Ironman Training Week 20: May 5-11

I’m in the middle now of a three-week hard training block, then Alcatraz and Dipsea (with rest and recovery around both), then another three-week hard block, week of recovery, and then we’re into the two-week taper — and we’re there. That’s all. So close.

It seems like things are coming together. I know I’ve said that before, but I’m training and just have to keep up the consistency. I’m not fast. I’m not going to be fast at the Memorial Day 10K, but that’s ok. I’m getting strong and I’m building up my muscular endurance. I’ll be ready for IM Canada. Hopefully. This is all part of the Train Harder, Not More — But Also A Little More plan, which I should expand on at some point, but it involves a lot of hard 4-hour rides instead of easy 6-hour rides.

Monday

Swim 1,300 yards easy and bike over the hill to get margaritas, which totally counts as a recovery workout.

Tuesday

OFF

Wednesday

Biked 1:45/27.5 miles on the TT bike with some cadence and tempo and strength work. Realized I really might not have gone hard enough at Wildflower, since I covered almost 23 miles in the same amount of time I “raced” 24.5 with about the same amount of climbing. Oops.

Rode the 5 miles to the high school and back. Ran a bit under 5 miles easy with the high school kids, except that oh man, easy is not easy running anymore.

Light core and PT when I got home.

Thursday

Crossfit in the morning before work. Too many lunges and squats. Also, pull-ups.

Swam 1,500 yards easy in the evening. That was supposed to be more, yes, but I was tired.

Friday

Swam 2,850 yards at Masters. The main workout was a set of 15 100s, with some 50s thrown in for recovery, with the whole point being that you maintained the same pace. Man, compared to the fast twitch Masters swimmers, this is the kind of workout I kill at. Actually got faster as we went on, from about 1:21/22 to about 1:19/20. And, swimming is stupid: When I felt like I was drowning, I swam faster; When I thought I was flying, I went slower.

Ran 5.5 miles easy in the evening. When I did this loop two or three weeks ago, it took 50′. This time it took 45′. Both times were easy. I’m hoping this means that running is coming back to me quickly.

20′ of yoga routine.

Saturday

Rode 73 miles hard with Steve on the TT in the wind. Really strong wind is weird. It was miserable and a battle not to crash. But, since I was on my TT and Steve was on his road bike, I actually had a comparative advantage. It made it shitty, but not as breathtakingly hard as riding “hard” with Steve usually is.

Sunday

Swam 2,000 yards with PacWest. I was supposed to swim more, like the whole workout, but swimming is stupid: I could barely swim sub-1:30s and was dying. And, the real workout was supposed to be the hard, long run the day after the hard, long bike. So, I got out and hung out on deck.

Then, Ilyce and I ran 12.5 miles up and down the bike path as warm-up, 1 x 10 miles at slightly faster than goal IM race pace, cool-down. That pace was supposed to be 7:40-45, but we ran most of them in 7:30 with a few faster. One direction we had the wind at our back and the other was into the wind, which just made half of them sort of miserable. It was one of those workouts that just beats you down. It never feels sharply hard, never like you might throw up, but as you go back and forth and back and forth it wears into you. The last three were not fun, partially because they were 7:15s and partially because I was just so worn out. But, they were fine and they got done and this kind of thing used to be my weakness. You got to work on your weaknesses and do the things that wear you down until they stop wearing you do.

Yoga’d and stretched for 15′ or so.

TOTAL: 14:15

Fingers crossed, y’all.