Putting it all in perspective

This weekend has been a tough one. We had some people over on Friday night to watch the final mountain stage of the Tour de France up Alpe D’Huez which was great fun although saddened significantly by the news that one of the coaches at Tri-Alliance, John Cornish, had been killed in a bike accident on Beach road.


I was aware there had been an accident as one of my friends who rides home that way had called me to check that I was not involved as he had ridden past a nasty looking scene. Even though the cycling community in Melbourne is huge, this had been playing on my mind for the evening, knowing that there was always the chance that the person involved could have been someone we knew.


It was about midnight when I saw the news that it was John. I didn’t know him that well but had done a number of bike session with him late last year, he always had an enthusiasm for riding the bike and was keen to pass on skills and knowledge. Seeing someone with such a talent for riding a bike was also pretty inspiring (John would have us doing hard efforts around Albert Park lake on the TT bikes – just as you were right on the limit, pushing for all you were worth, he’d float up next to you, spinning along in the small chain-ring offering some advice before flying off into the distance!).


My thoughts go out to all those close friends of John and his family. It’s such a terrible waste of a life and only goes to show that none of us know how long we have left.


I didn’t particularly enjoy riding my bike this weekend but am sure that in these circumstances, the right thing to do is to keep getting out there.

Rest in Peace JC, may the wind be forever on your back.

PB Updates!

Always a positive topic to write about. Post triathlon season the focus had been on running in preparation for the Gold Coast Marathon. I’ve now downgraded that to the half (at least in my head I have – must email the race organiser!!) more on the reasons for that later.


Meanwhile I’ve had a couple of short sharp races / time trials to see where my running has got to and was please to put down a couple of new PB’s.


Firstly the iconic Tan Lap in Melbourne, 3.82k and a lung bursting effort got me round in 14.55 (previous best 15.08). I understand that Craig Mottram’s best lap around here is 10.08 which is pretty bloody amazing! (2.39min/km!)


http://connect.garmin.com/activity/88091507


I then also did the Williamstown 10k run on the Sunday of the same week, I’ve got close to 40 mins before but never been under and I figured that I was in decent shape so should give it a go. I had done a hard bike / run brick the previous day but felt pretty good, went through 5k in about 19.30 (thanks greatly to the pacing services of Kev!) and managed to hang on for a 39.39, a nice little mental barrier broken.

Target 599!!
25 weeks to go until IMWA and training has now really started to get into full swing. Given that I have set myself a pretty tough target of sub 10 hours I was conscious that following the same sort of training plan for this year is likely to result in the same sort of result so decided to mix things up a bit and try something new.


The new thing has been to join up with Sean Foster at Fluid Movements and start doing some training wit his squad. As well as being keen to get some fresh perspectives on training for an Ironman I also wanted to continue to expand my network of people willing to join me on the tough (i.e. stupid) training days.

Run
I’ve been with them for a few weeks now and it has been going well so far. I joined just at the start of a run block which I came into in good shape due to the marathon training so I’ve been maintaining a pretty high volume (70-80k per week). When I initially spoke with Sean he was more than happy to help towards the marathon training but it was his view that would be detrimental to my goals in Busselton so after giving it some thought I decided to drop to the half at the Gold Coast. That will mean my recovery will be much faster an enable me to continue working towards Busso through July.


Bike
My biking has been pretty limited in recent times so getting a bit of consistency back into that over the last couple of weeks has been good although its pretty daunting realising how far I have to go. I punched out a pretty good 20min TT (average watts 312) but don’t feel like I have any endurance in my cycling legs at the moment.


Swim
Whilst I don’t think there are huge time savings to be made in the swim I think there are significant energy savings I can make on race day and so I have also been swimming with the Fluid Movements squad at South Yarra Sports. I’ve been to 4 sessions so far and it has been pretty brutal. The volume and intensity is much higher than I have trained at before and at the end of each session to date it has been a struggle to lift myself out of the pool!! The timing of the sessions works quite well for me in terms of work so the plan is to get myself there 3 days a week, get the sessions done and hopefully see some big improvements.


