Ironman training recap: week 7

Week 7? What happened to weeks 1-6??  We'll, here's what...

Week 1 of IMAZ training (24 weeks out from race day) was really the start of my taper into IM 70.3 Boulder. Which means week 2 was race week (which you can read about elsewhere).

Week 3 was recovery from Boulder. I pretty much laid low, not counting my long ride on that Saturday. I had intended for that to be a "triumphant" reentry into training, but managed to pull a spoke out of my rear wheel 5 miles from home. Happily it was on the home bound leg of the ride, so I got in a good workout, but 68 miles would have felt a bit better than the 63 I did.

Week 4 was recovery week for the first month of my training plan. It provided a nice *actual* reentry point for my training without being too overwhelming in terms of the work.  I did see a slight uptick in my average cycling speed as I was forced to ride my racing wheels.

Week 5 actually saw me average over 20 mph for nearly 30 miles on a flat ride.

20.2 mph over 29.5 miles, to be exact

The next day I got my new training wheels and I lost about a mile/hour on the bike.

Mavic Ksyrium Elite S - so pretty 

That Saturday I put in a 72 miler.  It was windy and I felt slow, but spent the time in the saddle and worked on my Ironman base.  The next day's run was a pretty thoroughly unpleasant 12 miles, but it did give me some confidence that I could run on tired legs.

Week 6 saw Summer really kicking in some unpleasant weather.  It was hot and muggy and pretty much gross.

Sweaty? Check. Gross? Check. Hot? Not so much

Peggy and I got out to Leigh's Mill Pond on Wednesday evening so I could put in an OWS, but I ejected after only 1 lap of the rock - the water is too warm for a full wet-suit.  The old 2XU sleeveless is going to have to make an appearance this year.  Saturday's brick was pretty nice, but hot on the run.  I backed off my running pace to try to keep my HR down, but still ended up working harder than I should have.

Probably the most notable thing about the first 6 weeks of IMAZ training was all the things that went wrong. Starting with the calf strain that killed my time in Boulder it's been pretty much a litany of ills. There have been the mechanicals:  I broke my wheel, ran into a road that was being repaved, broke my aero-bottle (well, to be fair, it committed suicide after I hit one too many bumps), used too much carbon compound on my base bar and ended up with a freely (vertically) rotating cockpit (which is bad...).

Pretty - right up until it collapses

There have been the environmentals:  wind, rain, heat, the goddamn humidity, hot water in the pond if you can believe it.  And there've been the behavioral:  too much booze, too much cheese, and not nearly enough swimming.

Did someone say "Drinking?"

If skipping swims were an Olympic sport I could probably medal in that.  Especially if you include cutting workouts short.  A friend pointed out that in Ironman training everything that can go wrong will.  So far that's been almost completely prophetic.  I need to get those things I can control under control, because the rest of it has been silly.

So, week 7 (this post is about week 7, right?):

Monday I decided I needed to get in the long base interval I was scheduled to put in on Sunday.  When I checked the workout it turned out to be a 1650 yard time trial.  So I hopped in the pool, warmed up and started flailing away trying to go fast.  "Trying" is pretty much right - turns out I'm a solid minute and a half slower over that distance than I was a the last time I did one of these a few months ago.  Note to self:  taking about 6 weeks off of regular workouts will not make you faster in the pool.

Tuesday was good (mostly).  I got in a 90 minute foundation ride before work, and not even the sticky humidity or left-over-rainstorm-damp grit that sprayed all over the bike can mess up the feeling from a solid workout to start the day.

Gritty bike, pre-hose

Tuesday evening Peggy and I went to the club for a swim.  Ended up there at the same time as the masters' class, so it was pretty rough, but it was a solid workout and felt pretty good.

