Post 75 - Tough stuff and Guinness crisps

I managed to shake off the rotten cold that had been plaguing me over the last couple of weeks, but there are only three months until Ironman race day and I’ve been starting to get the feeling that time is moving on quickly. Soon, my cycle of two tough weeks followed by one easier week is going to be dictated by the two warm-up events I’m doing – the North Norfolk 100 mile bike time trial in May and the Bristol triathlon in June, followed by the Ironman in July. I had a look at a calendar the other day, and leaving the current training block aside, there are only two more blocks of two training weeks left. And I have a lot I still want to do in training – critical swim speed workouts, longer bikes, longer runs, bike hill simulations, and so on.

I need to make sure everything is planned so that I don’t run out of time, and a lesson from this week is that I might even need to taper down for specific key sessions, so that I can absolutely nail them, rather than being tired and not able to do a key session as hard as I want to or need to. This might mean lowering the intensity of preceding sessions slightly, so that by the time a key, targeted session comes around, I still have reasonably good legs to maximise how well I am able to do the session. During this week, I’ve completed some good miles, and was happy with all my sessions except Saturday’s long bike.

On Tuesday I did an hour on the turbo with 2 x 20 minutes hard, followed by a short 20-minute run. During this turbo, the inside of my left knee felt a little bit dodgy. When I tried to do my squats afterwards, I managed three before I called a halt - my left knee wasn't comfortable at all and I didn't want to aggravate things further. I didn't do any squatting for the rest of the week - it's just constant management, reacting, and making the best of what the body lets you do. On Wednesday I did a 10km fartlek run, involving 15 sets of one minute fast and one minute slow running. Both Tuesday and Wednesday were “fair enough” sessions, tough but not too tough. On Thursday evening I was on the turbo for nearly two hours, and this session really knackered me. Not quite “fair enough” and maybe a bit too tough, given the training I still wanted to do on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Thursday’s turbo involved a short warm-up, followed by a pyramid of 1 minute hard/1 minute easy, 2 hard/2 easy, 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, then 8/8, 6/6, 4/4, 2/2 and 1/1, and finally a short warm-down. The hard intervals were all around 300-320 watts. The session was tougher than I thought it would be, and alarm bells should have been ringing when I was descending down the stairs afterwards… verrrrrry slowly, one step at a time, using the bannister and wall to take most of my weight, grunting and groaning the whole way down. Steve was in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, probably thinking, “What on earth is going on here…?” He asked if I was injured or if I’d just had a tough session… It had been a good session and a very tough one, but with hindsight, I should probably have taken a couple of easier days after it to allow for proper recovery, or else toned down the intensity and duration.

Struggling for photographic inspiration... 

answers (and/or suggestions) on a postcard...

On Friday I was in the pool and blasted out two sets of 10 x 100m. I hoped to pace these well, and hoped to be no slower than 1:30 per 100m, with 30 seconds of recovery up to two minutes. It turned out that my first set of 10 x 100m averaged about 1:27 and after a very slow 500m swim in between, the second set averaged 1:29. Not bad, but again my pacing was a bit off. I’d rather do 1:28 and 1:28. I have it in my head that my first set of this session is usually around 1:27-1:28 and the second set usually fades to something like 1:32, so I can’t be too disappointed. But I need to learn how easy the first few hundred metres of a swim feels – it’s not difficult to swim 1:22 for the first couple of hundreds and think that it’s sustainable, and then painfully realise that it’s not! On Friday night I did my single-leg turbo drills and watched the Crystal Maze on YouTube. The Friday night of dreams…

Ready for a long turbo/bike on Saturday...

