Post 126 - Training continues

Another tough week done… I do feel that things are slowly moving in the right direction and that the fitness, endurance and strength is coming, although I’m still not where I want and need to be, and I still have a lot of work to do. But I also have a lot of work done, so this means I have a lot to lose if things go wrong. I need to balance training hard with recovering well – but I can hopefully manage this and I have experience of this (and also how not to do it). So far, it has been going well.

I did 2 x 20 minutes hard on the turbo on Tuesday evening. I held 285 watts at 160bpm for the first 20 minutes, and after a short 4-minute recovery I held 290 watts at 169bpm for the second 20 minutes. I was never horribly uncomfortable doing this session, I felt strong, and I felt I was within my limits. I’d like to be able to hold over 300 watts for both sets of 20 minutes, and I think my heart rates would indicate that I’m not too far away from being able to do that. I’ll try to do a full-on 20 minute FTP test soon, and see where my FTP is. This would be a single 20-minute blast, as hard as possible. I’d like to be able to hold 330 watts for the 20 minutes. We’ll see…

On Wednesday evening I did a long run, for one hour and 50 minutes, at roughly Ironman pace. I averaged 7:43/mile and 138bpm. It wasn’t too bad, but I do hate long runs! They knacker me more than any other session I do, and I need to have good recovery planned – I need to know that immediately afterwards I can get some good food and protein down, get rehydrated, get straight into the shower, and not get cold. Then rest up, stay off my feet, and have a good night’s sleep. My housemate is training for a mountain marathon and ran 18 miles at the weekend. He then went out and drank 5 or 6 pints, didn’t get much sleep, and wondered why he had a nosebleed and felt awful and dehydrated in the morning… I gave him some friendly advice/a lecture in long run planning – it’s not just about the running, it’s about going into it feeling fresh and coming off it well, able to eat and drink as needed, immediately, and being able to sleep well too.

I’m a bit disappointed with my new running shoes. I have always used Brooks Adrenaline 13 series shoes over the past couple of seasons. I must own about 6 pairs of these shoes. They are great, and fit perfectly. But because they are an old model, it’s impossible to buy them any more. The latest model is the 16 series. So I am now running in a different model than usual. And even though they are the same size as the previous model that I used, the new model seems to be a fraction too small. And so my big toes are hitting against the front of the shoe. I get away with it in shorter and easier runs, but in the longer and faster runs it’s causing problems. This means I will need new shoes…

I bought new running socks this week. I threw out some of my old ones recently, as they had become awful to wear. All shrunken and stiff. On the recommendation of people on the TriTalk internet forum, I went for Hilly Off-Road Merino socks and Innov8 Race Elite socks. Both seem to be large-fitting, so I will downsize from large to medium, but they seem good. Also inspired by people on TriTalk, I’ve recently started using Vaseline on and between my toes while running. I can’t believe I didn’t do this years ago. It’s great stuff. No rubbing, not even a hint of a blister. It’s a definite for the Ironman, and for all future training and racing.

In case of uncertainty, here are socks and vaseline

I ordered some more stuff off the internet too. I bought a new Rudy Project helmet, with a shorter tail, which will hopefully be more aerodynamic and suit my head and body position better than my current helmet. I also hope it will fit my head better and not compress my ears as much as my current helmet, after a few hours on my head it is agony! I bought some new SiS energy bars after deciding that my PowerBars were too difficult to unwrap and eat while cycling. And I bought some maltodextrin powder, which I will mix with water to make an energy drink and which I hope will be easier on the stomach and guts than the standard PowerBar powder energy mix. I’ll need new shoes too. I’m all in, with a couple of months to go before the Ironman. The last crack. No excuses. I just need to sort out a horizontally-mounted front bottle and get the new running shoes and then there’s no more kit to buy. Hopefully I can sell a lot of it when I’m done.

I was in a shop the other day and saw this. 

Since when did sugary drinks, alcoholic drinks, and sugary alcoholic drinks become “essential”?!

Then I went and bought 2.5kg of maltodextrin (sugar).

I hope it will be easier on the stomach and guts than conventional energy drinks...

