame, one in my jersey back pocket, no racks, no funny business. Scoped out convenient stores, parks and places to refill water and pee. Kept stops to a bare minimum and super short - in, out and moving again.
- Sorta bonked once...it happened because I failed to fuel regularly and early on in a 4 hour ride. I've had this lesson before. I learned from it (again).
- Got good sleep - lights out at 10pm, up at 6am.
I hope this is a big shot in the arm for my bike fitness. I also hope that doing it with 10 weeks to go until IMCDA isn't suicide. For me, 18.5 hours of riding in 5 days is the most I've done in a week by about 30-40%. Looking for the big payoff.
Comments
Did similar. Finished 380 miles in hawaii. .65 to .8. I hope to jump into the remaining 11 weeks midweek.
I did swim in the ocean too which felt doable. Four times half to full hour.
We'll see how this pays off.
@Steve - Really? I would expect that if I continue to hit my workouts including the remaining Big Day #2 + the 2 RRs that I can hang on to a good portion of the fitness bump.
Wait - remember Certs, the breath/candy mint? You're both right!
My experience since 2005 with BBWs and BTWs tells me that doing a Big Week just before the start of a 12 week IM build really gets me into a physical state where I can handle the bump up in training volume. Then, another effort boost around the first race rehearsal (6 weeks out) provides a ramp up into the final training phase.
And, if anyone wants to join me in Aspen, I'll be there in July from the 8th through the 29th, to start out my 12 week training block for IMH Oct 13th. This would be a good time for folks doing Canada, Louisville, and Wisconsin. Then I'll be back in the middle two weeks of September, which woulod be a good time for Florida and Arizona folks. Send me a PM if you are interested - I've got room in my house for up to eight others, for as little as a weekend or as long as two weeks. Ride the roads Lance will train on this summer, and the US Pro Cycling Challenge (Tour of Colorado) will traverse. Swimming in a pool 1 mile downhill, and run on a rail trail by the river.
I get the feeling that you might have underfueled for breakfast. When I did my BBW, I had a pretty solid breakfast of raisin bran cereal, a protein bar, one or two gels, and Gatorade. That's around 700 calories right there I think. Not sure how much it affects the quality of riding, but I never had any problems with running out of energy (kept myself fueled with a bottle on Infinit per hour on the bike). Nice job on post-ride fueling though; I also went on a few In-N-Out binges.
I agree that all the Z2 riding can get pretty tough mentally, especially if you're out on the road alone. Much more fun to ride it with others if you can, even if it's only for a few rides. I think Steve is right about the ~10 week fitness bump though. I don't think a Big Day/RR is enough to recreate the same type of volume that comes along with a BBW, but usually a big tri week done ~10 weeks after a BBW can boost your fitness again.
Jim, how did you fit the BBW into your training plan: does the BBW take the place of one of the training weeks, or is it "shoehorned" in between two training weeks? Just trying to figure how/when to do one in my season. Thx.
Well, the driver was Spring Break. I had a condo in St. George for a week and the kids were out of school. I'm now trying to figure out how to get back to IM training. I know I need some recovery but I've been off the swimming and running for a week and feel compelled to at least do some of that early this week.