Wednesday morning was a fartlek run.  A hair over 5 miles in 45 minutes, with solid effort but not sprinting through the uptempo bits.  Just about drowned in the humid air (yes, it's a theme...).  I thought I might hang out in the garage until I stopped sweating so I could avoid dripping all over the house.  After a few minutes of my sweat-rate increasing as my body slowed down I decided I'd just shower downstairs instead. That was a better idea.  Wednesday evening I was supposed to swim, but let Peggy talk me into going on Thursday evening instead.

Thursday morning was a 1:30/0:30 brick.  This is a fun combo for me - just long enough to be a good workout, but not so long I can't try a little on the run.  Spun my way up over Rochester Hill and out Route 11 on the outbound leg of the ride and was averaging a measly 17.7 mph at the turn-around.  Somehow managed to salvage a 19 mph average for the ride though, so the inbound leg must have been moderately fast.  The run was really good.  The relaxed ride set me up beautifully for the transition to running, and I was able to hold an 8:22 pace through 3.5 miles while keeping my heart rate in high Z2/low Z3.

Who's ready to go run off the bike?

Thursday evening's swim was going really well right up until the dying-foot-cramp hit.  Nothing chases me out of the water faster than that tendon at the bottom of the foot feeling like it's shriveling to half it's intended length.

Friday morning I did short hill repeats on the bike.  Twelve times up and down Otis Road is just exactly as interesting as you think it would be.  I think I need to find a better hill though - I was over 17 mph in the uphill segment on all 12 repeats, which means it was probably way too easy.

Did get the old heart rate to jump and dip though

Friday afternoon I skipped my swim workout to go buy a birthday gift for our granddaughter and go for dinner at Christopher's Third Street Grill.  Note: neither of these things REQUIRED that I skip my workout, so it's pretty much just end of the work week laziness.

Saturday was scheduled for a 4:15 long bike ride.  Since we were going to my step-son's for our granddaughter's birthday party we decided that we'd leave the house (ridiculously) early, drive out to Western MA, and I would do my ride in the middle of the day in the mountains.  This seemed like a good idea in theory.  As it turns out we had a blizzard of family drama on arrival in the Berkshires, and my 4:15 bike ride turned into a drive back home instead.  Pretty much a wasted day.  I figured that a recovery run after not riding didn't make a ton of sense, so I blew that off too.  Went to La Corona for Mexican and got in scads of cheese and tequila instead.  Not EXACTLY the day I had planned...

Given my very *relaxing* Saturday, I figured I'd be able to get in a strong run on Sunday (instead of the 2 hour death march that would have followed a 4:15 ride the day before). I decided I'd try to make up for my missed ride by running some extended hill climbs.  So I headed out through the road construction in downtown Somersworth and ran out to Rochester Hill Rd.  The eponymous hill is about 180 feet of climbing over 1.75 miles on each side, with a nice sharp kick right at the top to make you feel like you've put in some effort to make it over the summit.

Up and down, up and down

Getting to the top twice in succession on an out-and-back felt like a pretty solid running achievement. Plus, I finally made it back to 13.1 miles.  Solid 2 hour run.  After spending a good chunk of the rest of the day helping Peggy with her Financial Statement Analysis class I got started on dinner, thinking that I'd get things more or less ready to go and then go swim.  As it turns out I got things all the way ready to go and ate instead. This week's long base swim interval bleeds into the next week's rest day  (again...).

What did I learn this week?

1. I'm getting into pretty good aerobic shape.  I'm hitting a reasonable pace on the bike and on the run without having to work very hard.
2. Controlling those things under my control includes not getting lazy just because the end of the week rolls around. Go swim, then go pig out.
3. Mid-day workouts never work out.  Breakfast, workout, then...whatever, but trying to fit "whatever" in ahead of a workout almost always means I don't get it in.
4. Swim, then cook

Week 8 is recovery week.  A little recovery will be much appreciated.

