Solid work

Phew.

What a week! Some solid training done and I even managed to fart around the house and get some things accomplished in that department too! Everytime I 'attempt' a home improvement project it always gives me so much more respect for the pro, something that would take them 30 minutes to do takes me 2 days and 6 hours of labour! As with training, I guess every so often one must suck it up and get 'er done.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had the week off, so the whole week was pretty much dedicated to plumbing and training. Plumbing is boring, let's talk training!

Monday: easy day, 1 hr spin and a 8k run

Tues: hard day. swim 3.5k. 2(10X100m free on 1:30. 1:22-1:25 avg lap) Aerobically, swimming feels good, it's just my spindly weak ass arms that are holding me back. Run: 11k (hill repeats). Bike: 1.5 hrs. 3X15 min climbs. 1st at 280w, 2nd at 290w and last one at 300w. A good day.

Wed: easy. spin 1 hr and a 8k run

Thurs: hard day. swim 3.5k same main set as above. Run 17k. Bike 1.5 'steady' @ 250w. A tough day.

Fri: easy. spin 1 hour.

Saturday. The Alton 'Leg Frier'. Stuart came up and we did an easy swim, followed by a bike LT test on the computrainer and afterwards did some run hill repeats. An excellent day!

Sunday: Legs weren't that cranky, ran 22k in 1:48. A good way to cap off the week.

Totals:

Swim: 8.8k

Bike: 7 hrs

Run: 76k

Saturday revisted:

Stu arrived at precisely on time and in short order we unloaded his car and were soon on the way to the pool. I'm always amazed at how easy it is to get along with a fellow tri-nerd. Oh sure, most of the talk is triathlon related, but really what shines through is passion. That's just one of the thing that makes our little niche so appealing, the people and the passion. I guess that's 2 things. Oops sorry for the tanget.. back on topic.

The swim had two goals. 1) log some easy mileage and 2) give any 'helpful' critique to Stu. The critique business was my job, now whether or not it was 'helpful', well that's another story.

On to the bike:

A standard CP30 test. (20 min warmup, 30 min TT, cooldown) I know, I know, doing a time trial test on the tail end of a big week may have not been my smartest move and by the 12 minute mark I almost bailed! The legs were complaing ... loud. The only things that kept me going was 1) I put this training day togethor and would have been so embarrassed if I quit and 2) just knowing Stu was nearby kept those dark thoughts at bay. So I soldiered on. The results:

308 watts, approx avgerage heartate 162. A FULL 10 beats below my usual LT!! This tells me that yes, my legs were pooched from the week's work. I just could not get the HR up any higher. I would hazard a guess I might be able to add 10w or so on fresh legs. Perhaps a retest is in order...

After Stu finished up his test, which I might add, he did very smartly, we hit the local hill, ran some repeats and capped of the day with a 10k'er. Actually, we capped off the day with a pint, which in case you didn't know, is a fantastic recovery drink!

Here's a pic of Stu about to begin his LT test. Don't tell him, but I'm going to steal his bike.

Cheers!

Wanna bet?

So I bet a guy work 100 bucks that he couldn't quit smoking. He looked me in eye, took up the challenge and shook my hand. I figure it's a win a win, if he successfully quits he wins large, society wins (perhaps one less future cancer patient), and I win because sometimes I just liking sticking it to the man. Actually, not bad value for 100 bucks.
Unfortuneately, I 'won'. A sour victory. Maybe he'll go double or nothing..

Training wise, things are going well. Here's the breakdown from last week:
Swim 5.8k
Bike: 7 hrs
Run: 55k

The swim story for the week occured on Wednesday. I was mixing it up a bit with a 2(3X300 IM) set. For the butterfly portion, I'd do 3 left arm strokes, 3 right arm and 3 full strokes. Actually my butterfly is pretty decent, for about 25m. Anything more than that, well let's just say it isn't pretty. Anyway, the curious thing about doing IM sets, at least for me, is that my freestyle always feels amazing and I'm not entirely sure why. Must have to do with muscle firing patterns and the such, try it out sometime and let me know if you experience the same thing.

Also swim related. Here's a Youtube video of the Men's 100m freestyle world record being broken - all I'll say, I never heard of the guy and he's huge. I'm not saying, I'm just saying. I think that WR beats my 20 year old PR by about 7 seconds, which may not sound like much, but trust me - it's huge!

Bike story for the week. Pretty uneventful, not even close to getting the bike outside yet. Averaged 243 watts for an IMLP bike loop.

Run story. Umm, kinda boring here too. Did some travelling to visit Mrs. Inlaw, so a had a bit of difficulty getting the extra K's that I wanted. Made up for it a bit by logging back to back 17k'ers on Sat and Sun.

Looking forward. A heavy week is planned, I have some time off work, just gonna put around the house and train. Stu and Aaron are coming up next Saturday for the Alton leg frier. An a.m. swim following by a bike LT test and then we'll do some run hill repeats just for the heck of it.

Cheers!

