Ironman Training Week 7

After an incredible marathon peak week last week, I went into this week feeling encouraged that I could actually complete the volume required of an Ironman without losing my job or falling asleep at the wheel. Last week my main focus was on running as it was the peak week for my long run, my mid-week long run (10 miles) and my Yassos (10 x 800). This week my mid-week long run went down to 8.5 miles, my long run was down to 16, but I wanted to attempt the Yassos one more time to give myself some more confidence that I am ready to PR at this marathon. Although my run mileage was down, the total hours this week went up because I added one more easy spin and I added more yards to my swims. I also managed to fit in my weekly yoga session!

• Monday: 60 minute Sufferfest “Very Dark Place” on trainer – easy effort AM; 2,000 meter swim (80% drills) PM
• Tuesday: 8.5 mile run AM; 45 minute easy effort spin on trainer plus 15 minutes of Insanity “Cardio Abs” PM. I hadn’t done Insanity since I finished the program in early December and I definitely lost some of that strength! It felt good to get back into it. One of the things I really want to make sure I don’t leave out is core work since core strength is so vital to all three sports.
• Wednesday: 60 minute Sufferfest “Downward Spiral” on trainer – hard effort AM; 2,000 meter swim PM. After spending the majority of my Monday night swim focusing on skills, I was kind of sick of them. Instead, I decided to do a normal swim workout but reminded myself to focus on my reach and my catch the entire time. After a warm-up and a few laps focusing on breathing every 3rd stroke, I then did a pyramid scheme workout of 400, 300, 200, 150, 100, 50 and then finished with 4 x 50 at hard effort and then did a cool down.
• Thursday: I slept in this morning and got nearly 9.5  hours of sleep. It was a great decision! Then I did lunchtime yoga at work. The last two Thursdays of the month my office has a yoga instructor come in and do a 1.25 hour yoga class. The class is beginner level so it’s perfect because I get a good stretch but I’m not painfully sore the next day. Since I have yoga on my schedule for once a week, this works out perfectly. The best part about a lunchtime workout is that it leaves either my morning or my evening free. In this case, I slept in until nearly 7 a.m. and got over 9 hours of sleep! After work I went to the gym to face off with the Yassos again. I really wanted to complete 10 Yasso 800s one more time to build my confidence that I could indeed run a 3:50 marathon. I did complete 10 x 800 Yassos (8.5 miles total), but I must admit I struggled with this workout! It came at the end of a long week and I was just not feeling energetic. By Yasso #7 I was contemplating just doing 8 and calling it a day. Instead, I took a Gu (yes I had a Gu on the treadmill) and started feeling a bit better and powered through the next three intervals. I was pretty tired at the end and decided to skip the 1,000 meter swim I had planned for myself.
• Friday: Rest!!!
• Saturday: 16 mile run. It rained pretty hard Saturday morning which actually didn’t interfere with our workout since Asia was returning that morning for a business trip. We ran around noon and kept it nice and easy. We kept with our 1 Gu every 40 minute schedule and everything went well.
  
• Sunday: 45 mile bike ride & 3 mile run. We went back to the hills on Sunday. We have been riding the coast (ie no hills) for the month and a half or so as we ramped up our marathon mileage. However, since there was a marathon going on down the coast in Carlsbad and since we were starting to taper our marathon mileage we decided we could go back to our Pizza Port course which has about 1,500 feet of climbing over 43 miles. As compared to CdA (6,000 feet of climbing over 112 miles) it is about 35 feet/mile compared to 53 feet/mile. So…Pizza Port is an intermediate slope at best and CdA is black diamond. I’ve ridden this ride several times on my old borrowed bike and this was the first time on my P2 and I definitely felt a difference. Overall, we finished the route faster than previous attempts and I felt pretty good at the end of the ride. I definitely could have ridden longer. We immediately put on our running shoes after the ride and ran a quick 3 miles. We easily ran a sub 9 minute mile on these three miles and felt pretty good finishing the brick.

Mileage:

• Yards Swam: 4,000
• Hours Biked: 5.5
• Miles Run:36
• Total Time:~15 hours

Nutrition:

Weekly nutrition was good overall – lots of healthy salads, lean protein, veggies, & good carbs during the week. On Sunday night I made a big pot of turkey chili and we had that with our salad or sandwiches all week. The weekend had more indulgences but overall within reason. Well, except for the massive mud pie that Mike and I split on Friday night during our dinner date. One nice thing about Ironman training is that I can eat these things and not feel guilty! I’ve actually lost a few pounds in the last couple of weeks, which has been a little surprising based on the amount of food I’ve been consuming! My hunger has been pretty intense at times.

Workout nutrition went well. Lately I think I’ve been under-nutritioning on the bike, partially because now I only have one water bottle holder and I don’t like to have a flavored drink and no water to go with it. So I’ve been riding with water. This week on the ride however, I had one Stinger Waffle during the first half, a half peanut butter banana sandwich at the stop and then another Stinger Waffle toward the end of the ride, for a total of about 630 calories during the approximately 4 hour ride/run. I felt fresh at the end of the ride and good on the run.

Overall Thoughts:

This was the first week ever that I’ve completed four double workout days in a row and I felt pretty good most of the week. The Yassos at the end of the week were probably the hardest and I think that putting run speed work near the beginning of the week is a better idea. I actually have already incorporated this change into my Ironman training plan beginning after the marathon (after two weeks of recovery with no speed work of course). It was hard to end the week with my most demanding workout so I don’t plan to do that again!