Post 133 - Last tough training week

This was my final tough week of training before a 2-week taper leading into Ironman UK. It’s unbelievable, I don't know how I have made it this far in 2016, with everything that’s been going on this year: with work, with all the redundancies, with all the threats of moving office (thereby making my commute literally untenable), with my consequent lack of motivation for training earlier in the year, with everything. The year has gone so quickly, but at the same time it has gone so slowly. And I still have two weeks left to go, and it seems like ages…

I had a rest day on Monday as usual, and the sore quad from last week seemed to have sorted itself out. I’ve been lucky with injuries this year, I’ve had niggles but nothing has really hindered my training in a big way. I say "lucky" - there's an element of luck, but maybe I could also say well-prepared, disciplined, adopting good avoidance strategies, not overtraining, doing my core work and stretching all the time, warming up and cooling down well, eating well, hydrating well, trying to sleep well. It all adds up and it all helps the whole.

I planned a final FTP (functional threshold power) test for Tuesday evening. This would tell me exactly where my fitness is, and will help me in deciding how hard to ride the Ironman bike. I did an FTP test on 17th May, 6 weeks ago, and hit 325 watts for a 20-minute all-out effort. I hoped to hit 330 watts this time around.

So I went into my pain cave (i.e. my bedroom) on Tuesday evening where my bike is clamped to its indoor trainer, did my stretching and warming up, and got going. The thermostat was reading 24 degrees in my room, and I had all the windows open and the fan going full blast in my face. 20 minutes of agony ahead. For the first 30 seconds, as I was settling into it, I was over 330 watts. But there’s no point in going too hard too soon and blowing up. So I settled into a wattage of just under 330, hoping I wasn’t overcooking things and hoping I’d have the legs to gradually increase my output in the second half rather than fading.

After 15 minutes my average was 328 watts and my heart rate was pushing 180bpm. I was maxing it out as hard as I could, doing everything I could to hold my output. The power meter doesn’t lie. You can ease off a fraction, but your power meter will show you up and you’ll drop from 330 to 290 all too easily. Keep the output. Could I hold it for 4 more minutes? Then 3 more? With 2 minutes left, I changed up a gear and my power went up to 340 watts. I thought I could hack it for 2 more minutes. Then one more. With less than a minute left, my average power hit 330 watts. I didn’t want to finish with less than 330 watts. So I hammered it to the end, heart rate in the high 180s.

Then it was over. I stopped my bike computer and collapsed over the bike. Oooffff. It took me a good few minutes to recover enough to sit up and look at my Garmin computer. I’d averaged 330 watts for 20 minutes at an average heart rate of 174bpm. Tough, tough stuff, but it was my highest ever 20-minute effort. Multiplying this 330 watts by 0.95 gives me an FTP of 313.5 watts (the theoretical maximum power I could hold for an hour). My current weight is about 66kg, so this gives a power-to-weight ratio of 5W/kg for 20 minutes, or 4.75W/kg for an hour.

Elapsed time 26:29, so it took me 6:29 to recover enough to take this photo

Why not just do the test for an hour, instead of doing 20 minutes and then applying a fudge factor? Well, 20 minutes is horrific, but you can recover quite quickly from it. Doing a full-on hour would take days to recover from, and would be way off the horrific scale. Plus, it would be quite dangerous to go so hard on the road, and doing an hour so hard on the turbo would be tedious in the extreme - it would feel like about 6 hours.

It’s interesting to compare my FTP and power-to-weight ratio with pros and elites. From the point of view of cycling as a standalone discipline, the following table gives a guide:

My FT power-to-weight ratio is currently 4.75W/kg, which puts me in the “excellent” category (hmmmm). To get to “world class”, I would have to either lose 16kg of weight (but losing that much weight would literally be impossible for me, and anyway, losing much more weight would mean I wouldn’t have the strength or energy to increase my power), or I’d have to gain another 100 watts (how on earth could I do that?! It took me 6 weeks of tough, tough training to increase my 20-minute power from 325 to 330 watts…), or a combination of both. Genetics are restrictive…

From the point of view of Ironman, the pros would typically hold somewhere between 3.8 and 4W/kg for the Ironman bike. For me, at 66kg, holding 4W/kg would mean an average of 264W for the Ironman bike. Not likely. I averaged 263 watts for the 100 mile time trial a couple of weeks ago and there’s not a chance I would have been able to run a decent marathon straight after that. For good amateur Ironman athletes trying to qualify for Kona, it’s said that around 3 to 3.3W/kg is a good guide. This would be 200-220 watts, and that seems reasonable…

I went out on Wednesday evening and did a fartlek run. Nothing too tough. A 5-minute warm-up, then 20 minutes of alternating fast and slow running, then a 5-minute cool down. No problem. Then I did some weights and core work. No problem. Then early to bed. No problem.

On Thursday, I had another rest day. No point in overdoing things at this point, there aren’t many more gains to be made. I had a chat with management at work, and they offered me the chance to work from home over the next two weeks, in the lead-up to Ironman UK. This is literally priceless, and goes a long way to making up for some of the situations I have been put through earlier this year by our head office. So that’s a lot of stress that I won’t have to deal with in the final two weeks – no commuting, no office, much less risk of getting ill, more sleep, more relaxed me, more time, better all around. Brilliant.

Rest day on Thursday - Jenga rocks!