I guess technically I can add another pb to the list as well, although really by default, after 3.3k of butterfly and freestyle drills the other day we then did a 200m TT, I was already cooked but dragged myself through to a 3.05 which I was pretty happy with in the circumstances, but sure I could improve if fresher!


Anyway, looking forward to my first trip up to Kinglake of the year tomorrow (will be interesting to see how much more recovery there has been since the 2009 Bushfires), must stop typing now, my arms are still hurting from swimming.....

End of Triathlon Season – Part 2

Last week marked the second end to the triathlon season for me, after coming back from London in January significantly better insulated and less fit than when I left, I’ve enjoyed the last few races of the sprint season and rounded that off with a 6th place finish in 30-34 age group and a good all round race.

Despite fairly limited swimming I’ve actually been going pretty well in races and based upon the splits posted yesterday (which I am still not convinced by) I was actually 5th out of the water in my age group

Copious amounts of baby oil helped to get my slightly snug wetsuit off in double quick time and I picked up a podium slot (3rd fasters through T1!).

I wasn’t feeling great on the bike but my speed was pretty good, a couple of guys came past me as I was starting to lose a bit of focus (probably due to the slight hangover and sore legs from paintball on a bucks/stag (depending on your nationality) and that woke me up and my simple plan was to make sure that they didn’t get to far infront. This kept me working pretty hard and before too long I was back past one of them and hunting the other guy down. Off into T2 and some quick abuse from the coach’s husband regarding the aero lid (fair) had me on my way into T2.

I had a bit of a fight with my new shoes (check them out - trying to move toawrds forefoot running a bit - at least they look fast!!) which cost me a bit of time in T2 but I was on my way. Run was reasonably uneventful, I was pushing as hard as I could and running a decent pace. Some more abuse from the coach as I got near to the line (“Rob this is a race!”) had me busting out a mini sprint finish.

Splits for the race were:

Swim 13.06 (3rd in AG)
T1 1.01 (3rd)
Bike 33.52 (4th)
T2 1.15 (13th)
Run 19.59.7 (10th) - (ok I know that is 20 mins when rounded like the others but it looks better this way)
Total 1.09.14

6th in 30-34 AG, 48th overall. I measured the bike course a little long for this event (21.6km) and the run course a touch short (4.95km).

Overall I’ve been really happy with part 2 of this season, it was hard coming back to racing having lost so much fitness post Busselton but I’ve enjoyed the last few races and can feel my form coming back again. The focus now switches to running as I start to build up for Great Ocean Road half marathon and Gold Coast marathon.

I have to say a big thanks to Scott at XOSIZE, he’s helped me out this year with some sponsorship and it’s been great being part of the team.

I’ve been really impressed by the XOSIZE series, having previously only done Gatorade races. I think the support these races give to the kids series is also pretty impressive, although having a 35kg 15 year old bouncing past you on the run is a little soul destroying!! Busselton was a great memory for this year but getting my first podium at race 1 of the series was also a cool moment.

Last week saw an increase in running up to 60k's for the week, I have a target of close to 100k this week but will see how the body holds up.

Target 599 – Stage 1

My previous post outlined the goal for the year, as much as it would be nice, I’m fairly sure it won’t happen for me without plenty of hard work, a calculated approach and no doubt a little bit of luck throughout the process.

I have some ideas for things that will help me with my training to get there and I thought I’d talk about a few of them here.

My first 2 plans are closely related and were trialled a little in my Busso build up this year to get a bit of understanding.

1.     Training with Power on the bike

2.     Using Training Peaks WKO+ to track fitness and plan workouts / taper

Power – I bought an ibike last year (http://www.ibikesports.com/products_ipro.html) which is basically a very clever computer that estimates your power output based on measuring or estimating all other variables. I found this pretty useful and gave me a better idea about pacing my longest rides. One major benefit of the ibike is that I can transfer it between bikes and use it when racing, however although I found the power numbers useful as a guide, I did get a fair bit of variability between the two bikes and bad weather would tend to make it have a heart attack!

