The Ironman Training 2022 Thread

Congrats!!!

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SLEEEEEEEPPPPYYYYYYY

I’m not sure if its been asked in here, but how much sleep are all of you getting throughout training? This is by far the area I need the most improvement. I only get about 5.5 hours per night (11pm-4:30am). Working out before and after work. My wife and I don’t have kids yet, so when the fatigue really mounts I’ll sleep for like 10 hours per night on the weekend and do my workouts later in the day.

I’ve been doing this for almost 30 weeks now (which is a long time), but I don’t think it’s sustainable for super long term. I am pretty much worthless at work after about 2pm lol.

I’m not lacking motivation/dedication though. I have pretty much zero issues waking up and getting the work done. But the 1-2pm crash is real.

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Not doing tri anymore but still ride around 8-10 hours and run a little and I usually avg around 8 hours. I can do 9+ but lately life has been making it a little harder. It is all about routines.

There are outliers for sleep requirements, no one rule will work for everyone. If you’re having to use stimulants to stay awake, if you’re getting sick frequently, if you have daytime sleepiness - all good indications that you’re not sleeping enough

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3 month old baby so less than before…

I’m about 5.5-6 avg, was getting closer to 8 pre baby but I generally don’t need that much. My partner needs at least 8 so baby is hitting her worse than me, baby sleeps through the night but later bedtime and earlier wake up time than she’d like.

8-10 hours a week training is all I can fit in right now because baby (and grandparents living with us).

I stopped alcohol about a week and a half ago, often don’t drink last month before a race. My Garmin Sleep score has shot up since, don’t feel like it changed my sleep at all but seems like it might have. This morning was the first time my body battery ever read 99, and possibly first time over 90.

Screenshot_20220510-090455

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I havn’t been sick in a long long time (knock on wood). But stimulants to stay awake…and daytime sleepiness. That is my life right now lol

Sleep has been a big focus of mine recently - never been a good sleeper

M-F I try to target 7.5 hours per night
Sat/Sun 8 hours

Right now 7.31 hours per night average per the Athlytic App

I keep waking up in the early hours (grrrrr), however I have never gone to bed as early as I do now. I try to be better on the weekends focus on 8 hours, but had to get up to watch the IMWC this last Saturday.

I tend to get ~8 hours of in-bed, lights out, head on pillow time. Usually that’s in bed around 8:15-8:30 followed by some reading w/ head on pillow at 9. Alarm goes off between 4-5 depending on the morning workout on the plan for the day, but usually 5.

Schedules at very personal and what works for others may not work for you, but I’m curious. What’s stopping you from going to bed earlier?

Check out Why We Sleep by Matt Walker. Might motivate you to prioritize sleep…it certainly motivated me lol

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Alcohol has a huge effect on sleep and recovery, even if it’s “out of your system” before bed.

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Checking in for April…decent month despite a fair amount of business travel. Did a 5K at the end of the month averaging 4:53/km which I’m really happy with given I don’t run a ton and running is not a natural strength.

Still haven’t decided on a 140.6 in Nov or 70.3 in December - why not do both? :slight_smile:

  • Total Time: 47:22:26
  • Run: 12:39:56; 117.1 km
  • Bike: 27:14:36; 789.1 km
  • Swim: 5:08:20; 13698m
  • Total TSS: 2579

Thanks everyone, and keep on training!

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Congratulations! Give up on controlling your sleep patterns for the next five years+. The best you can expect is to get what you can when you can. I was getting 4-5 hrs in the beginning. That was broken up. Now after carelessly starting the process again 4 years later…

Well now for some reason my wife wants to spend time with me (I don’t get it either) I get about seven hrs and five if I get up for a six am swim. You do get used to it. Mostly it’s the consistency of the sleep and it will improve as the baby gets older.

Alcohol affects sleep. I combat this by consistently having a beer… consistency is everything! :thinking:

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I could probably get to bed before 11 if I really try to start prioritizing it much as workouts. My evening typically looks like…

5:00 - Arrive home from work.
5:00-6:00 - take care of my 2 dogs (feed them, bathrooms, short play time)
6:00-8:00 - typical workout time, give or take
8:00-9:00 - making & eating dinner
9:00-10:00 - showers for wife and I getting ready for bed. By the time we screw around a little it ends up being 11ish.

