The Ironman World Championships 2011 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii is only 8 days a way. This is especially significant to me as I am currently training fo
r my first Ironman. Though I am very amateur triathlete, I deeply respect all that everyone participating has undertaken to make it to Kona.
Training for an Ironman is like nothing else in the world…
Another swim in the pool at LA Fitness. It was fairly crowded at 9pm so I had to share a lane for most of my workout, which I cut short a little bit. 1750 yards tonight only, but it was a decent workout.
I pushed the pace a little bit and I continue to work on my swim form. It is a struggle for me to get the mechanics correct and I know I could be much more efficient during the swim.
I am also trying to change it up enough to keep it from getting too monotonous. Back and forth, back and forth, lap after lap soon becomes mind-numbing. I notice that I tend to loose count of my laps frequently, mostly because my mind is drifting or I am thinking about how my stroke form could be improved. I think I frequently do a longer workout than I actually log because I loose my place so often.
Next week I am moving my Wednesday night swim to Friday night to keep my weekend in order: Friday swim, Saturday long bike, Sunday long run.
Time again for the early Tuesday morning brick at Fiesta. Moving into winter training, I am now starting my ride in the dark so I transferred the lights from my mountain bike to my road bike.
It isn’t very crowded on Fiesta Island at 6am so it is a great time to settle into a comfortable pace and keep the HR low. Fiesta is nice and flat and at this time in the morning, there isn’t any wind. I was able to do most of the ride in HR zone 1 and zone 2 while keeping my pace at 17.1 miles and I did four large loops for 16.65 miles. I probably should have pushed a little harder and spent more time in Zone 2 but I am really pleased with how I felt on this ride!
Since this was a brick, I did a short fifteen-minute run to keep my body used to transitioning from the bike to the run. I stayed in HR zones 1 and 2 to keep working on conditioning.
I prefer open water swimming — especially at La Jolla Shores/Cove, but I am learning to appreciate swimming in the pool. Another hour tonight in the pool at LA Fitness. It was about 2100 yards with some drills in the middle, working on my form, strength, and endurance.
Long 7 mile run was on the calendar for today. I elected to run at Lake Hodges and get some trail work in. It was a great day for a run as it temperatures were in the low 70s and there was a slight breeze.
The route I took was from Rancho Bernardo to Del Dios along the path on the north side of the lake. This is a fairly wide trail that can be busy at times with other runners, walkers and mountain bikers. It has some elevation change as well, which is good for me to work on my pacing and keeping HR zone 3 or less.
I ended up doing 7.5 miles and the run was excellent. I felt good mechanically during the entire run and I was able to keep my HR at a decent level.
Here is the run profile:
Today was something different — Brick intervals! A 8 mile ride followed by a 1 mile run, repeat 4 times. Nice change up from the normal ride routine.
We started at De Anza Cove and rode around the large loop at Fiesta and back then then ran along the bay. The goal was to stay sub-lactate so I focused on staying below hr 150 as much as I could, while pacing as fast as I could. Fiesta is a great place to work on pacing as it is flat.
Post workout felt pretty good. This slower-pace training seems to be having a positive effect. On the calendar tomorrow is a 7mile run and a 1 hr strength workout.
Here is the data from Training Center:
My first time back to track workout in a few weeks as I was not running to allow recovery from my ankle sprain.
Tonight was mostly drills, focusing on form and on breathing. Coach Steve keeps reminding us that our Ironman run pace will be much longer than our 10K or 1/2 Ironman pace. We have 112 miles on the bike before we start the run!
Another hour in the pool tonight. More focus on my stroke and building strength and endurance. I managed 92 laps — 2300 yards — continuously this time and I feel pretty good overall.
I was lucky the pool at the gym wasn’t crowded and I had a lane to myself tonight. Back and forth, back and forth. It would be nicer if the pool was longer than 25 yards. Towards the end I tend to loose track on which lap I am on so I probably am swimming more than I am logging in Trainingpeaks.
Each session in the pool I get a little faster. But I can see that I have so much more room for improvement when other swimmers seem to effortlessly do a lap in half the time of mine. Maybe one day I will catch them.
Now time for some much needed rest!
Coach Steve had some drills today – spin ups and dominate legs. Woke up way early while the rest of the house was sleeping peacefully and made my way down to Fiesta Island. First loop warm-up, then the remaining 3 loops doing the drills:
Nice and easy overall overall, with brief periods of high cadence. Then I noticed that my Garmin was still acting wonky even after I updated it to the latest firmware from Garmin. My simple”backup” Cateye computer was showing a much higher speed than my Garmin FR310XT. I confirmed that the Garmin was reporting my speed 25% slower than it actually was. At the end of my ride, it had logged 12.88 miles while the actual distance was 16.45 miles.
I am really frustrated that my Garmin is not getting accurate data on the bike. It seems to be doing ok on the run however. Updating from 3.70 to 3.90 fixed a lot of issues but right now my 310XT is useless on the bike!!! I use the data to gauge my performance to make sure that I am staying on track with my training program. This data is also used by Coach Steve to further tune the workouts so they are appropriate for what I need to focus on. No new firmware out yet so I am now going to completely reset my device to factory defaults and see if that resolves anything.
Here is the fairly useless bike profile:
Nice easy run today to see how I feel after completing the San Diego Triathlon Classic. I am particularly worried about my left ankle as I have been struggling to keep it healthy since I sprained it in August.
The training goal was 1 hour sub-lactate, but I wanted to go a little slower and stay in HR zone 3, but my pace was in HR zone 4. I did my standard out-and-back run, which has a decent hill in the middle of it. Managed to get in 5 miles in 62 minutes and I felt great. Everything seems ok mechanically but I did take the precaution of icing down my ankle after the run to minimize any swelling. So far so good!
Run profile:
