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I had a couple of beers post-work yesterday evening, and then went out for 10k easy when I got back. Foolish you might say… but my heart-rate was surprisingly low: a good 10bpm lower while allowing me to run at a higher pace! Wasn’t sure if:
- HR strap was faulty.
- I’ve had a fitness breakthrough
- The alcohol was having its wicked way with me
They say caffeine reduces RPE, but perhaps booze does the same.
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Not quite winning, I’m too old for that! I would have come 3rd overall though in Maryland without the puncture 
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Thanks for the document! Just wondering what you did to deduce your threshold running pace?
Following on from my post way back in December…
I’ve continued with TR for the bike, but had dropped the swim and run elements. The reason being that I managed to get a place in the London Marathon. I therefore needed to use a specific marathon plan that peaked a lot earlier than the TR plan.
I picked up an Achilles injury with 5 weeks to go, but managed to get through the event with careful rest/ rehab/ management.
With the marathon out of the way (my first one) I am now looking forward to dropping back in to the TR plan and using it for all three events.
I think an updated FTP test is in order before I try and carry on where I left off.
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So I’ve been plugging away with the Specialty plan. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have been having a 
with my training, some highs and some real lows - I guess this is all part of the iron(man)-distance experience?
This weekend (the end of week 4) I am do what amounts to the “big day”; with a 3,000 m swim, longfellow and 1:15 run. Does anyone have any advice for this day? I think I might do a slightly longer run because I really want to see how my nutrition holds up. I might leave an hour, or even 90 minutes, between swim and run - I think I read this on the Friel blog - but does that sound right or should I leave longer?
One musing for anyone approaching Specialty later this year… The plan itself talks about either doing this training day or a warm up 70.3. I really wish I could have raced! I’m having withdrawal. The reality is that as the season has barely started here in the UK, there just isn’t a race to easily go to.
If you can, I say, definitely race!
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I used the pace calculator in the top right of this page. Seems kind of like the jack daniels VDOT running calculator.
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Looking at my plan for the rest of the year and I’m going with this
2 weeks left of HIM speciality then outlaw half
Then got a week off when I might get in the pool for a couple of recovery swims
Then in Zante for a week all inclusive will do something each day to avoid getting too fa.
Back for two weeks (going to do instructured easy training)
Then off to Austria for a week with school white water rafting, hiking and mountain biking
When I get back I am planning to go straight into Sprint distance build and then speciality.
3 weeks off and then Sweet spot base 1 and 2 coupled with 2-3 runs and 2 swims a week
2 weeks off at christmas where I will do unstructured training as and when.
Then into FD build going towards IM Hamburg next year (although dependent on date it might end up being one of the other two summer holiday IM’s in Europe).
What do people think about jumping straight into sprint build following a couple of weeks of unstructured training and a decent amount of lager?
Just got back from a vacation in Sedona Arizona, and broke out the trail running shoes. I probably over-did it but everything was just so beautiful that I had to keep going, and what’s the point of having all this fitness if I can’t go out into the desert and run to my heart’s content? 
Anyways between hiking and running I racked up just over 70km in 4 days. Still I feel great, probably because the effort level was quite low. Even if I wanted to go out hard, the trails a lot of times were just too technical for me to keep up any real speed.
But now it’s back to the trainer and pool and had a pretty good bike session last night, but overall this was a very positive vacation as I think mentally it was exactly the kind of break I needed both from structured training and just from life/work.
And for those of you lucky enough to live somewhere where there are interesting trails to run on, how much trail running do you do as a portion of your run if any?
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I did this exactly last year as my big day for 70.3. I only had about 30min after the swim to start the bike (logistics, no way around it) but then did the two others in direct succession.
My tip is to 100% use the same nutrition as on race day for spot on testing (incl day before and breakfast) and to otherwise enjoy it 
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Interesting might be a stretch but it’s pretty easy for me to get into the South Downs national park on a long run. Only about 5km to the countryside from my door. I did all my long runs there last year for my marathon training and will be getting out there more as the distances mount up in the full distance plan.
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Looks quite a busy schedule, look to simplify where you can.
Sprint plans are relatively light at least low and mid vol are, I would not see a problem there.
