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3 weeks to Port
Peak week 1
The job is done! It is now time to focus on achieving a peak. I think this is one of the hardest parts of any Ironman program. The base phase and build phase are quite easy to manage, you just get out there and train as much as you can and as consistently as you can. The peak period is not that simple. You are always fighting demons, have I done enough, I’m losing too much fitness with all this recovery time, I’ll go out and do 1 more long hard session. The mind really starts playing tricks on you and it takes a lot of discipline to cut back on so much training you have been doing over the last 6-12mths. The common temptation during the peak period is to go out and really test your fitness with some higher intensity work. I think this is a mistake and contributes to a lot of people picking up colds in the lead up to an IM. We have spent so many months knocking out consistent weeks of steady state training and then all of a sudden, bang, people start hammering, and hammering a lot. The body can’t cope with this change and in some cases, people will find they a PBing everything they do in the first week of their peak week. By the time they reach the Ironman they have lost that quick peak because it goes as fast as it came as a result of a sudden burst of very high intensity work. The real objective I think is to maintain your normal intensity while inserting slightly higher periods of above race pace efforts while gradually reducing your volume. The idea is not to PB all your sessions, but to finish those sessions feeling as though you could of completed that whole session again with the same result. If you feel this way then your hitting peak. That is goal we are looking for in an Ironman, that is, to feel good all day. Well at least up to the 25-30k mark of the run.
The approach Scott and I are taking this year is to focus on just two key sessions for the week. This will be a brick session (2/45) on Tuesday and then another brick session on Saturday(3/1). The rest of the week will be filled with aerobic maintenance type workouts. For example, our long run will only be just over an hr (I’ll see if more foot will allow for this) to maintain our run durability. Our open water swim will focus now on improving our first 500m swim start, sighting skills, and drafting.
fluro
The job is done! It is now time to focus on achieving a peak. I think this is one of the hardest parts of any Ironman program. The base phase and build phase are quite easy to manage, you just get out there and train as much as you can and as consistently as you can. The peak period is not that simple. You are always fighting demons, have I done enough, I’m losing too much fitness with all this recovery time, I’ll go out and do 1 more long hard session. The mind really starts playing tricks on you and it takes a lot of discipline to cut back on so much training you have been doing over the last 6-12mths. The common temptation during the peak period is to go out and really test your fitness with some higher intensity work. I think this is a mistake and contributes to a lot of people picking up colds in the lead up to an IM. We have spent so many months knocking out consistent weeks of steady state training and then all of a sudden, bang, people start hammering, and hammering a lot. The body can’t cope with this change and in some cases, people will find they a PBing everything they do in the first week of their peak week. By the time they reach the Ironman they have lost that quick peak because it goes as fast as it came as a result of a sudden burst of very high intensity work. The real objective I think is to maintain your normal intensity while inserting slightly higher periods of above race pace efforts while gradually reducing your volume. The idea is not to PB all your sessions, but to finish those sessions feeling as though you could of completed that whole session again with the same result. If you feel this way then your hitting peak. That is goal we are looking for in an Ironman, that is, to feel good all day. Well at least up to the 25-30k mark of the run.
The approach Scott and I are taking this year is to focus on just two key sessions for the week. This will be a brick session (2/45) on Tuesday and then another brick session on Saturday(3/1). The rest of the week will be filled with aerobic maintenance type workouts. For example, our long run will only be just over an hr (I’ll see if more foot will allow for this) to maintain our run durability. Our open water swim will focus now on improving our first 500m swim start, sighting skills, and drafting.
fluro
posted by Paul Fleuren at 2:19 pm
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