The Ironman Training 2020 Thread

May I interest you in some Mount Bond? :sunglasses:

1 Like

I’ll be doing Outlaw X too, if it’s on, might well be my only race of the year. I did it last year, it’s a nice course.

Hoping to do IMUK next year but with all the deferrals from this year it might be a rush to signup for it when it opens.

Still training for Cascais in late September even if I just give it 10% chance to happen.
I had a 70.3 in my program as a C race that was obviously cancelled.
However I did a home project to simulate it using my current IM targets.
How did I do it? Thedered swimming in my backyard pool using a time reference and a tempo trainer, 90k on the trainer at target power and 21,1k running around my neighbourhood at IM target pace.
It was much simpler than what I thought. Transitions were around 3 to 5 minutes because I changed completely and weighted myself each time.
I tracked all fluids in (and out :blush: too) as well as calories weighting anything in the process. It is something we cannot do easily outside but in this context was very easy to do.
The knowledge acquired is gigantic. In the 5 hours it took me to complete this, my body weight went down from 74kg to 72.1. Some of this loss came from my bladder (0.7) but the rest was just sweat and glycogen.
I drunk around 2.1 liters = 2.1kg and consumed 0.625kg in gels and dates.
In general terms, my conclusion is that my calories were pretty ok but I should maybe drink an additional bottle on the run.
Nevertheless, just doing the math and multiply everything by 2 to extrapolate to full distance is frightening to say the least. We are talking a potential 4% body weight loss even doing things very very aggressively from the caloric and fluid intake prespective.
My kcal/hour on the bike was 320 (I think I can go a bit higher here) and on the run it was a record high 271.

As a conclusion I think that, if one’s fitness allows, doing such a simulation in a very controlled environment, will make everyone faster in the upcoming IM (stealing the Trainerroad motum, here).

2 Likes

It would be nice if the weather was better than last year.

1 Like

Since you do not want to test, go check out Lola or Lola -1

Those are much more appropriate for giving you a gauge of your current fitness vs FTP setting compared to Pioneer (45min of tempo) .

If youve still got two recovery days, the day off and the “petit” day I think youve got it.

Same for me (mentally) - I and a buddy are thinking to push CDA out to STG. Wondering now if Maple Valley will happen. I can’t imagine the swim in lake CDA with people still not able to get in most pools (+ the lake is always cold in June). It would be quite the cluster!

1 Like

That can be a pretty choppy lake too (and yes, that water temp always surprises me, even when CDA is so warm and nice.)

MV is the only race I’m actually thinking has a shot at happening on my calendar, but far from 100%. Crazy to think of STG being basically a year away after what would have been a race in ~7 weeks.

Social distancing on the bike leg is already sorted though… :wink:

1 Like

I hope we all learned our lesson never to sign up early for races that don’t sell out. I’ll happily eat the small fee and be a last second entrant from here on out.

3 Likes

Describe your runs. Length and intensity and why do you run 2x per week?

I would strongly advice against what you are doing. The reason you can’t fit 2 runs into your schedule is because the HVSSB is not meant for triathlon. It is time consuming into cycling and stressful. On top of that you are filling in the rest days with more riding. It just doesn’t work with running and swimming on top of that. Not even pro triathletes who train 20+ hours, would do this.
Go back into the podcast and listen to the interviews of all the KQ’s. You will see how much less they train and all of them respect rest days and recovery.

And another one gone - IM-Vitoria cancelled this morning

I’d keep the amount of time you spend in Z3 to a minimum and just use the running to keep some volume in your legs. But 1.5-2.5hr of running a week is probably a bit too little. Could you toss in another 2 30min runs at a really easy pace, or maybe adding 3 runs at 20min each? That way you’re probably closer to averaging 30km a week.

I’ve found it’s pretty easy to toss in a 20-30min run at lunch or in the morning before hard workout, and it doesn’t affect the quality of my biking as long as I’m keeping those runs really easy.

3 Likes

I’ve been doing the full SSBHV rather than a tri specific plan. With no swimming I basically do an easy run most days, and follow the HV cycling plan. I’m finding this tough but manageable. All of the intensity is on the bike. I don’t need any on the runs as my overall fitness improvements and a bit of gradual weight loss is improving my run pace. Bike is a relative weakness for me so I’m using this period to see if I can make some gains that I can hold on to once swimming returns.

FTP ramp yesterday saw my biggest gain I’ve seen from an FTP test, and to my highest every result. Today will be first workout proper from SSBHV2 so this morning’s run was very easy. I’m dreading the new sweet spot power targets already!

3 Likes

AWESOME!

I’m doing something similar. More or less cutting workouts out of a few plans,.

1 Like

Sure thing.

There’s the last week before the cut back week of SSBHV1. Monday was just a few miles with my daughter at her pace, but they all get logged!! :slight_smile:

I aim to get roughly an hour per run at an easy effort. I run to heart rate, keeping under 75% of max. This gave me about 30ish miles for that particular week. I aim to get between 30 and 40 done every week just now, but I’m not being rigid about it. I skipped the Sunday that week because the two big efforts on the bike on Sat/Sun were hard work.

I get my run done in the am, and bike in the evening. Once a week I’ll do the bike/run as a brick instead. On the week above it was the Saturday. If time is tight and I won’t manage to train twice in a day I’ll drop the run.

When I need to focus a bit more on the run I’ll start to introduce a steady state session once a week (the run equivalent of a sweet spot workout) and I’ll start to extend the distance once a week for a long run and slowly increase the overall run volume as well.

2 Likes

You just have to keep them almost hilariously easy. Like, 2-4 RPE.

1 Like

I don’t have the ability to run at zone 1 at all. For me, Z2 is really, really easy. Z2 is probably fine. The zoomed out point is really just about getting run time in without having to actually recover from it.

2 Likes

Well - The email has arrived - Vichy Cancelled this year :frowning_face: