Today marks the 2 months to go point and my training is really starting to get challenging. This weekend was really tough but I managed to survive and feel like I learnt a few things which is good.
Saturday's ride was good, I made an early start, getting out the door by 6am so it was nice and quiet on the roads. I decided to take a route that meant a lot of the ride was on the A21 towards Hastings, a dual carriageway at some points but I was keen to try and get some uninterrupted riding with less junctions and better road surfaces which worked quite well, I got home n just over 5 hours with 145km covered, a quick change at home and I then headed out for my one hour run. I started this at a nice easy pace and managed to plod along ok, legs didn't feel too bad, pace was certainly not high but I had never intended it to be.
Sunday's plan was a 90 min easy ride followed by a 2.5 hour run, the ride was fine, a bit windy on the way home but no major problems, quick change and out for my run, I took a camelback filled with water and 3 gels for the run which would normally be plenty. My plan was to take 1 gel after 1 hour, the next after 1hour40 and the last one just after the 2 hour mark. These plans changed pretty rapidly when after only about 15 minutes, I was feeling awful. My legs felt like they had nothing in them and as such I could not get my HR up to where I would have liked it to be so with over 2 hours of running still to go, I decided to revert to a damage limitation type of strategy. I therefore took one of my gels after 20 minutes and that helped for a little while but I was then into the cycle of being slightly lifted after each gel and then feeling this slowly wear off over the next 20-30 minutes and then feeling terrible again! As I only had 3 gels I had to just try and battle through the terrible parts and try and keep going. I am fully expecting to feel like this on the actual day so in a way it was probably pretty good practice, although in hindsight I think I need to start taking out a sports drink rather than simply water, at least during the race there will be an aid station every 2km or so where I can properly re-fuel if I need to.
As you can probably imagine, the next 2 hours of the run were not a whole heap of fun and I was pretty happy to get home in one piece. Hopefully some lessons learned for next time though, and was also encouraging that I still managed to cover 27km even though I felt like death for most of it, had the run gone really well I would have expected to cover something like 29km so it was not the end of the world.
I have booked this Wednesday off work and am planning to do my 2nd Half Ironman simulation. The weather forecast looks ok so I am expecting this to go ahead. I'm going to follow the same format as last time, which means braving the public swimming pool again which will no doubt drive me mental!! I'm going to try a few tweaks to my nutrition strategy as I felt a bit bloated on the bike this Saturday.
This session will be done at my planned Ironman pace which I think I have worked out in my head, and only 2 and a half weeks out from Barcelona will also give me a bit more practice stringing all three sports together. The only other thing I need to sort out before then is getting some open water swimming in, I had hoped to do this yesterday but ran out of time and was feeling pretty beaten up after the weekend so I will try and work out a time to get down to the lake to get used to my wetsuit again.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Friday, 1 May 2009
The May Challenge
So with April now out of the way, the training is going to move to a new level. Due to the 2.5 week holiday, Aprils training totals were relatively low:
Swim - 14.9km (9.3 miles) - 5 hours 34 mins
Bike - 459km (286.9 miles) - 17 hours 3 mins
Run - 137.2km (85.8 miles) - 11 hours 47 mins
Total - 34 hours 25 minutes
I've had a good week so far, after having a nice rest on holiday, my legs were complaining a bit with the 55km that I ran over the first 3 days of this week but although there is always an element of having tired legs with this sort of training, I'm not feeling too bad.
May was always going to be my biggest training month of the year, as I get to the last couple of weeks of June I will start to reduce the volume to prepare for the race so I decided to set myself a challenge in May. I want to have my biggest month in each sport, based upon the training log that I have which goes back to the start of 2008, the most I have done in each sport is as follows:
Swim - 26.3km (Sept 08)
Bike - 1170.3km (Jan 09)
Run - 265.7km (Oct 08)
When I started working towards this race I spent 3 week blocks concentrating on one particular sport which is why the biggest weeks for each one were some months ago.
My intention is to do this through consistent training rather than mega sessions, although obviously the big weekends that I have planned over the next few weeks will help. I am also taking a day off work next week to do another half ironman simulation so that will help with the numbers.
Have a 5 hour ride followed by a 1 hour run planned for Saturday and then Sunday will be my long run (2.5 hours) with an easy 90 minutes on the bike beforehand. Being a public holiday on Monday I am hoping to get my first open water swim of the season in as I'm reliably informed that the lake is now about 14 degrees so should be just about bearable!
Swim - 14.9km (9.3 miles) - 5 hours 34 mins
Bike - 459km (286.9 miles) - 17 hours 3 mins
Run - 137.2km (85.8 miles) - 11 hours 47 mins
Total - 34 hours 25 minutes
I've had a good week so far, after having a nice rest on holiday, my legs were complaining a bit with the 55km that I ran over the first 3 days of this week but although there is always an element of having tired legs with this sort of training, I'm not feeling too bad.
May was always going to be my biggest training month of the year, as I get to the last couple of weeks of June I will start to reduce the volume to prepare for the race so I decided to set myself a challenge in May. I want to have my biggest month in each sport, based upon the training log that I have which goes back to the start of 2008, the most I have done in each sport is as follows:
Swim - 26.3km (Sept 08)
Bike - 1170.3km (Jan 09)
Run - 265.7km (Oct 08)
When I started working towards this race I spent 3 week blocks concentrating on one particular sport which is why the biggest weeks for each one were some months ago.