On Saturday I planned a longer bike ride. I haven’t done too many long bike rides in training, and with a 100 mile time trial coming up, I need to get a couple of 4-hour rides done. So I got on the turbo intending to a 4 hour bike ride, with 3:40 at a good pace, between 220-230 watts. A few weeks ago I did 3 hours at 222 watts, so I didn’t see this long ride as being impossibly tough. The first hour went fine and my wattage was on target. The next 30 minutes also went fine. Then it got tough. I was holding my wattage but I knew there was no way I’d sustain it. I was hanging. Sure enough, it dropped away just before the 2-hour mark, down to around 200 watts. My legs just didn’t have anything. My heart rate was still fine at around 140-145bpm, but my legs were saying “too tired”. I made it through to 3:10, for a net 3:30 bike ride including my 10 minute warm-up and cool-down. I managed a 25 minute run afterwards. Very tough, and my body’s way of saying, “You can’t expect me to have a Thursday like that, and then a Friday like that, and then expect to do a Saturday like that…”

Not a good look: struggling in the pain cave.
Did I mention I was struggling for photographic inspiration too...?

For the rest of Saturday I was in zombie-mode, not fit for much except lounging about and resting. But I did have enough energy to think about how vital my longer bike sessions are becoming (I haven’t done enough of them and the 100 mile time trial is looming), and how I’ll have to prioritise these longer bikes in the weeks to come. This will mean slightly easing down the intensity of training during the week so that I have legs that aren’t too tired for the long bike on Saturdays. That way, I can really hit the long bike as hard as I need to, and get good benefit from it. I’ll put this into practice next week, and hopefully before the North Norfolk 100, I’ll have done two decent, strong, long bikes.

On Sunday morning I played with my toys. In the pool. Not rubber duckies or water pistols, but hand paddles, leg floats and rubber bands to tie my feet together. The rubber band is the worst kind of toy, rendering the legs completely useless when swimming, but helping to promote strength and good body position in the water. This was followed by a 70-minute run, with an hour at sub-6-minute-mile pace. Fortunately my left knee didn't give me any more problems this week, and not doing any squats definitely helped it. After Sunday's run, zombie mode kicked in again and I took things very easy. I even treated myself to a bag of Guinness-flavoured crisps. Wow.

Reward time

Bradley Wiggins is attempting to break the hour record in the London Olympic Park velodrome in June. He’ll probably smash the record. Tickets went on sale on Friday at 10am. I really wanted to get a ticket or two, because I’ve never been in a velodrome, and this hour attempt will be an awesome, awesome occasion. I’m sure a huge number of people were all online, trying to get tickets at 10am on Friday. I was trying too… After 10 minutes of frantic clicking and refreshing and selecting and frustration, I thought the chance had gone and that they’d have sold out. They weren’t even as expensive as I thought they’d be – I wouldn’t have been surprised at a hundred or even two hundred pounds, but they were priced between £29 and £49. Then, to my surprise, I got a message on screen saying that I was being offered 4 tickets and that I had 8 minutes to complete the transaction. Cue an even more frantic 8 minutes scrambling for my credit card, registering my address online, and making sure I didn’t mess anything up. Something to really look forward to.

Also, the London Marathon is next weekend. Paula Radcliffe – marathon world record holder – is running it as her final marathon. She ran 2:15:25 in 2003 and I remember being astounded and inspired by it, just as my running career was starting. This 2:15:25 is one of the single greatest athletic achievements ever. I’ll have to go and see her run next weekend, and work out how to fit this around my training. No tickets required for this one…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 13 May: Rest
Tue 14 May: 1:05 turbo (2 x 20mins hard), 20 min run
Wed 15 May: 40 min fartlek run
Thu 16 May: 1:55 turbo (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 pyramid)
Fri 17 May: Swim 3k (2 x 10 x 100m off 2mins in 1:27, 1:29), 1:05 turbo (10 x 2mins R/L/B)
Sat 18 May: 3:30 turbo, 25 min run
Sun 19 May: Swim 3.3k (250/500 paddle drills), 70 min run (1 hour hard)

Totals: Swim 6.3km, Bike 165 miles, Run 24 miles.