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Fluro's Ironman Training (FIT)

Face your fears live your dreams

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Mt Keira climb



Mt Keira TT climb
This is a climb that is literally in my own backyard. It’s on the cylce2max website. The statistics are as follows
• Distance: 5.94km
• Gradient: 6.2%
• Record: 19min 5 sec
About 6 weeks ago I time trialed the climb in 19:43. It was only my third week back in training since Forster. I’m looking forward to having a go at the record. Sine my last attempt I’ve been working a lot on my strength on the bike. Each week I have been riding climbs such as Jamberoo Pass, Mt Kembla, Macquarie Pass and the mother of all climbs Saddleback Mountain.
It has been my goal over winter to try and break the MT Keira record and then to really knock some time off the climb. By the end of the year I want to be able to break 18min on this climb.
The hardest part of Mt Keira is the initial climb up to the Demonstration school which is the last building on the left. This is little over a 1km long and I sit on around 12-14kph. One you’re past the school things will level out for the next 2 km up to and past the archery range. You then reach a flat section for about 200-300m before the road starts winding up and slowly increases in gradient. During this section I try to aim for around 16-20kph.
If I beat this record next week I’ll then start looking at other climbs in the Illawarra and see how I go.
Lookout for my results late next week

fluro

Sunday, July 10, 2005

week ending 10/07/05


Photo
Northern loop ride. A beautiful undulating ride up to The Northen gates. It takes about 2 hrs to complete from Figtree and I love this ride for the ocean views and early morning sun rises.
Base 2 (week 2/4)
16 hrs of training this week. I did 10 hours of riding and 6 hours of running. The breakdown of training was a follows

• Recovery: 5:50
• Zone 1: 5:12
• Zone 2: 3:47
• Zone 3: 0:37
• Zone 4: 0:34

Spending the majority of time in and around zone 1 now. This is good as I’m now up around 16 hrs of training and I need to start focusing more on recovery. While I only ran 4 sessions, I did every run between 1-2 hours. This really tested my foot and I must admit it did feel a bit tender towards the end of the week. I’m probably still not ready for the longer runs yet. Next week I’ll drop the volume of each run and increase my frequency to hopefully run around 7 hours this week.
My LSD bike was the best session of the week. Rode with the group up Mt Keira then through to Loftus, Sydney. Felt strong all day. I was happy to finish the ride feeling like I could of punched out a few more k’s. I was especially pleased with the new found strength I have on the hills and am looking forward to challenging the record for Mt Keira climb as found on cycle2max.com. I’m 40seconds off the record at the moment and that was around 6 weeks ago. I’ll probably have a shot at the 19:05 towards the end of my recovery week next week.
Getting up in the morning is difficult at the moment with the tour on. Those late nights are starting to get the better of me. I don’t even watch the whole thing. I’m good to about 11.30pm before I give in to modern technology and hit the record button.
Read Haads approach to running this week and I must say it made some sense. I don’t think I’ll be able to even get close to running around 150-160km per week but I definitely agree with his philosophy on running as much as possible at a low hr in order to improve your aerobic capabilities. He states that you need to run as much as possible between 70-75% MHR. Even now I struggle to run at 75%. It just feels to slow and I guess it confirms how aerobically unconditioned I must be. At the moment my comfortable all day running pace puts me at around 78-80% of MHR. No wonder I haven’t been able to run a good IM yet. I know now I need to get good at running between 70-75% MHR and only then will I consider upping the intensity. This may still take a few more years to achieve.
Haads also talks about pace 2 running which is much higher and around 5 bpm of LT. This is something I’ll avoid for now as I am just not conditioned well enough to be running comfortably at a hr around 165-170bpm. I also think this type of intensity is not relevant to IM racing. I decided to cap my pace 2 intensity work at 155-160bpm. This will still put me at least 10-15bpm over my Aet (145bpm). I think this will be a good adjust for IM training considering that we still need to swim and ride before we reach the marathon.
Well onto next week. This will be the challenge. I’ll aim for around 20hrs this week of just riding and running. My goal is to ride 13 hrs and run 7 hrs. My LSD bike will be up to over 5 hrs and my LSD run I’ll keep at 2-2.15, depending on how my foot holds up. I’m off to the coast on Thursday for a 4 day break, so I’ll be able to hit the trails around Berrara National Park which makes running very enjoyable.
Hope everyone is training well and enjoying the tour.

fluro

Sunday, July 03, 2005

week ending 03/07/2005

Base 2 (week 1/4)
I was feeling really fresh after my recovery week. Training went well except for the 2 days I lost on Wednesday and Thursday due to the torrential rains. I’m managing to keep most of my training now in zone 1. The breakdown of my week was a follows
Recovery: 5:15
Zone 1: 4:18
Zone 2: 2:17
Zone 3: 0:31
Zone 4: 0:39
Zone 5: 0:04
Total:13:06
I’ve decided to try using Haads running protocol to really focus on improving my running endurance and especially running economy. At the moment I feel as though I’m lacking efficiency with my running. To address this major limiter I will start increasing my run volume and run frequency. Its time to start teaching my body to minimize the production of lactic acid. To do so I need to lean how to run well with a very low heart rate.
My bike sessions were good this week. I’ve been riding quite a few hills lately and the strength work is starting to show through. Last Saturday’s LSD ride confirmed this as a found Mt Keira is getting easier to climb. I’m now using my 39/19 instead of my 39/21. After 3hrs in the saddle we stopped for coffee. I then thought it would be good to climb Mt Kembla and make my way across to Mt Keira. It was a tough climb. 8.3% for the first 3km and then another 6km of 4.5% left me feeling nooked by the end. Total ride 4:40.
Next week I’ll be looking at training around 18-20hrs. I’ll keep focusing on riding as many of the toughest climbs I can in the Illawarra. On the run the focus will be on running in zone 1, to increase my second long run to 2hrs and keep my double run day at 2.5-3hrs.
Anyway got to get back to the TDF. I can’t believe Lance already has over a 1minute lead on his major rivals. How can anyone beat him now??

Next training article: Why we need to train at a low hr to get faster

Happy training
Fluro