Saturday morning LSB (long slow bike) July 5th, 2014

So, just so you understand, my schedule includes a long ride or a long brick on alternate Saturdays. The previous Saturday was a long brick - 30 miles on the bike and a half hour run (ok, wasn't that long, but it was recovery week...).  So this week got to be a genuinely long bike ride.  How long?  Well, it was scheduled for 4 hours.  Considering that my last long ride was supposed to be 3:30 (turned out to be 3:15 because I broke my rear wheel), 4:00 seemed like a big jump.  Also I'm experimenting with a new nutrition regimen, trying to match what will be available on the IMAZ course.  And, it's my first long ride on my new Ksyrium wheels. So I have to admit I was unsure what to expect.

The good news was, the rain that was thundering down at 6:00 AM had cleared out by 8:00.  And the frickin' 90 degree/98% humidity weather from earlier this week had blown away in the face of Hurricane Arthur. I was left with a beautiful sunny day at about 68 degrees to start.  The downside was that the winds had stuck around - I was facing 24 MPH winds out of the NNW for the ride.

The other annoying thing was that I'd left my 910xt on after Friday's ride, so it was all out of juice, and I wasn't going to have any feedback on how I was doing at any given moment on the ride.  And I have to admit I freaked out a bit about how I was going to be able to record my ride for Garmin Connect - after all, if it doesn't make it up to Connect it doesn't count (right?). Happily, it occurred to me that I could load the MapMyRide app to my iPhone and use that to at least get a GPS track for my ride.  Not quite as good as my usual data, but it gave me SOMETHING I could look at.

So...after fueling up on coffee, a sausage and an egg on toast, and some Nutella and almond butter (also on toast), I loaded up 4 bottles with Gatorade, dropped 6 gels in my UofA jersey pocket, and headed out.

I figured I'd take a run out and back up through Maine - Route 9 to Route 4 to Route 5 and back again.  Seemed like it should be reasonably flat(ish), and I expected that by sticking to major routes I'd be riding on pretty good roads.  And that's pretty much directly into the wind for the "out" leg, so I expected to struggle outbound but to be able to reap some benefit from my work on the way home. Most of that seemed to work out pretty well for most of the ride.  The ride out 9 to North Berwick is a little rough, but I ride that all the time, so I know where the crappy bits are. I was able to keep a nice steady rhythm most of the way, and got to the junction with Route 4 without incident.  In retrospect that segment runs largely east, which made that chunk of the ride pretty relaxed as the wind kept quartering around to push on my shoulder or back.

Running north out of North Berwick through Sanford and Alford towards Waterboro also went pretty well.  I lucked out with the wind as it was blowing largely on my shoulder and I was able to take advantage of the nice road to keep a solid pace through the next 21 miles to the intersection with Route 5.  I hit (what turned out to be) 28 miles at just about the 1:30 mark, which seemed fine for an LSB kind of effort.  I have to admit that I was a bit confused at this point.  I thought going into it that the way that I went was the continuation of Route 4, which I've been given to understand is a pretty good cycling road.  Turns out I went up Route 5 instead, which is in no way a good cycling road.  In fact, the 8 miles I rode (16 out-and-back) were pretty much an unmitigated stretch of crap.  The pavement looked like alligator skin, except where it was so badly broken up that it looked like long stretches of dirt with bits of pavement scattered across it.  Add the fact that this was a long up-hill stretch, and that the wind finally started pushing in my face and I was feeling pretty miserable for the half an hour I spent running up this chunk of road.  The only bit I liked was that I found a port-o-let at the public boat launch on Little Ossipee Pond, which eased my mind considerably (considering that I'd been thinking about finding a private tree since roughly immediately after leaving the house...).  I turned around at Waycross Road in Limerick (just after hitting 2 hours on my old chronograph) and began the long slog home.