On Friday, I left the office and the next time I go back to the office will be after the Ironman. I’ve no idea where I will be going back to, because there has been some fairly definite talk in the last week that the office will be moving within two weeks. To somewhere further out of London. So instead of 150 minutes per day commuting, it’ll be over 200 minutes. That’s ridiculous. I’ve been saying for ages that my days in London are numbered… Anyway, I’ll worry about getting through the Ironman first…

I went to the swimming pool after work and did 20 x 100m, each in 1:30, with 10 seconds of recovery. At least, that’s what I planned. By the time I had done ten repetitions, I was fading. Instead of holding 1:30, I was down a couple of seconds. The usual problem of starting too fast in the pool was biting. I was sneaking a few extra seconds of recovery. Instead of 10 seconds of recovery, it was 15. Not a great session, but I got through the 20 repetitions, and it was tough.

Then I went to the shop and spent a fortune on pasta, rice, vegetables, fruit, milk, porridge, chicken, turkey and salmon. And a very small bar of chocolate. I’ve got to know the guy in the shop. He sees what I buy every week. He couldn’t believe I had bought a small bar of chocolate. I told him that after the Ironman, he could expect me to be buying beer, Guinness, pizza, chips, pies, the works... I got home, did my single-leg bike drills on the turbo trainer, and got to bed. 

On Saturday, I planned to do a “metric Ironman” – 112km on the bike (instead of 112 miles as in an Ironman) followed by a 26km run (instead of 26 miles as in the Ironman). The idea being that this session would be a good confidence boost, and hopefully not take too much out of me. Ideally I'd have done this session a month or more before race day, but circumstances haven't allowed it, so I hoped that 15 days before race day would be enough to allow good recovery. I want to be fresh and tapering well for the final two weeks, not knackered and recovering.  

I didn’t feel great on Saturday when I got out of bed. I was very tired, and a bit sniffly. I knew that pollen levels were high, and maybe that had something to do with it, but also I’ve felt washed-out since before I went to Italy, and then I did a hard 100 miler, and then had to endure a trip to Italy, and then some more hard training. The body was tired and depleted. I didn’t feel terrible and I wouldn’t say I was full-on ill, but I definitely didn’t feel 100%.

For the metric Ironman, I thought I’d start with weights (to tire my arms and try to simulate how they'll feel after swimming 3.8km in the Ironman), then I'd do 3 and a half hours on the turbo at Ironman race intensity (220-230 watts) and then 16 miles of running in around 2 hours, again at Ironman race pace. I didn’t feel as warm on the bike as I usually feel, and ended up closing a window, but I got through three hours, varying my cadence and doing three efforts of 10 minutes at higher wattages, to simulate going uphill (plenty of hills at Ironman UK). I averaged 220 watts and 141bpm for the three hours.

Then I went out to run. I didn’t fancy a full two hours, and the more I ran, the less I fancied it. It was windy and I wasn’t warm, and the skies were dark and ominous, and I felt tired, and there’s only two weeks to go, and do I really need to trash myself running for two hours or more? After an hour, it started to spit with rain. The first stage of the Tour de France was due to finish soon, it would be good to see that. There was no point in running on, I wouldn’t gain any more by running any more, and I would need more time to recover. So after 10 miles, I told myself that was plenty, and went back to the house to eat for the rest of the day. I was back in time to see Mark Cavendish win the first stage of the Tour, and take his first ever yellow jersey.

Weight after 3 hours on the bike and 10 miles of running

Weight after refuelling and re-hydrating after 3 hours on the bike and 10 miles of running

I noticed that my right knee felt a bit sore. And I was still sniffly. Hmmm. I took some anti-inflammatories, went to bed very early and hoped for the best. I didn’t feel much better in the morning but went to the pool anyway to do my last tough training session before tapering. And it wouldn’t even be a “tough” training session, it would be sets of 250m, doing different strength drills with my arm floats, leg float, ankle band and hand paddles. I got through it, went back to the shop, bought more food, went home, and rested/ate/drank/watched sport on TV. I was a bit spoiled for choice – Tour de France, Formula 1, Wimbledon tennis, and Euro championship football. But that was it – all of the training done. Now just two weeks of tapering and easy training to get through.

I even had the pint of Guinness that has literally had my name on it since I won the Bristol triathlon. I texted my result back to my housemates and they texted me back a "well done" with a photo of a can of Guinness with a post-it note stuck to it with my name on it. This was 4 weeks ago. And I literally haven’t had any time to sit and drink it. So I finally drank it. It’s good for you, it has iron in it…

I should be really happy that all the work is done, and that I’ve got my fitness to a reasonable level. I have proof that my fitness is decent: a win at the Bristol triathlon, a 3:58 100-mile time trial, and a 330W FTP test. If you'd told me in January that I'd get to this level, I'd have taken it. But I know how quickly things can go wrong in the run-up to race day, and on race day itself. And I’m also worried about my right knee and my sniffles. Hopefully my sniffles will go away within a few days if it is a cold, and if the pollen levels go down, this should help (although I’ve never had problems with pollen or allergies in the past).

I am concerned about my knee though. Usually little niggles die down within a couple of days, but my knee has not felt right for a couple of days now and is showing no sign of getting better. I’m not sure what I can do about it either, other than rest it for a couple of days. I’d planned to rest for a couple of days anyway, so I’ll just take it easy, try to stay off my feet, and hope for the best…

So near and yet so far… so much effort put in, and it could all still yet come undone, but it could also be brilliant if it goes well…

Let’s see…

Training done this week was as follows:

Mon 27 June: Rest
Tue 28 June: 45 min turbo (20 min FTP test: 330W/174bpm: FTP = 313.5W)
Wed 29 June: 30 minute fartlek run
Thu 30 June: Rest
Fri 1 July: Swim 2.5km (20 x 100m, 1:30-1:35, 10-15 sec recovery), 30 minute turbo (3 x 3mins R/L/B)
Sat 2 July: 3 hour turbo (220W, 141bpm), 80 minute run
Sun 3 July: Swim 3.1km (12 x 250m drills)

Totals: Swim 5.6km, Bike 90 miles, Run 15 miles.