8 weeks to Port

This is the start of my final 4 week block before Port. The goal each week will be to hit 4 key sessions which are

1. Long bike (180-200km)
2. medium brick (4/1-1.5)
3. Ocean swim (4km)
4. Long run (24-30km)

Everything else will be aerobic maintenance, skills and technique. I'll keep my volume up around the 15-20hr PW mark. The big difference now will be that my key sessions will be much harder while everything else will be kept at an easy to Aet level of intensity. In the lead up to this 4 week block I was performing around 8-10 sessions PW that focused on long Steady efforts. Now I’ll be focusing on just 4 sessions PW. The intensity levels will be at mod-hard (ie Impace to Impace +5bpm).

Monday
Swim 3.7km 1:20. 400 free, 300 (50f,50d), 300 (50f, 50off). 12-50 finz hard/easy on 55. mainset 4-200 finz @80%, 4-200 free @80%. coming in around 2:30's with the finz and 2:50 without. Swam okay not great.
Run 10km 50min (RPE). Steady fartlek run to and from squad tonight. 25min each way. legs were feeling pretty good. holding a good pace running on RPE at the moment. Feels good to not have Hr monitor on.
Tuesday
Bike 58km 2hrs (RPE). Massive southerly blowing this morning. So I rode north for an hour then I did 4-8min efforts ME style. ie 1-2 gears harder then normal. Cadence was around 65-70rpm. Did all the efforts into the headwind. It was a struggle to get anywhere near 30kph this morning.
Wednesday
Run 18km 1:23:55 (av hr 145bpm). first 7km steady in 32min, then 8min steady-modhard with a 1min recovery. I repeated this 3 times. Was covering around 2km in 9min. very solid running for me. The last 20min I dropped back to Impace (145bpm) and ran a couple of hills. All up the did the entire run at 4:36-4:40pace with a 145bpm av hr. This was a real breakthrough run for me today. Progressing well since leg injury.
Thursday
Bike BT session 200km 6:40 (av hr 134bpm). 7hrs from the time we left home till the time I got back. Actual saddle time was 6:40. We lost 20min due to lights, trains, school crossings and 2-3 water refills. A very good mental and physical ride today. 200k is a long time in the saddle. I felt quite good most of the way. Nutrition was okay. I think I went through close to 10 bottles all up. Legs were good on the hills and it especially helped having a 23 on the back now. No more grinding it out towards the end of long rides. We broke the ride up into doing plenty of TT efforts fartlek style and we had quite a few good climbs to contend with. Av sp for the enitre ride was exactly 30kph. Overall very pleased with todays session.
Friday
Run 12km 1hr (137bpm). ran a very easy 12k today on tired legs. Threw in a couple of hills for good measure. legs came good the further I got into the run. Feeling pretty good after yesterdays big ride. Recovering well these days.
Swim 2.5km 40min. Difficult swimming in the ocean with SE onshore winds. Battled through 40min on my own before I had enough. Upper body is feeling good and stroke is coming along well. Had some good hip drive happening today.
Saturday
Bike. 115.6km 4hrs (av hr 129bpm). Excellent ride this morning. TT'd from Loftus back to Wollongong. Dist 49km, time 1:24, av sp 34.6, av hr 141bpm ascent 519m. Good TT effort at Impace, felt very comfortable. Legs feel good. recovery has been good. Hopefully I can keep this up in the lead up to Port.
Sunday
Long Run BT session 24.7km 2:03 (av hr 145bpm). ran 9min on 1min off. Goal was to keep running around 10min for each 2km split (goal for a 3:30 IM run). ran a hilly course today to mimic the Port run course. 2km splits were 9:39, 9:54, 10:27, 10:06, 10:24, 9:40, 9:53, 9:58, 10:00, 9:55, 9:50, 10:04. ran exactly to my target pace. However, I think at this stage I may struggle to hold that pace for a full IM run. My leg was quite sore after throwing in some decent hills and that was only after 24km. It's going be very close coming into Port and I hope I can nail my Peak period to find some much more needed running endurance.
Ocean swim 3km 45min (av hr 112bpm). swam over from North beach today. saw the biggest stingray along the way, awesome. pretty rough conditions until I got into belmore. Then I hooked with Brian and we did three loops. Brian was swimming very well. He was there with me the whole time.

Total training time 21.5hrs. My biggest and best week of training yet.

fluro