Running back down Route 5 was *slightly* more fun that running up it was.  Wind at my back and downhill was awesome.  Hitting long stretches of badly broken pavement at 25 MPH was slightly less awesome.  As fabulously engineered as my Nathan Designs AP Pro Hydration System is, the cap still vibrated off the fill hole, and I ended up getting sprayed with probably 4 ounces of Gatorade out of the 16 that were in the bottle at the time.

Given the amount of time I spent swerving away from the broken shoulder, I have to admit I'm surprised none of the drivers of the trucks and SUVs that seem to be de rigueur in ME were in any way rude to me as I made my way back to civilized riding territory.

I've never been happier to get off of a road than I was to leave Route 5 behind and get southbound on Route 4.  Getting back to North Berwick and the junction with Route 9 was largely an exercise in maintaining cadence and letting the winds push me up what hills there were.  Nothing particularly interesting, not counting the growing layer of dirt sticking to all the Gatorade I'd sprayed on myself over the course of the ride.

Turning back onto Route 9 to get back to Somersworth quickly became a genuine suffer-fest though.  Not that there's really anything that's at all challenging on the chunk of road.  But it is pretty consistently hilly, and a net uphill from North Berwick to Somersworth.  And remember how the outbound leg had the wind quartering around to push on my shoulder or back?  Well, the wind intensity had picked up a lot, and the direction had stayed the same, so I spent the last 7 miles of the ride running directly into a pretty stiff headwind.  By the time I made it home I was more or less ready to be done (and, frankly, was feeling like it would be pretty much OK if I didn't ever ride the damn bike again...).

I was finally I  able to check the MapMyRide app to see how I'd done. Imagine my disappointment when I saw that I'd only gotten through 72 miles in all that time.  I *guess* that averaging over 18 mph over that distance in that wind is ok, but I really wanted to get over 75. However, I did get a solid 4 hours of time in the saddle (well, OK, 3:57...), and I felt like I kept a high cadence and low effort level throughout, so I'll go ahead and give myself credit for a solid LSB workout.

It may be that the best test of how I'd managed the ride was that evening's 35 minute recovery run. While the first half mile or so felt pretty rough, the remaining 3 miles were actually pretty enjoyable, and I was able to maintain a 9:30 pace despite keeping my average HR down to 138.

See Luke Tri in Boulder

See Luke Tri in Boulder

6/15/2014




My Ironman 70.3 Boulder story really begins on the weekend before the race. That weekend we’d loaded up the Prius with kayaks and my bike and headed down to the Berkshires to visit family.  The plan was to start a brisket smoking before heading out for a last 3 hour ride on Saturday morning, do a short speed workout that afternoon, then on Sunday go for a lake swim while the rest of the family kayaked with my long run on that afternoon.  Very nearly none of that happened.  My wife Peggy had to go to the ER on Saturday morning for an infection in her finger, so she couldn’t tend the brisket (bike gone).  I did salvage most of my run workout that afternoon (8x1 minute lactate intervals), but it was hot and humid and I blew off the last repeat.  Then I burned the hell out of my hand on the grill, which precluded climbing into a mucky lake to swim, and I was just tired by the time we got home on Sunday, so I didn’t run either.

I woke up for Monday’s scheduled day off feeling like I really needed to salvage something of the weekend’s work.  So I headed out for an easy 11 mile run, just ticking along at an easy pace and letting it flow.  Eight miles in, I started feeling a lot of soreness in my right calf, which quickly escalated to a lot of pain.  Like, ALOT.  So I walked for a couple minutes and then started to run again.  I was able to limp home at a 9:30 pace, but my calf was so sore that I could barely walk. At that point I’m feeling pretty frustrated, but I figured I’d spin out the cramp, or knot, or whatever it was on my ride the next day and carry on from there.  Turns out that didn’t really help though – when I went to run on Wednesday I barely made it half a mile before I had to turn around and walk home.  At this point I’m seriously freaked out about my ability to compete on race day. I decide I’m pretty much shutting down all running until race day

Thursday was travel day.  Note to self:  don’t schedule a 6:00 AM flight – you have to get up at 1:00 in the morning to get to the bus to take you to the airport…

Thursday afternoon my friend David came to collect me at my sister’s house in Denver and we went for an easy 16 miles of urban riding at altitude.

