14 weeks to Port

14 weeks to Port
“Greatness is there, if we’d simply wake-up and commit ourselves to working our butts off.” (Scott Molina)

Monday
Boxing day. Decided to take the day off.
Tuesday
Run: 12km Time: 56:16sec. Went out hard today. Leg felt good. Hr was high (av 156bpm). I can’t believe my leg gets sore when I run slow but when I run hard it feels good. Will try running MSS on Thursday (ie 150-155bpm) and see how things go.
Swim: 3km. 1km straight free LSD. Main set 400 free, 8-50 on 50, 4-100 on 1:40 and 2-200 hard. Came in around 2:45-2:50 mark. 100 w/d. Swimming is improving but not enough due to lack of volume. Need to start getting my swimming back up to around 4 sessions PW to see some big improvements.
Wednesday
Bike: 2:07 dist: 61.7km. Climbing 525m, av sp 29.5, av hr 125bpm. Rode with Scotty H this morning. Main set was 3-10min efforts hard (155-160bpm). Rode the northen loop up to Stanwell Park, didn’t do Bald Hill this morning. My riding feels good at the moment up to the 3-4 hr mark. Need to spend time riding in the 5-6 hr range between now and Port.
Thursday
Swim: 3km, 1hr. main set was 5-400 (400free, 8-50free, 4-100free, 2-200free, 400free). The 2-200 were hard I came in on 2:45 and 2:46. pleased with the speed I have at the moment. need to work much more on improving weekly volume.
Run: 10.5km 52min av hr 144bpm. Ran slower then Monday. Leg felt good, even did a couple of hills for the first time in a while.
Friday
Bike: 117.6km 4:20 av hr 130bpm. Rode to Bundeena turnoff. Scott H and I felt quite trashed at the end of this ride. Tough hills and plenty of them. Lot more of these rides to come.
Saturday
Bike: 90km 3:29 av hr 125bpm. Was meant to be a recovery ride today with the tri squad. We ended up riding to the Garrie beach turnoff. Took it easy on the hills. Legs felt heavy for the first 2hrs, then I came good. Felt unreal TTing home from Sandon Point to Puckeys estate. Good strength on the bike and I feel like I'm backing up well with 210km of riding done in 2 days.
Sunday
Run: 11km 1hr av hr 144bpm. Very risky run today, but my leg held up fine. I was incredibly hot and my hr keep rising throughout the whole run while I maintained a pace of 5:30 k's.

Week in review.
This has been my first week of training since July that I have been injury free. I'm stoked and hopefully I can knock out a few more weeks like this without falling apart.
The aim next week is to increase the volume up to around 18-20hrs. I'll keep everything easy to steady. Scott H will be tapering for Tassie so most of my training will been on my own. That's not so bad as Scott is such an animal on the bike at the moment. It's always a tough session training with Scott.

Happy New year everyone

Cheers
fluro


fluro

15 weeks to Port

Plan

swim: 2 sessions
Bike: 2 sessions
Run: 3 sessions

The plan this week is to recover. I'm suffering from deep DOMS at the moment and is probably the worst case I have ever had. It is definitely not a good strategy to enter a race underprepared. I am certainly paying for it now. It's been 3 days since the race and I'm still having trouble with my quads walking down stairs. The pain just doesn't seem to want to subside. Hopefully things will be better by the weekend.

If you after some good reading, now is the time to head over to Gordoworld.com. There are some excellent dicussions happening at present in relation to training intensities. Pay special attention to the stuff ozroberts has written. Here is an example from part of the discussion.

Good idea. Norman has asked a number of good questions. Ashburn has also asked 'what is base', and answered that by saying it's just fitness. I've had some thoughts here that I'll share.

What is Base?
IMO Base is not a type of fitness but a type of training. Leaving aside questions of other disciplines/distances and talking SOLELY about performance in and training for Ironman distance events (12-hr TTs would be similar IMO), I'd say that Base is the foundation on which we build our performance. The Base of our training is that we have, in IM, to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 and run 26.2 in the course of a single, basically continuous, event. So we must train to be able to cover those distances AT ALL. And this is the Base of our fitness: that we are able to cover something approaching the distances/durations required by our event, and that we can do so easily enough to be able to repeat it for training purposes. I suppose that what I'm getting at is that Base training and fitness is about building up to a level of maximum repeatable volume. This max volume is often predetermined by worfk/life issues, but it's still a necessary component of the process. You can't, for example, do a 2-hour FT/LT bike ride if you aren't fit enought to ride for 2 hours slowly without even noticing it.

How do you build Base?
I don't think you do. I think you build fitness, and the first level you build it at is a Base level. It's a level that - barring illness or injury - you could continue to train at every day without noticeable fatigue, probably even if you were adding, say 10 per cent to the weekly total each week.