There are probably some areas that I can tighten up in there if I really try to rush through and not waste time.

Thanks, so far we have lucked out. We were actually waking her up for a middle of the night feeding and finally like wait why are we doing this to ourselves if she’s not the one waking us up. About 5 weeks now of just getting her up at about 6 when I leave to go swim, change her and hand her back over for feeding. Working great, but prepared for that to blow up in our face at any moment.

The consistency thing made me chuckle. I have a friend who a few years ago wanted to lose about 30lbs, he was 2-4 drinks a night guy. He didn’t want to cut himself off completely so said lunch will just be a salad with a protein and measured dressing, and limit it to 1 drink a night. That was enough for him to lose all the weight he wanted. He likes to joke to people who asked what worked for him that he just started drinking 1 beer a night, and the weight fell off! Always takes the person a minute.

Oh yeah for sure knew it was disruptive, just never had any sort of actual data to back it up. We’d done dry January before but it’s usually tied in with sex month or one year we tried some CBD drops at night before bed. This year my 945 showed up a few days before the baby came and end of dry “can you not drink the last month with me” month (which happened to be january). This past week+ was the first time I had data to back up the only change being alcohol so it was interesting to see it actually showing up in the Garmin data. I’ve done a year without drinking, month? without caffeine, before that sort of thing as experiments but all that was also while I had a crappy job and sleep was garbage no matter what. I don’t think I got a damn thing done at work the month without caffeine, hadn’t realized how much it helped with my adhd.

5.5-6h. Has been this way for as long as I can remember. Structuring sleep routines doesn’t lengthen the time I sleep but it does do consistency and quality - TRs top qualities for training.

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It doesn’t taste as good, but switching to non-alcoholic beer seems to help me lose weight and not drink as much.

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My update:

Swim: RED
Haven’t been in the pool at all in April. I’ll have to visit the pool a few times in next 4wk. At least, Beastman (in June) has only 800m of swimming. I’m not trying to improve my swim time as I’ve found that I would need to invest tons of time for very little reward. I look forward to swimming in local lakes ahead of IMCA in Aug but first it needs to stop snowing here in Bend.

Bike: GREEN
This season I’m focusing on consistency with TR’s structured training now that there’s an alternative to ramptest. I’ve been consistent and just completed LD Tri Base LV. I do the Low Volume and add extra workout and/or MTB ride as time & weather permits.
I’m happy with the results.
FTP went from 212W (mid Feb ramp test vs the 232W ramp test just before IMAZ in Nov)
to 255W (latest AI FTP detect) this week.
I typically undertest on ramptest. AI FTP detection is my friend and I use this feature every 2-3 wk. At 212, everything was too easy so I kept choosing stretch and breakthrough workouts.

After a week break (family trip), I’ve started LD Tri Build LV this week. This weekend, I’ll also start longer rides (>2h) as downhill ski season is over.

Run: YELLOW
I’ve struggled to increase volume >25km and to extend longest run > 10km.
Last week, i reached 30km weekly volume for first time this year without causing my right glute injury to flare up. Physio and no downhill skiing contributed for sure. This week I’m starting the Run-walk-run method to increase mileage and my longest run. We’ll see.

With DH ski season over, I’ll have more time in the weekend to train so the ramp up is starting.

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In your shoes, I would try out what AI FTP detection proposes and do a workout. If you still need to adjust that workout down, then I would manually reduce your FTP further down and then let AI FTP + AT take over, up or down. They will give you something achievable to do. It won’t ramp you up if your answer are Very Hard & AllOut. If you answer Easy, Moderate & Hard , it will adjust upward but won’t ramp you up fast.
Once you feel better, the workouts will feel quite easy and then you could pick Stretch and Breakthrough workout and rate them honestly and consistently.

Just a note to say that some of the non/low alcohol beets are fantastic. I’m sure there was a thread about them somewhere :+1:

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