But maybe consider separate swim and run plans if you’re going from SS Base to FD Build. Even FD Base is quite full on across the sports in week 1.
Unless you’ve never done a half or full, I’m pretty sure you’ll get more benefit from these as training pace efforts than as a race. Race is more fun obvs! But if you’re not racing, and you don’t need the confidence boost then swim on a separate day and pace the run easier than race pace.
Agree with @Schmidt on simulating the nutrition👍
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I did a day like this a couple of years ago before IM South Africa. Because I’d been training indoors through the winter and hadn’t done any racing to gauge race paces or fitness I felt like it was worthwhile doing.
I essentially followed the recommendations from the Joe Friel Big Day training, from memory I had around an hour between each part, had race nutrition during the ride and run and only liquid calories in the ‘transitions’.
My day was 38x100 in the pool off a very short rest, pretty much touch and go for for the swim rather than a straight 3.8k. I headed home and got on the trainer an hour after I’d got out of the pool for a 4:45 ride at IM intensity and an hour after I’d finished that I ran a half marathon. This was 3 weeks before the race and I think at the time it was well worth doing. The pace I ended up running that day turned out to be virtually the same as I managed at IMSA run a few weeks later so was I think a good gauge of where I was at.
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follow-up after finishing HIM Build HV (8wk + 2weeks repeat). it was a nice block! pretty sure I’m up for a FTP increase next ramp test. I was eating like a champ.
I did all the bricks on Thursdays after work. this meant 2-3h workouts, basically only having some food afterwards & straight to bed, getting up before 6am to go to the pool friday morning. it was madness and I will move the brick workout to saturdays for the next block.
one thing is clear to me after the brick workouts: I will ride an easier effort during my HIM than 0.8IF. I am not fresh enough to push the pace during the run afterwards.
as a workout, the 0.8IF is probably good to be a bit above race pace, but I’m thinking to do 1-2 bricks at my actual race intensity to see how the run is feeling then. any thoughts?
in 3 weeks I am doing a benchmark race, really looking forward to it. the open water hasn’t been warm enough yet but i’m looking forward to move one of my swim workouts there each week, can’t be long anymore
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UGHHHH.
For me lately I feel it has fallen apart. Recently I have had to start travelling every other week for work. So what I have been doing is shifting my bike workouts to the week I am home and the run to the weeks I am gone. This so far has been working but I feel as if I have missed too many workouts.
This will be my 3rd Ironman, I keep track of all the hours I have done previously, per month. (typical engineer, lets nerd out with numbers in excel). So this month I have done about 6-10 hours less training then the other two times. Now to add insult to injury I became rather ill and have had to take a full week off.
So here I am freaking out a bit. Thinking I am 4 months out and have not A) trained enough, and B) lost much weight (I think stress has been a huge factor, been so stressful at work I don’t sleep or eat well)
one bonus is I am at the start of Build my FTP is the same as last time I did an Ironman at the start of Speciality.
So someone please tell me I’m not crazy and a bad month of training won’t screw it all up lol.
thanks,
A question about the run workouts with strides… in base the workouts all “concluded” with the strides. In build, the strides are “included”. Does it matter if they’re at the end or sprinkled throughout?
Does not matter whether you do them before a big effort as part of your warm-up, mid run, or after an easy run. The key thing is to remember they are NOT full out sprints, maybe ~90% max. You pick up the pace as you go. I typically go 100m and pick up the pace every ~1/3, walk back, and repeat. Also, the last one will probably be faster than the first one as your legs stretch out and your turnover picks up.
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The great thing about the insanely long time we train for these types of events is that you can take a “bad” month and it shouldn’t impact you all that much. The aerobic gains we make take a long time to train, but they also don’t drop off all that much, especially if you are still getting training in when you can.
I say stay the course, and try not to fret too much. This isn’t your first rodeo, your experience will help out a lot more than you think. The one thing you should absolutely NOT do is try to “makeup” any workouts.
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The one thing I always tend to forget is that on raceday, when I’m tapered and fresh, adrenaline is flowing, and I see other people out there on the course I want to beat, RPE is much lower than during training. 0.8IF for a HIM is right around the ballpark when you factor all that in. What have you typically done as for IF during a HIM race and how did that feel?