How much Base work do you need for IM?
This will depend on how you respond to training, and on how much time you have, but I'd suggest that you'd want to reach a series of levels (adapted shamelessly from g's blog)
* Be able to train six days a week for an hour a session with no major fatigue.
* Be able to train twice a day, six days a week, for an hour a session with no major fatigue.
* Ideally, be able to train three times a day, six days a week, for an hour a session with no major fatigue.
* Build up until you can swim at least race distance non-stop aerobic once a week with no major fatigue.
* Build up until you can ride at least race distance non-stop aerobic once a week with no major fatigue.
* Be able to do the swim and the run in the same week each week with no major fatigue.
* Be able to do the swim and the run in the same day.

Unlike g, you'll notice I've left out running. This is because I think so much of this depends on your individual speed and running history, and also because I believe that, for almost everyone, an attempt to make full marathon distance in one run (or even, say, 20 miles in one run) - even an easy run - a weekly 'incidental' session would probably result in injury and overtraining far sooner than it resulted in a useful training effect because of the impact forces involved in running. I would suggest that a more reasonable target might be 2.5 hours (rather than run further than that at any point, I'd rather add up to 45 minutes of aquajogging onto the end of the session). I also don't think it would be sensible to try to tack that run onto any other session (although you could try doing in the same day as a short, easy spin or a tech swim).

Once you have built that sort of volume and are happy with it, or have filled as much time as you can really find with this sort of training, then you can start thinking about adding in extras that will add to your fitness without the need for more volume. I'm thinking particularly here of sessions involving sub-FT/LT/50TT pace work, which to my mind is better than IM race pace in terms of the fitness returns for effort put in. Big Gear work is another type of session that might go in here, as are hilly runs (not hill intervals).

Obviously, after your first IM a lot of this stuff can be compacted or run side by side. There's poss. no need to go right back to the start, but since the body will need rest as much as training, it's probably not a bad idea to spend some time each year doing no 'hard' training.

Can you get the same Base from non-typical Base training?
Yes, because all training builds fitness (up to a point - specificity has a large role here, and sprint work is unlikely to provide the real benefits needed for IM). You could even build the same level of fitness with less volume and more intensity. The problem - as has been discussed elsewhere - it that you have to do so very carefully. I THINK I'm right in saying that, physiologically, the recovery cost of all training up to JUST BELOW FT/LT is largely the same, and that major increases in recovery cost only appear above FT/LT. (Incidentally, this is why 'anaerobic' intervals and speedwork are only appropriate when you're trying to squeeze out the last increases in performance in the final build up to your race - it also helps here that these sorts of sessions work so quickly.)

The relatively low recovery work of just-sub-FT/LT work means that you can train at that intensity and get a lot of 'bang for your buck' (e.g. a 4hr ride which contains 4x20 mins at 50TT pace might provide a training effect similar to a 5-5.5hr slow ride or a 4hr IM pace ride, but would only be slightly more knackering than a slower pace 4hr ride, and in my experience is significantly less knackering than a 4hr IM pace ride). This has obvious benefits if you are (as we all are) time constrained. But it has drawbacks because it's easy to push too hard during the 'harder' sections of the training. It's something I think is only appropriate for the experienced athlete, not the novice.

I think its safest and most elegant to think of fitness for IM as a crescendo: we build up the frequency, then the volume, then the intensity. Then we race.

comments?

ozroberts


Next week I start my build up to Port. I have been waiting in anticipation for over 6months now and to my relief I have overcome some setbacks along the way, but I'm in and I can't wait to start training again.

Cheers

Fluro

I'm off to port Macqaurie

I did it. I qualifed for Port next year. My goal was to race a 5:10-5:20 to ensure I made it. I pulled off a 5:15 on very limited preparation. In fact 3weeks of training and 1 week of tapering was all I had to get ready for this race. I stuck to my race plan very strictly to maximise the chances of me being able to get through the 21km run. The plan was to swim hard, bike easy and then run 10min on 1min off for the entire run.
I had a great swim. I decided to start on the left hand side as it seemed to congested towards the middle and right hand buoy. This strategy paid off as I only had to get past one person before I had clear water right through to the first turining buoy. I keep swimming hard to this buoy and it was only once I reached the first turn that I started to pass slower swimmers from the wave in front of us. The rest of the swim was uneventful. I found some good feet to drag off and this guy basically led me around the course. Don't know my time yet, still waiting for splits.
The bike
My bike time from rack to rack was a 2:42.(still waiting for splits) It was very important here for me to hold back today. This is something I'm not used to doing to often, but it worked well and is something I should think about more in the future. From the word go I capped my heart at 150bpm. At Forster last year I averaged 163bpm. So it was going to be a big drop in effort. Luckily for me the course suited my riding style down to a tee. I'm at my best in the hills and there were plenty of those. I snapped my left tri-bar pad at about the 1hr mark. Luckily the hilly course worked in my favour. It was a bit annoying not being able to ride on the bars though during the flats for the last 90min of the ride. Being in the last wave ment that I was catching people all day. I didn't like being in this sort of position as it gave you a false sense of doing well. I had about 3-4 people in my category pass me on the bike and for the first time I made no effort to go with them. I stuck to the race plan and by the time I entered T2 I was feeling fantastic.
1 week out from the race I was still falling apart running 12km. I knew things were going to be tough and I think that running running 10min and then walking 1 min right from the start really paid off. I got to the 12km mark on the run in pain, but it was managable enough for me to keep going. At this point I decided to run 5min and then walk 1min as I didn't want to aggrevate my leg any further. I ended running approx 1:57. I was so happy not to DNF this race. I thought at some points my leg was going to give up on me. It didn't. it hurt, but not enough for me t stop racing.
After crossing the finish line in 5:14 I realised I had done enough. I was confident and relieved that I qualified for Port. I put plenty of pressure on myself going into this race as it was my last shot at trying to qualify. I'm in and I'm one very happy camper at the moment. I can't wait to start my build up to Port. I'll probably need another 4 weeks of Physio to really get on top of this injury and then I get to start training my ass off again.

