| Summary of Week 4 : BASE 3 (5th of 5) | |
|---|---|
| Training Hours: | 12:53 (Swim 1:22, Bike 7:52, Run 3:39)  |
| Training Stress: | 749 |
| CTL Ramp Rate: | – 0.2 (to 108.4) |
The Highlights
- I’m alive. Yep, after the bike crash on Sunday, being alive is the highlight of my week!
- The bike is fixed (again!).. The mechanics at Gold Coast Triathlete must be getting sick of me! Fortunately, there was little permanent damage from the crash and they fixed it up the same day, for free! Since then I’ve had to replace the PowerTap hub batteries, move a few sensors that had been knocked out of alignment, and replace a broken bottle cage. But, considering the impact, the bike is still humming along!
Dramas
- Dead laptop. While not strictly training related, I’ve been using my Macbook Pro to store all of my exercise data, spreadsheets, training plans and analysis tools. A week later the laptop is still in the shop being assessed (grrr….). While I do have backups of everything (although one of my backup drives died – luckily I also had backups of my backups!), it is a right PITA to setup all of my files on another machine, especially WKO+. It all takes time, and I have other things I’d rather be doing than spending my time copying files! Finally, I’ve got everything setup and can do this weekly review, albeit 5 days late!
- Bike fitness is a bit under par. If I’d followed Scott Herrick’s 20 week ironman training plan, my bike fitness (CTL) should have been sitting at about 47 by now. But I thought Scott’s plan looked a little light on the bike so I decided to augment his plan with some longer rides, and some harder rides. Right now my bike fitness (CTL) is just over 49. That isn’t much of a step up!
I think in my quest to ride longer, I’ve ridden my long rides far too easily, and I’ve gotten so tired that I haven’t done my short rides hard enough. The numbers I’m seeing on my power meter confirm this. But while I can look at the power meter and see I’m not pushing hard enough, I’ve been too tight (hammies) and leg-weary to do anything about it!
It’s hard to say whether keeping shorter and harder would have been a better approach. I certainly underestimated how difficult it would be to ride both long and hard. And while I’ve ridden as much as I can in the time that I have (4 kids, new baby, blah blah), my bike fitness base isn’t as good as I expected it would be by now. And I never managed the over-distance 200km+ ride – in fact, 150km will be my longest ride going into Ironman NZ. I’ll have to readjust my goal times.
- Swimming ain’t working. The bike crash has left my left shoulder pretty sore and I haven’t been able to swim. At this stage I’m not too worried about it. I’m resting it up for the week and if it’s still no good by Monday I’ll get down to the physio. I’ve still got a few other niggles from the crash that haven’t come right, but they aren’t holding me up.
Coming Up?
Week 3. This is the beginner of the peak/taper block. Shorter, sharper sessions. The biggest is a 2hr run and a 3hr ride. Hoorah!
Total training planned : 13 hours.
Iron Therapy 
Read through your blog… great stuff. I’m doing Ironman France, Nice in June and am following the same plan. It was really good to read your thoughts on it. Great work and good luck. I look forward to seeing how you do and any tricks or tips are welcomed as it will be my first Ironman distance Tri.
Cheers Jason. All will be revealed in 9 days!
Ironman France sounds like a good plan – I like the idea of recovering in Nice after the race! I’d be interested to hear how Scott’s plan works out for you.
John.
John,
Ironman France didn’t go so well… I broke my elbow 36 hours prior to the start on a checkout ride on my bike. I didn’t go to the hospital because I wanted to try to believe it wasn’t broken. I completed the swim in 1:15 minutes, and the bike in 9 hours… so I made the cut to start the run, but the medica staff had to cut off the RFID tag on my wrist due to swelling and strongly advised me to stop. I had enough pain on the ride to agree… When returned home to the States I got Xrays and had surgery the next day. Now i have a screw and a wire in my arm to hold the the Ulna bone together at the elbow. No long term damage was done.
I think the plan put me in pretty good shape to do well. I would agree with you that it might need some tweeking to focus on each persons weak areas better. For me, I would have prefered a bit more running so if I ever get the chance to do it again I’ll add in some longer runs.
Hope your year is going well…
Jason! Tragic stuff!! That’s a helluva long way to go to break your elbow!
Hopefully it all heals up 100% and you feel motivated to give Ironman another crack. I bet you feel you have unfinished business. It’s such a big time sacrifice to take on an Ironman, and you have so much invested in it – being unable to finish because of a single moment has got to be a hard thing to swallow! All rides with elbow pads in the future?
If you still have the bug and decide to take a second crack at it, at least you’ll have a nice base of fitness and knowledge to draw on. Stupid bike crashes…grrr!