The Week That Was: Dec 3rd - Dec 9th

Summary
This was a nice, easy recovery week as I tapered for the Rehoboth Beach marathon on Dec 10th. It was a few short runs with some pick me ups and strides, a couple of easy bike rides and short swims. The week did start with a 5km at Southern High School, which bode well for for the marathon with a new PR of 16:38 and 1st place overall. Other than that it was a time to recover and get the Training Stress Balance (TSB) back to a positive number.

Sat Dec 3rd: This was a last minute decision to run the Southern High School 5km, directed by friend and SHS XC coach Doug Ellmore. The key was to run hard but not to do anything unnecessary to affect the marathon a week later. First mile was steady at 5:16 then a tempo to maintain the lead. The good thing was that without really going hard the last two miles it still led to a PR of 16:38.

Sun Dec 4th: Early morning ride with Ace.....I'm making him go slow on Sundays as I build my mileage back up on the bike. Ended being a 45mile ride through the Ag Farms in Beltsville at a nice endurance pace on the fixie.

Mon Dec 5th: Swim at lunch time working on endurance pyramid. Didn't push it hard just focused on technique and form. Worked out to be 3000yds.

Tues Dec 6th: Weather ended being bad so had to run on the treadmill. Cruised along with 45sec strides every 4-5mins at 6min/mile marathon pace. Legs felt good for the first run since the race on Sat. Rode the computrainer in the evening holding back from riding hard.

Weds Dec 7th: Another lunch swim. First medley for a while including some fly.....need to work on that :-) Still rain so ran on the treadmill with the same strides as Tuesday. Included 30mins of strength work.

Thurs Dec 8th: Complete day off.......TSB close to zero!

Fri Dec 9th: Very short lunch run for 15mins, legs feeling preppy now :-)

Total Run Mileage - 15.98miles

Total Run Time - 1hrs 52mins

Total Time - 8hrs 43mins

Not Much Left To Do.......

Other than rest up, not work too hard and keep sharp. The Ironman taper starts tomorrow and you can only really make trouble for yourself in the next two weeks. You can't gain any fitness but you can carry on thinking that you can and just end up way too tired on race day. The last 6 weeks have averaged 17 hour training weeks and now the body just needs to absorb all of that and get ready to go all out on August 30th.

The taper doesn't mean zero work however, and I have my final tune-up race at a sprint triathlon on Sunday. The lack of fast-twitch work means that I probably won't be blazing fast (at least not with the regular short course racers) but it will blow away the cobwebs of racing and give some open water and transition practise. Plus it is a race that I have never done before and it is always interesting to do new races.

So what will I be doing over the next two weeks. This week coming will essentially be about 8-9 hours of training, based on easy-moderate workouts with nothing particularly hard. The body needs to easily recover from the workouts and so if the temps get too hot I may head inside for cooler sessions. The high temperatures always make training harder than they originally set out to be and you don't need to be slogging through the humidity at this stage of proceedings.

The final week will be short workouts of generally less than 45mins, making sure that all the equipment is firing well and getting as much sleep as needed. The final few days will be for travel and race preparation over in Louisville. By that time it will be ready to get into race mode to make sure that the everything is ready both physically and mentally!

Three Weeks and Counting.......

Just 22 days until my biggest scheduled race of the year and everything is coming together nicely. The past months training has been great and pretty much all the key workouts have gone to plan. The last week has been stellar and I'm just hoping that I'm not reaching a peak too soon.

The week started on Saturday with a 120mile ride down to Solomon's Island and back with a crew of 6 from ABRT. After feeling the long run from Friday night on the first half of the ride, the second half was a complete blast and the final 25miles were covered in under an hour. The weather sucked on Sunday and after running around the neighborhood for 45mins I called it a day with thunder rumbling around. Monday was just an easy flush-out ride followed by a threshold run. One of the key workouts of the week is always the D-Ville hammerfest on Tuesday (after swimming at lunch) and that was sweet, everything felt great and smooth. Ended up having the fastest ride of the year at dead on 25MPH and followed that up with a 10km at 6:40min/mile pace, which felt quite leisurely.

Just lately my long runs have been struggles, I think it has been mainly due to adjusting to the heat and humidity now that it has finally turned up. Yesterday was good though. I swam before work and the plan for the run was just to keep it easy and get the miles in, just go the steady pace that I felt would get me through the 16 miles. It worked out to be just about 7min/miles and I was fine with that. That pace is just below what I am hoping for Ironman in 3 weeks and importantly I wasn't completely wiped by the end of the run....I had something left.

With most of the hay in the barn (did I just write that!) and feeling pretty good, this weekend in the UK may be a good way to keep at my peak. Just some short, intense sessions before the taper actually begins for real on August 15th.

Importantly the IMKY athlete guide came out today and it has the preliminary Kona slot allocations.........6 in my age group! It's time to get big-time focused :-)

Lets Do This Again.....

For the second weekend in a row we headed out to the Eagleman course and pre-rode most of it, only cutting off one section so that we could check the Church Creek course for this weeks time trial (beware of the rumble strips along the edge of MD 16). Don't forget that registration for the TT ends this Wednesday see here

The ride this week was much better than last, I concentrated on some solid race pace efforts rather than trying to follow Ace and Stu on their 20 min intervals. I also made sure that I checked the course and wind directions, meaning that I will have a good sense of where the headwinds and tailwinds will be....although on race day they always feel like headwinds! Nothing else left to do now other than rest up, make sure that nutrition and hydration is spot on this week, and get mentally prepared to make the mind and body suffer. Long distance triathlon is definitely a huge mental game and can play a huge part in the final result on the day. You know that it is going to hurt but everyone else is too and you have to keep that in mind. Those that can push through the pain will generally succeed.....Mind over Matter!