At a Glance...

Officially I have survived 18 weeks of Ironman training! It started out with an 8 week base phase followed by an 8 week build phase, and now I am in the second week of the 4 weeks of the peak training phase. After that, the long-awaited taper leading to race day. So, peak phase is all that the name implies. Here is what this previous week of training entailed:

Monday, July 12:

Rest day (This was the day after the half-iron Musselman Triathlon)

Tuesday, July 13:

Swim 2,900 yards

(pool workout including warm up, drills, moderate and threshold intervals, kicking and cooldown)

Bike 1 hr. 40 min.

(27 miles, 15.9 avg--slower then usual due to still recovering from the race)

Wednesday, July 14:

Swim 2,900 yards

(pool workout with warm up, drills, moderate and VO2 max intervals, speed intervals, kicking and cool down)

Bike 1 hr. 30 min.

(23.5 miles, 15.9 avg---still in recovery mode...)

Thursday, July 15:

Run speedwork 6 x 800 m repeats, 5 mile total run distance

Open Water Swim (3 loops in Canandaigua Lake, first swim with no wetsuit this season and it felt great, IM Lousiville will not be wetsuit legal due to warm water temps so I must practice in open water without a wetsuit.)

(1 loop equals slightly less then a mile, plan called for 3700 yards so I guess/estimated at the lake, must have been around 2.5 miles??)

Friday, July 16:

Run 6 miles

Bike 2 hours

(30 miles, 15.0 avg)

Saturday, July 17:

Long Run 16 miles (hot and humid!)

Sunday, July 18:

Long Bike 5 hr. 15 min. (76 miles in the wind and lots of climbing made for a slower pace)

Run 4 miles (immediately following bike workout)

Next week is quite similar to this week, there is usually a Brick workout each week but this week was slightly modified due to the race on Sunday. My bike workouts are usually supposed to be at moderate intensity, one on a hilly course and one high intensity bike workout. I just didn't have speed this week mainly because of racing on Sunday. I can feel fatigue settling in and that is normal.

Nutrition during workouts: I've been tweaking nutrition on my long bike ride days to try and figure out my race day plan. Today I burned 3300 plus calories on the bike and 400 on the run! That's a lot of calories to keep up with so I can keep going on the long workout. Race day will be an even longer time on the bike followed by 26.2 miles of running, nutrition is the most important factor to plan. Currently I'm leaning towards a 4 hour bottle of perpetuem on the bike plus a couple packs of GU chomps plus 3 or 4 mini Clif bars. (100 calories each and easy to consume) For the run I"ll likely stick with straight gels and water/gatorade because that was all I could tolerate last time and it seemed to do the trick. I'm no expert and basically just figuring it out as I go along. :)

My training plan: Following Matt Fitzgerald's Triathlon Level 4 Ironman Plan. (love his training book/plan)

Coming Soon: Pictures and a full race report from the Musselman Half Iron Tri on July 11. It was a fun race, hard run, I improved in everything except the run but I blame the heat and sun! I'm just full of excuses in this post...forgive me!

Shout-Out: to several training partners... Sandy and Kim for open water swims and bike rides from time to time, FF running groups for long runs, and the biggest and bestest shout-out of all to COLIN for biking with me on the long endurance rides. He's a strong cyclist and patiently waits for me at turns, he also plans our routes. :) Thank You! I'm lucky he's training for the Highlander, a 125 mile bike ride in September so he needs these long workouts too.