Heart rate was a little high for RPE, and some up-hills left me feeling a little more out of breath than expected, but otherwise things didn’t feel too bad (not counting my sore calf complaining (a bit) on every down-stroke…).

Friday we decamped to Boulder and I got to the venue to get in a practice swim.  I was grasping at straws trying to keep my burn dry, but in the end decided I was just going to have to hope it would be fine. 

Saturday I rode my bike from the hotel to the venue and got checked in.                                                                                         

A little wandering around Boulder, fabulous dinner with David and his wife, and the run-up to race day was complete.  To this point it was the most fun but least helpful race week I’ve had for any of my HIM distance tris.  

I went to bed thinking I’d see how it went, but there was a strong chance that this would be my first DNF.

Race day morning kicked off (like they all do) with a 4:00 AM alarm.  Or rather it should have – Peggy woke me up at 4:15 as I’d slept through it.  

We had run into another athlete at our hotel the day before and she and her Sherpa had offered to carpool, so I had to be in the parking lot at 4:45.  That lost 15 minutes meant that I was a little rushed, which didn’t matter much until I realized that I’d left my breakfast in the hotel.  That blew Peggy’s chance at sleeping in (she had to bring it to me at the venue), but it did give me a chance to watch my competitors come streaming in.  

It’s quite a sight, watching a solid line of cars a couple of miles long flowing into the parking area.  It’s an amazing number of truly dedicated athletes.  

Into transition for pre-race activities.  Took my bike over to the mechanics’ tent to get the tires topped off and a little chain lube put on to counteract the overnight rain storm.  

Got on my running shoes and headed out for my traditional 10 minute warm-up run.   My calf hurt to start, and by the time I was done it hurt a lot, but I was able to grit my teeth and get through a hair over a mile without having to stop, but only barely.  Feeling just a bit heartened I pulled on my wetsuit and plodded down to the lake for a warm-up swim.  Then it was time to wait, and wait, and...  The downside to ageing up into the 45-49 age group is that I’m no longer in the first wave of age groupers to get in the water.  The pro men went off at 7:05, and my group didn’t hit the lake until 8:00.  On the upside I got to see the pro men and women get out of the water.  But I have to admit I’d rather be on the course than spectating.  

Finally the announcer calls for wave 12 to get in the water and it was go time.  Swim conditions were perfect.  The water was dead-flat calm, and slightly cool at about 68 degrees, perfect for wetsuit swimming.  
                                   

Prior to the start I was trying unsuccessfully to urge the uncomfortably large mass of men behind me to move forward, since I’m clearly not faster than, well, any of them.   No one wanted to admit they might be “worthy” of getting that close to the start line though, so when the gun went off I think I had at least 50% of the field go by me in the first 200 yards.  I found this a bit demoralizing, but not as disturbing as the one swimmer whose stroke caught me in a headlock and forced my head under water.  I know he didn’t do it on purpose, but he got a nice shove in the ribs for that one.  Anyway, I moved a bit away from the buoys and settled into what I thought was a pretty good rhythm.  After the first turn I started to catch some of the slower folks from the previous wave, and by the time I got to the end of the swim I was among swimmers from multiple previous groups.  This made me think I’d done OK, but checking my watch I saw that I’d actually gone a hair over 40 minutes.  Considering I was hoping for sub-38 I found this disappointing.  On the bright side, I did feel like I’d avoided spending too much energy and I was ready to hit the bike.

Swim result:  00:41:02, 02:07/100m pace, 88/151 division,553/924 men, 811/1528 overall

T1 was unremarkable.  Got out of my wetsuit, hit the port-a-potty and trotted out with the bike.

