Friday, April 17, 2009

The Build-Up Begins.....

The good weather is finally forecast for the weekend and it's time to start building up to the big races later in the season. I essentially have two (2) 'A' races this year, which are Eagleman 70.3 in June, and then Ironman Louisville at the end of August. It's time to get serious and get into full-on 70.3m/Ironman training mode...the base of winter and spring has been set and it's time to go long!

In that regard, this weekend is planned for the next step up to bigger/harder sessions. Saturday will be 4.5hr brick workout (4hrs bike and 30min run) and then Sunday is Carl Dolan. I am doubling up in the Cat 3/4 and Cat 4/5 races, so that should be a good workout, but then I plan on riding home to add another hour or so. This is the first weekend of the build and so gradually the bricks will work up to 6hrs (100miles/6miles) or so by the time that Ironman gets close.

The only trouble is trying to keep the speed for bike racing and 70.3m triathlons but then to have the endurance and durability for the Ironman as well. It's bit of a juggling act, but the key is Eagleman on June 14th, which then leaves a solid 12 weeks to IM Louisville. It will be fun......

4 comments:

Kyle Jones said...

Goodness gracious. Ian as a friend who likes you racing your bike, drop the dorky iron man stuff. haha. Actually if you want to get faster on the bike you have to concentrate on harder and shorter efforts. But since you are training for long dorky stuff it is kind of hard to do that. If you could get away with doing shorter bike rides most of the time and just do one long bike ride a week I think that would be optimal. I have noticed that as long as I do a 50-65 mile ride once a week i can hit those 80 mile rides fine, but i can do them faster. Just works for me. But I am faster for bike races(those arent dorky) also.

Iain Banks said...

Fortunately I seem to be quite good at this dorky triathlon stuff. I wouldn't want to embarrass y'all if I concentrated on bike racing!

Kyle Jones said...

From the south I see.

Iain Banks said...

South of England :-)