SO after much deliberation and procrastination I took the plunge and bought a powertap. The main disadvantage of this system is that I cannot race with it, however, I can use it for all of my other riding, on either bike and can therefore use it to structure my training more.

Structured bike training seems to be one of the things that a lot of triathletes seem to lack, we are good at running interval sessions, fartlek sessions, hill session or keeping the pace easy on other runs however, more often than not bike rides for me seem to get dictated by the group you are with or how you are feeling rather than having a really specific aim. I also think people have a tendency to kid themselves about how well a bike ride went, it’s easy to feel like it was a good ride when you spend the last hour flying home with a roaring tail wind, although actually measuring how much effort you put in can only be done accurately by looking at power numbers.

WKO+ - This program which I purchased last year enables me to use the power data in order to objectively measure my fitness and fatigue. I used this throughout my Busso build and as a numbers geek at heart, found it a useful guide, particularly in relation to fatigue, but also good validation that your fitness is progressing.

I started using WKO+ from June last year and as of a few days ago, can explain my last 8 months training in one graph, however, in order for this to make any sense you need to understand 4 few key concepts:

TSS – ‘Training Stress Score’ – this is a score computed for every workout based upon how tough it was, this is calculated using the intensity of your workout (calculated with reference to your threshold running pace or threshold bike power) and the duration of the workout, so for example, a 30 min flat out running race may give you the same TSS as a 90 min easy run – WKO works out this TSS for you based upon the threshold numbers you put in and it then uses the data from your workout (using a Garmin and the ibike for me).

CTL – ‘Critical Training Load’ – This is essentially your average TSS over the last 6 weeks and gives you a measure of your overall fitness – this is the blue line on the graph

ATL – ‘Acute Training Load’ – This is your average TSS over the last 7 days, so a shorter term measure of the work you have been putting in – this is the pink line on the graph

TSB – Training Stress Balance – This is the difference between your CTL and ATL and therefore gives you a measure of current fatigue (the yellow line of the graph) – basically if you went out and accumulated a TSS of 100 every day for 7 days your ATL would be 100, this would effect people differently depending upon their underlying fitness (represented by CTL) so this is a really useful guide when trying to taper for an event, and can sometimes show you when you are trending towards overtraining (or being a slacker!!)

I’ve noted a few key things on the graph below (which is a combined bike and run graph – I actually track these separately but this graph will do for now!).

I started recording data in the system from June last year and my fitness slowly built up over the first 6 weeks since it was starting assuming that my fitness was nil (which was not the case!)

You can then see how my fitness (blue line) went down when I was on holiday in NZ. I then had a good long block of solid training as I built towards the marathon and had a huge peak in ATL (pink line) following the two day camp at Apollo bay – that left me very fatigued and I struggled for a week or so after that (look at how low the yellow line goes – I now know that if I want to be able to train usefully, that is more fatigue than I can reasonably cope with).

As I came into the marathon (10^th October) I tapered down and you can see how the fatigue reduces (yellow line comes up) but the price you pay for that is a small reduction in fitness (blue line).

Post marathon recovery the last 8 week block into Ironman started and again I managed to start raising the blue line (note that as the blue line gets higher and higher, you have to perform workouts with greater TSS in order to keep raising it). The one downfall for me this year was that after the Melbourne marathon I did most of my riding on the TT bike, where the ibike would give me a lower power number compared to the same effort on the road bike. Therefore the TSS’s I was generating were not equivalent to pre-marathon. However, absolute numbers are not really important, this tool is more useful for showing the trend of your fitness.

However because of this the absolute numbers would suggest that I was about the same fitness for the Ironman as I was for the marathon – I know that this is not the case but having the powertap this year should help to reduce the inconsistency of data.

It’s all just numbers and pretty graphs and doesn’t help you come race day, however I find it an interesting way to plan my training and it has been useful as a guide to knowing when I am starting to get really fatigued, it gives you some objective evidence on those days where you are fairly sure that staying in bed will be the best option!

The final note is to point out that you can see how all that hard earned fitness pre-Ironman has happily left me now!! I’ve started doing some fairly structured training again so hopefully I can start having that blue line head in the right direction!!