T1: 4:32 (meh)

I spent the first 5 miles or so of the bike trying to get my HR down in the face of a constant false-flat uphill.  Luckily I’d read some race reports from last year’s race, so I expected that I’d be slow through this bit, but an average of about 16 mph felt kind of lousy.  The next 23 miles seemed almost all downhill though.  I was able to spend a lot of time spinning along at 23-25 mph and got to the half-way mark at 1:21 (woohoo!!).  

                                                           
Since I knew for sure that I’d not be putting in a 2:40 bike split I figured that meant that there’d be some hills ahead, and I was right.  Surprisingly, the majority of the uphill portion of the bike course comes once you’re well out onto the Great Plains.  I managed to keep a nice steady rhythm to my pedaling, didn’t bother trying to hammer up the hills when they came, and pulled an unspectacular 1:29 for the second half of the bike.  Based on my training results and the fact that we were racing at altitude I was thinking I’d be lucky to break 3 hours for the bike.  Given that I was pretty much ecstatic to get a 2:50 result. The only faintly unpleasant note came from the woman who felt the need to yell at me when I launched a water bottle after hitting a bump.  If she’d have let me know she was back there I wouldn’t have dropped the bottle, so I blame her (obviously…).
  

Bike result:  02:50:37, 19.69 mph pace, 82/151 division, 503/924 men, 636/1528 overall

Note: After spending the last 6 years riding almost exclusively on the poorly planned and even-more-poorly maintained road-net in New Hampshire, the bike course for this race was a revelation.  It’s amazing how much more fun (and fast) it is to ride on roads where the shoulder is not crumbling and the pavement is actually smooth.  Even the bit where the road was being repaved and was ground down to grooves was nicer than what I’m used to.  Kudos to the Colorado highway department for the job they do.

In T2 I commented to the athlete next to me that the good part of my day was pretty much done, and now it was time to go DNF.  As I was in no hurry to go get on the run course I took my time changing shoes and took another pit-stop before heading out to see how far I could get before I had to abandon the race.

T2: 4:11 (I know, right? So slow…)

Out onto the run I went.  I’ve never been a big fan of off-road running, so when I found out that the run course around the reservoir is pretty much all dirt road and trails I was something less than thrilled.  It turns out, however, that the course surface actually felt pretty good underfoot.  It proved much more stable and provided significantly better traction than I expected.  There’s a stretch around the far side of the reservoir that’s a bit uneven, but there wasn’t a ton of loose dirt making my feet slip on each stride.  I was thinking even before I got hurt that running sub 1:50 on dirt was going to be challenging, but without the injury it may have been possible.  Of course with the sore calf a good result was out of the question, so I started run/walking right away.

My plan was to walk for two minutes after each mile marker, and to do my usual slow-roll through the aid stations, and I mostly managed to stick to that. I kept a close eye on my time over the first few miles and was discouraged to see half an hour roll by before I got to the 5K mark, but I seemed to be managing the pain ok.  I decided at that point that it was going to be silly to have traveled all the way across the country and put in all the time on race day to walk away from the day without a finisher’s hat. So I slogged my way through the remainder of the run, running when I could, walking when I felt my calf getting worse, and generally enjoying being outdoors on a glorious Colorado summer’s day.  

I ended up with my worst half-marathon since my disastrous first HIM, but I finished.  And on this day finishing felt like a major victory.

Run result: 2:22:28, 10:52/mile pace, 100/151 division, 588/924 men, 786/1528 overall

Total time of 6:02:50 means that if I’d gone sub 1:50 on the run as planned I would have been damn close to 5:30 for the day. I would have loved 5:30.  But, sometimes you just have to do what you can do with the body you have on race day.  The good parts were I finished feeling strong and fresh, without further injury, and more than ready to shift focus from HIM training to prepping for IMAZ 21 weeks further into the year.  For the record, this is now my new favorite race, and I full intend to go back in 2016.