The magic number, Etta James

But first the stats:
Swim: 5.2k
Bike: 6 hrs
Run: 58k

Fairly standard build week. The plan is too increase volume this week and further increase the week after. As mentioned in my last post, I'm in a 'hill phase' of my training, yup Tuesdays and Thursday are hillacious. Aaron and Cliff know what I'm talking about as they ran down the sucker during The Alton HalfIron extravaganza back in January. Here's how I do hills: run steady and evenly paced up, bringing HR to 20 beats less than LT, picking pace up at the crest of the hill focusing on a fast turnover. Easy run down, again picking up cadence in the last third.. rinse, repeat. No stopping.

The second part of hillacious Tuesdays and Thursdays are bike hill repeats. Bring the cadence down to low 70's rpm, crank up the tension and peddle away at 20 beats below LT. Just keep in mind this is strength work, not LT work. LT work is later in the season. Thursdays hill session was awesome, I'm now holding 300w at 20 beats below LT. A substantial increase in power in a fairly short time. Logically this is to be expected. For the last couple of years I was very dedicated in keeping my HR at 40 beats below LT and in the process built a decent base. Now that the shackles are off and I'm routinely training at 30 and 20 beats below LT, subsequent power increases are only logical. Logic be damned, it feels great!

For me, the magic number is 10. Ten is where I can feel the physiological changes kick in. Take the hill training example, after 10 hill sessions ( 1 or 2 sessions per week), the strength component really starts to kick in and you can feel the difference. It might be 10 weeks of base training, 10 long rides, or 10 weeks of Yasso's. Perhaps in tribute to Spinal Tap I should change my magic number to 11..

So Saturday was once again my day to do the Ergvideo Lake Place loop and I'm currently up to averaging 239 watts for the loop. I don't cheat, ie increase target power on the downhills, I just dial in what I want average power at the end to be, knowing full well there are easy parts and hard-as -in-I-don't-wanna-do-this-anymore parts. Coasting down the Keane descent is ummm.. well.. very easy, the bad news is your average power number keeps dropping and you're gonna PAY to get that sucker back up to your target. It was during such time I was 'paying' and I needed a little pick me up from the tuneage department. It was clear that Etta James just wasn't gonna cut it. Time to bring out the heavies.. Sandman by Metallica, and yes in this case the amp did go to 11..

Cheers!

Snotcicles at basecamp

Yes, I live north of 49th parallel. Feel free to insert snowshoe, igloo or muckluck related joke here. In case you need more ammo for your salvo, this is pic of the front of my house. Yes, that snowdrift is 2.5 feet from the roof. 'nuff said, fire away. I promise to keep the weather bitching to minimum.. I'll only say, that 2 years ago, I was biking outside at this time and I'm a self-proclaimed fair weather biker!

A fair bit of running recovery this week, made up for it by logging some extra bike time. Stats for the week:
Swim: 5.2k
Bike: 9.25 hrs
Run: 18k (season low!)
This weekend turned into a back-to-back-long session on the bike. Sat and Sun were both 2.75 hr affairs featuring the Ergvideo of Lake Placid. Legs were a tad cranky but managed to average 235 watts on both days. Good stuff.


So my season training strategy is looking something like this: 3 months of 'base'. (done!), 2 months of base + mega hill work (starts tomorrow!), now here is where it gets a tad muddled, the original plan was start LT work in May and steadily increase the duration throughout the summer, but after reading Chuckie V's post on Tabata intervals and doing some research, I'm thinking of delaying the LT work and do 6 to 8 weeks of Tabata training.. then moving to the LT work. Luckily I have some time to figure out what I want to do.


Chuckie's theory is build the foundation (base, base and more base. Base building is basically what I've been doing for 2 + years), put the roof on (extending VO2 max by doing Tabata training), THEN do the LT work (ie fill the house).


As usual the more research you do, the less you know. Anyone else feel like a lab rat around here?













All secure at basecamp. Over.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast..

For a PB !

An-early-season-unscheduled-my-last-race-as-a-39-year-old-34-second-improvement PB. Here's the quick and dirty race report:
Time: 1:24:51
Place: 8th in AG, 40th OA.

After some initial unsucessful attempts of trying to get in contact with Stu to relay a slight change in plans, sand-bagger Aaron and I lined up near the front of the line for the Burlington Chili Half Marathon. Just us and 2000 of our closest friends.

At the gun, we took off, we took off fast. Too fast. But hey, it's a half marry and if you are trained for it, you should be able to redline the sucker the whole way. Well, close to redline. Go check Aaron's report about redlining- hehe. He was going for a massive PB and in the back of my head I was thinking that if he could run with me for the first bit, he may just 'buy' enough time to do it. Did he? Well, you'll have to read his report and find out.

I haven't done any speedwork this year and now I'm telling my legs to run fast. They complained the whole damned time! I mean complained loud.. as in 'hey dude, stop now!!' And this was only at 2km marker! Great, 19k to go with legs that don't feel like cooperating.. gonna be a fun ride.
Split at 5k: 19 flat. Yup too fast. But the back of the mind is saying.. 'hey, if you keep this up......'
Split at 10k: 39 min. Lost a minute, but have a minute in the 'bank'. (I was aiming to run 4min/k for the race)
Split at 15k: 1hr. That minute in the bank is pretty much gone. Legs are really bitching now.
Finish: 1:24:51

Interesting to note the each of the 5k splits is a minute slower than last one. Perhaps not the best thing to do tactically, but in the end I did PB and I'm more than happy to take a PB in the beginning of March!!

Cheers!