Now entering the meat, the heart, of any Ironman training cycle. Everything up to now has been merely preparation for what happens in the next 32 days. It’s all about far, and steady, and focus, and aero, and refining the eating and drinking. Get wet, get sweaty, getting ready.
The past week was at times a struggle for me. I managed 940 TSS in six days of training, taking Wednesday completely off to allow for some recovery and consolidation after a Big Bike effort in the mountains. CTL is up to 124. I finally configured WKO 4 (Mac version) to my liking, so I can review each sport in depth on a weekly basis. EG:
- Swim: 4 sessions, 10, 958 meters, 3:40, IF 0.81, finishing with a 4500 yd continuous swim (Somehow I miscounted my strokes or laps or 100s or something – I was trying to do 4200, but reduced O2 will do that, I guess.)
- Run: 5 sessions, 29 miles, 4:15, IF 0.81, including my first TP efforts since tweaking my R hamstring and glute after IMLP. I also got back on the long run program, hitting a 2 hour split run on Friday.
- Bike: Only 3 sessions, but still more hours, 9:02, than the plan called for with 140 mi, 8700′ elev gain, IF 0.71: 2:30 @ HIM pace up hills on Monday, 1:15 with 40 min of FTP intervals up my neighborhood “hills” (the first one is 1000′ elevation gain over 20 minutes), then riding the entire valley down and back in 5:20, suffering a mini-bonk about 4:20 in, then collapsing for the rest of the day (8 hours) with no run before or after.
This week has another mandatory rest day on Friday, traveling back from CO to WA. I’m planning on 5 swim sessions, as I find that splitting the Mon and Tues workouts each in half works better for me at altitude, and also when I have to swim on days when I also do run or bike intervals. I want to up my run by another 15% in distance, pushing the split long run to 15.5 mi on Wednesday. And I will do the mini-camp/RR bike this weekend back at sea level, 112 miles + 6 mile run on Saturday, then swim 3800 meters, maybe outside, and bike another 56 miles on Sunday.