My intention is to do this through consistent training rather than mega sessions, although obviously the big weekends that I have planned over the next few weeks will help. I am also taking a day off work next week to do another half ironman simulation so that will help with the numbers.
Have a 5 hour ride followed by a 1 hour run planned for Saturday and then Sunday will be my long run (2.5 hours) with an easy 90 minutes on the bike beforehand. Being a public holiday on Monday I am hoping to get my first open water swim of the season in as I'm reliably informed that the lake is now about 14 degrees so should be just about bearable!
Monday, 27 April 2009
Well rested but starting to get nervous
Arrived back from my holiday yesterday and had a great time, we spent just over 2 weeks in South Africa and managed to get to Durban, Johannesburg, a game reserve, the Garden Route and Cape Town. Throw in a wedding (which was the main reason for the trip) and you have a fairly busy two weeks. I won't add all the photos that I took (digital camera's only result in me taking hundreds of of pictures of sunsets) but here are a selected few:
A friendly lion cub:
are you sure they only eat grass??
Sunset at Camps Bay, table Mountain in the background
Managed to take in an IPL game in Cape Town, another spectacular sunset after a stormy day
Finally, I'm not sure that his elephant was too pleased with us watching him and his family!!
Training was pretty much nil while I was away, I managed a few short runs but nothing else, my legs at least feel well rested now!!
Got home yesterday to the realisation that Barcelona is now only 4 weeks away so with Austria only 6 weeks after that the two weeks of no training has made me a bit nervous, but also determined to get back into it. I also ate well whilst on holiday, so have a few kg's that I would prefer not to be carrying around races with me so need to try and deal with that over the coming 2 months as well.
Didn't train yesterday after a long flight but went out for an easy 2 hour run this morning that was ok, am going to do a couple of hours on the bike this evening as well as it is light beyond 8pm now which is good. I'm back to work from Monday but will be putting of plenty of hours into the training.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
A nasty cold and a busy week at work
Training this week has been rubbish! My legs recovered well from the Half Ironman on the weekend, felt much better than they have done after recent races so that was promising, however the rest of me felt terrible, the cold that was creeping up over the weekend turned quite nasty and I have felt generally terrible for the last few days.
I could have done with a day in bed but work was really busy and fairly stressful so just had to try and get through it.
Tuesday evening it was all getting on top of me so I decided that I would go to my swim squad anyway as it would be good to stop thinking about work and feeling crap for an hour. The lane they put me in last week was pretty easy so I thought I would stay in that lane and just take it nice and steady.....
Started the warm up and they asked me to move up a lane (to a faster one) in order to even the numbers out a bit, so my plans went a bit out of the window. I ended up having a great swim session though, I really enjoyed the session which had us doing 600m with paddles at 1500m pace. The coach then used that time (10.30ish for 600m) to come up with a planned pace of 3.25 for 3x200m (with 30 seconds rest). A few months ago I would not have had a chance of swimming at that pace but I ended up leading the lane off and making the splits pretty comfortably, pacing well to come in at about 3.20 each time. So all in all I'm happy with my swimming at the moment.
Apart from that and riding into work and back one day I have not done any training, just haven't felt up to it so thought rest was the best policy.
We're off to South Africa this evening for just over two weeks which should be great, my training will be hit and miss, I'll do whatever I can when I can but I'm not going to set myself a formal plan, will just try and run a bit and swim whenever I get the opportunity.
Once I get back I will only have 10 weeks left to Austria so my training will really start to pick up. I'm going to try and add another medium length ride one morning during the week to help my legs get stronger, together with running into work once per week to help keep the run volume up. Will just need to get myself up out of bed earlier in order to fit in the ride before work!
Anyway, I need to go and finish off my packing, off to the airport in a couple of hours.
I could have done with a day in bed but work was really busy and fairly stressful so just had to try and get through it.
Tuesday evening it was all getting on top of me so I decided that I would go to my swim squad anyway as it would be good to stop thinking about work and feeling crap for an hour. The lane they put me in last week was pretty easy so I thought I would stay in that lane and just take it nice and steady.....
Started the warm up and they asked me to move up a lane (to a faster one) in order to even the numbers out a bit, so my plans went a bit out of the window. I ended up having a great swim session though, I really enjoyed the session which had us doing 600m with paddles at 1500m pace. The coach then used that time (10.30ish for 600m) to come up with a planned pace of 3.25 for 3x200m (with 30 seconds rest). A few months ago I would not have had a chance of swimming at that pace but I ended up leading the lane off and making the splits pretty comfortably, pacing well to come in at about 3.20 each time. So all in all I'm happy with my swimming at the moment.
Apart from that and riding into work and back one day I have not done any training, just haven't felt up to it so thought rest was the best policy.
We're off to South Africa this evening for just over two weeks which should be great, my training will be hit and miss, I'll do whatever I can when I can but I'm not going to set myself a formal plan, will just try and run a bit and swim whenever I get the opportunity.
Once I get back I will only have 10 weeks left to Austria so my training will really start to pick up. I'm going to try and add another medium length ride one morning during the week to help my legs get stronger, together with running into work once per week to help keep the run volume up. Will just need to get myself up out of bed earlier in order to fit in the ride before work!
Anyway, I need to go and finish off my packing, off to the airport in a couple of hours.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)