The Ironman in 2019 thread

Just done tallac at the end of the recovery week of him base, hardest ride to date

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Maybe check out whether there is a shuttle service from the airport to Interlaken. I have no experience with Zurich - Interlaken, but I’ve had good experiences at Geneva airport, plenty of the winter shuttle services do also offer their services for MTB riders in the summer up Portes Du Soleil. Might be worth a shot, they’re usually fairly cheap as well.

Thanks. I’ll look into. Although I’ve heard the train ride is very scenic

Well done!

Last ride of full distance base today for me…next up ramp test. It’s actually been four months since i last tested so…no pressure then :roll_eyes::grinning:

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Anyone got any advice on pacing a duathalon both on and off the bike.

Can’t help in duathlon my friend, no experience.

Ramp testing…

So I’m thinking I’m doing two tomorrow, one in aero and one upright. An hour in between okay, or more?

Last bike was hill intervals yesterday easy in between about 89TSS, brief swim today. I could do another swim and run tonight, but how much could that affect the ramp test?

What distances are you racing?

Have you done that before? I’d try to leave a day between the two if possible. What’s your rationale for doing both?

I got a clear steer from TR eventually last summer that I should now be testing in the aero position but I’m still not quite convinced. Not sure what’s different this year, perhaps it’s just more training over autumn/winter, but I’m definitely feeling weakness when in aero.

That said, I don’t know what I’ll do with the results. I guess I just want to see how big the difference is. It’s been a while since I analysed my fit, so I may rework that.

I’m still alternating aero/upright in the training sessions for the endurance rides. Interval sessions I do in aero until/unless I can’t then I’ll sit up and easily finish the session.

10k, 40 and 5

Fair enough. It might be an interesting comparison to make.

I guess I come from the point of view that I find it really difficult to ride aero indoors but have no issues outside in that position. It takes a couple of early season TT’s to get back in the groove of riding aero and after that alternate between racing aero and training upright indoors.

Pretty consistently my indoor upright threshold is around 10W higher than I can ride aero outside and would base ideas of race numbers on TT races rather than indoor testing.

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Obviously to a degree it depends on how long you anticipate whole race taking but for standard distance I’d be aiming for around 45s-1m slower than 10k pace for the first run, trying to hit 90% threshold on the bike and holding on the the best pace you can for the last run.

Riding after the first run in a duathlon though I find much harder than after a swim.

I can’t believe I forgot about this thread!!

So much to catch up on…

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I did this experiment back in Oct, although I left a few days between both tests. I personally wouldn’t do them on the same day as you’d want to be equally rested for both tests in order to compare them. I found my aero FTP was about 5% lower.

If you’re interested, this is a clip from the AACC podcast where they discuss this stuff:

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Well disappointing so far…I wasn’t expecting much given the illness etc in Nov/Dec but it’s been pretty hard work since Boxing Day.

FTP dropped 1pt! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth::laughing:

On the plus side that’s well within any margin for error of any PM/trainer. It might have gone up :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Same here. My FTP went up by 3 Watts after 8 weeks of low volume Base.
I comfort myself with the hope that my FTP is the same but my Endurance hopefully went up…

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Ramp #2 (upright) …+12W. :grinning:

I’m now frantically trying to find my notes/posts that remind me if I was upright in October at my last test… :rofl:

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Hi All,

So after picking up the tri bug last year and completing 3 70.3’s in 2018 I’ve decided to go ahead and sign up for my 1st Ironman in Zurich - from having quick look through this thread it looks like there’s already a few experts on this race

I had planned on doing the mid volume full distance base/build/spesh plan however due to a combination of Christmas, unexpected work travel and illness i’m already 3 weeks in the hole with 25 weeks to go and the full plan taking 28

What would you good folks recommend? start the full plan and cut the base phase by 3 weeks or some other combination of sweet spot base + full plan build/spesh?

This’ll be my first time following any sort of structured plan so I’m kinda clueless at the moment

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