I had my rest day on Thursday. I struggle to imagine doing a tough bike interval session on Thursdays now, but this is what I did last year. I must have been absolutely destroying myself. On Friday I hit the pool as usual, and did some very fast swimming: sets of 50m sprints in 40 seconds, followed by 50m slower in 60 seconds, followed by 20 seconds of recovery. I did 20 of these, then went and spent a fortune in the shop on food. I usually get my shopping home delivered, and the delivery was 2 hours late. I didn’t mind at all, and I minded even less when the delivery man handed me a 4-pack of Guinness by way of an apology… To be fair, I am probably their best customer, and I spend a fortune in there every week. On Friday evening, I entertained myself with the usual 30 minutes of single-leg drills on the turbo trainer, but I made the intervals tougher than previously. I didn’t hear any clunking, signifying dead spots in the pedal revolution, so it was good.

My road bike is in getting serviced at the minute, so on Saturday I got on the turbo. I did a 15-minute warm-up (and a 15 minute cool down at the end) with 3 hours of Ironman-intensity riding in between, averaging 217 watts at 143bpm. I mixed things up a bit, and broke the three hours into separate 1-hour blocks. In the first block I did 15-minute sub-blocks, increasing from 200 watts up to 270 watts by the end. In the second hour block, I did leg strength/speed intervals: repetitions of 4 minutes at very high resistance and low cadence (50rpm) to build strength, followed by 4 minutes of very fast spinning at 110-120rpm, followed by 2 minutes of normal pedalling at 90rpm. For the third hour block, I hovered at and above Ironman intensity, at 215-230 watts. I followed this with a run and felt good.

On Sunday I went to the pool and battered out an endurance swim at what I thought was Ironman intensity. I did 4000m and had a look at my time after 2000m, so I was able to get an idea of how well I’d paced it. How well? Not very. My first 2000m were done in 33:05 and my second 2000m were done in 34:36, totalling 67:41 for the 4000. This works out at a 64:15 Ironman-length swim (3800m). That’s not great to be honest, I swam a faster 4000m a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn’t pushing super-hard this time around. I got back to the house (after going to the shop and spending yet more money on food) and debated heading straight out for my 60-minute hilly tempo run. I was tired though, and the Formula 1 had just come on , and the Giro d’Italia time trial was just coming on, and it was very sunny and warm and if I went out I’d have got sunburned, so I decided to eat, drink and recover, while watching the sport on TV.

Then, later that evening I headed out for the run. I wasn’t looking forward to an hour of pushing myself up and down hills. In the end, the run passed quite quickly (maybe the warm and sunny evening had something to do with it) and I felt strong. I was much stronger than the same run a few weeks ago, and significantly faster, for the same average heart rate. A good sign. I averaged 6:04/mile and 163bpm. I had a very sore left big toe afterwards. Damn fractionally-too-small shoes…

I was glad that another week was done. I’ve got a whole day off on Monday to look forward to. I’ve got an event next weekend (a 50 mile time trial in Essex) and then I can have a whole 2 or 3 days off! What a luxury. What a thing to be looking forward to, so much. Here’s hoping the next 9 weeks go well…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 9 May: Rest
Tue 10 May: 1 hour turbo (2 x 20 mins, 4 min recovery: 285W/160bpm/96rpm, 290W/169bpm/92rpm)
Wed 11 May: 110 minute run (7:43/mile, 138bpm)
Thu 12 May: Rest
Fri 13 May: Swim 2.5k (20 x 2 x 50m: 40/60sec off 2 minutes), 30 minute turbo (3 x 3mins R/L/B)
Sat 14 May: 3:30 turbo (3 hours at 217W average, 143bpm), 25min run (7:02/mile, 151bpm)
Sun 15 May: Swim 4.1k (4k in 67:41: 33:05/34:36), 10 mile hilly run: 60:50, 6:04/mile, 163bpm: (6:07/146, 6:03/160, 6:04/160, 6:09/160, 6:09/162, 6:10/166, 5:57/169, 6:05/167, 5:56/169, 6:02/170)

Totals: Swim 6.6km, Bike 110 miles, Run 28 miles