fluro

16 weeks to Port ( Gordo Interview )

Plan: Canberra 1/2 this weekend
Swim: 3 sessions (1 squad, 1 open water, race)
Bike: 3 sessions (1 x 2hr Intervals, 1 x 1.5 hills, race)
Run: 3 sessions (1 x Aet/ strides, 1 x 40min tempo, race)

This week is somewhat of a taper week. That will start Thrusday afternoon. Most of my training will be on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in a last ditch effort to find a little bit more strength and fitness. I’ll probably do a light run on Monday and swim squad that night. Tuesday, I’ll ride Mt Keira in the morning and then run my tempo run in the afternoon. Wednesday, I’ll do a ocean swim in the morning with Scotty H and we’ll work on our swim starts with some hard 200-300m efforts out to a swim buoy off North beach. In the afternoon I’ll do a very light run of around 40-45min. Thursday, morning I’ll do some Threshold efforts of 5-3min with a 1min RI over a mixed terrain. After that I’ll probably just kick back, stretch heaps and do some 20-30min easy rides or runs.

If your looking for a good article. The link above is an interview with Gordo Byrn and how he got to where he is today. Here are some noteable quotes from the article

Gordo Quotes from recent interview

“In making the transformation towards a decent elite athlete, initially, the toughest part was deciding what to do – there have been periods of my development where I really had no clue how to get to the next level” (gordo)

“Once I knew what it was going to take, showing up every day, day after day – that can be tough. It helps that I really like to train.” (gordo)

“For your readers that have access to power, I’ll share some thoughts on watts. The other day, I caught myself being a little disappointed because I couldn’t hold 300w for 50K after doing some hill repeats. For me, 300w is a magic number. If you are a good runner and can hold 300w steady-state then you have a very good shot at winning most Ironman races (including Kona). In pure cycling terms, 300w isn’t a crazy number. It’s do-able if you train your butt off.” (gordo)

“So, for your readers that think that ‘elite’ cycling numbers are out of their reach, think again! If you want it, if you are willing to put in the ten of thousands of Ks that are required, then you can become a far better cyclist than you ever thought possible.” (gordo)

“Cam finished about an hour up the road on me! Having a guy like that in our sport forces all of us to lift our game.” (gordo)

“Surrounding myself with the best athletes and coaches in the world works well to keep me in check. Think that you are swimming well – try to sit on Monica’s feet for a while. Think that you are running well – try to hang with the Baron on a training run. Think that you are riding well – head out the door with Mister A (and pray for flat roads and a hurricane headwind!). My training partners work to keep me humble and maintain high standards of excellence.” (gordo)

“I’ve found that most athletes don’t know ‘how’ to train – or perhaps – they simply don’t enjoy training like I do. Specifically, they haven’t developed the feel for the long steady training that's essential for endurance success. When I’m sitting in a bunch, I’m either 40-50 bpm below my threshold or covering a random pace surge. It’s not the training that I need for my cycling.” (gordo)

“Also, I’ve got several training idiosyncrasies that mean that often I’m not particularly well-suited to group situations. I still haven’t mastered the zen-like calm that’s required when a guy that’s been drafting for four hours decides that he’ll crank the pace (for a full 90 seconds) towards the end of a ride. That kind of stuff can piss me off – especially when my blood sugar is a bit low.” (gordo)

“The single greatest thing that you can do to improve your performance is get an extra hour of sleep, every single night. Secondly, take the time to build a simple, straightforward training plan that addresses the basic requirements for success – and stick with it.” (gordo)

“Anything that you see in me is simply a reflection of the potential that you have within yourself.” (gordo)







fluro