Ironman Training Week 11 – Learning to Love the Saddle

This week’s goal was to get on the bike 5 times. I have that same goal for the next 6 weeks leading into my first Half Ironman (yes it’s only 6 weeks away, no don’t want to talk about it!). And I’m happy to say that I achieved my goal and was on the bike for 9.5 hours this week!

Monday: I woke up early and headed to the gym for a 4 mile easy run on the treadmill followed by 2,000 meters of swimming. For my swim workout, I did a pyramid type workout of 400, 300, 200, 150, 100, 50 followed by 4 x 50 hard. During the warm-up and cool-down, I focused on bilateral breathing. After work Mike and I got on our trainers for a 60 minute spin while we watched The Voice.  After the spin, I put on my Personal Trainer hat and coached Mike and myself through a 20 minute upper body/core workout.

Tuesday: Happy Valentine’s Day! If couples that sweat together stay together, then we’re staying together a LONG time. We started our day with another 60 minute spin on the trainer, this time we watched The Bachelor. I must say watching reality TV while riding the bike really makes the time go faster! My trainer has a power meter and I use a heart rate monitor so I can make sure that I’m not taking it too easy. That night we celebrate Valentine’s Day with first a bottle of wine, then a nice three course meal at our favorite Italian restaurant, and ALSO another bottle of wine. We rarely drink wine and don’t drink in general that often, so needless to say we were quite tipsy by the end of the meal. We went to bed past our “bed time” and agreed that our scheduled bike ride for the next would have to be postponed.

Wednesday: Waking up hungover is never fun. It’s especially not fun when you have to go to work. Luckily after 2 cups of coffee and some Advil I felt better. After work Mike and I had yet another date on the trainers. We spun in zone 2 for 90 minutes on the trainer and followed it up with some push-ups, plank and core work. I tried to focus on staying in aero for as long as possible during this ride. The longest I made it was 13 minutes. I need to work on that! It may have something to do with the fact that I need to get my bike re-fitted (that’s on the agenda for Friday after work).

Thursday: You guessed it  – another ride on the trainer. This time we put on one of our favorite Sufferfest workouts – “Fight Club” which consists of 5 x 6.5 minute intervals at 70-80% max effort with 3 minute rest periods between. This workout definitely kicked my ass!  After work I headed to the gym for a 2,000 meter swim . After a 400 meter warm-up (with some bilateral breathing), I did 10 x 50 alternating focus on the length and keeping my fingers pointed down then did 4 x 200 at a medium-hard pace, followed by 100 meters of bilateral  breathing and a 200 cool down.

Friday: P90X Yoga! We modified it by skipping the Warrior 3 sequence and the balance postures,  bringing it down to 1 hour 20 minutes instead of 1 hour 35 minutes. After work I went to the bike shop that I purchased my tri bike at and had another fitting. I had purchased a new saddle as well as had some time to get used to my bike and wanted to make sure that I had the best fit possible. They made a few adjustments and I could tell a world of difference right away!

Saturday: We had originally scheduled a 50 mile bike ride for this week, but Mike suggested we bump it up to 60 and we all agreed. We had been stuck at the 40-50 mile bike ride range for months and we wanted to get a taste of a longer distance. Mike mapped us a 61 mile route with 2,440 feet of climbing in order to roughly simulate one loop of Ironman CdA which has 2,306 feet of climbing. So we biked 61 miles of hills and then ran 4. After this workout I truly felt like I was training for an Ironman. See my blog post about this ride here. 

Sunday: This was the first week of our new  Sunday routine. We joined a TriClub group at 8 a.m. for a 1 mile open water swim. The waves were pretty large (4-6 feet) and there was a strong rip current headed south, so just getting out past the waves was an effort. I’m pretty sure we swam at least 2,000 yards in total due to the current and the fact that we had to swim so much further out. Although we won’t be doing any beach starts in the Ironman, this was a good test of comfort in the water. It was also a good test of our ability to sustain cold water. The air temperature was about 58 and the water temp was about 57. My feet were numb for at least 30 minutes after we got out of the water.

After the swim, we went for our weekly long run. Now that the marathon is over, however, this meant a  8 mile run. It definitely took some time to warm up and mentally I was ready for this run to be over, but it didn’t feel too bad considering the beating my legs took on Saturday climbing.

Weekly Totals:

• Meters Swam: ~6,000
• Hours Biked (total time on the road): 9.5
• Miles Run: 16
• Hours of Core-work/Strength: ~1.75
• Total Hours: 16.5

Nutrition

Nutrition was good this week. I was happy to have tried CarboPro and to have stuck to 200 calories/hour on the bike. I may try to increase it a bit next week and see how that feels. I made my favorite Yam and Black Bean Chili last week so we had that to go with our salads each day. On Saturday after our big bike ride we rewarded ourselves with pizza and a beer from my favorite pizza place, Pizza Port. And of course, I can’t forget the Girl Scout Cookies. I hunted these girls down on Sunday to get more Samoas! My love of dessert runs too deep for me to give it up during training. If there is any time in my life to indulge a bit, it’s now!

Reflection on the Week

This was the first week that I felt like I was truly training for an Ironman. Not a Half Ironman, but a real, full 140.6. I can’t believe that I worked out for nearly 17 hours and didn’t feel miserable! This was by far the highest volume week I’ve ever had, and surprisingly I felt good coming out of it. I had a bit of a stuffy nose last week but  it never turned into anything other than that so I trained through it (and made sure to get extra sleep). Since we had President’s Day off, we added on a 44 mile bike ride on our favorite hilly “Pizza Port Route,” for a total of 105 miles biked, 12 miles run and 2,000 meters swam in 3 days. However, if you do the math, this still doesn’t equal the volume I’ll be doing on race day. But, the good news is that we are getting closer and I am feeling stronger and more confident that I can do this! The fact that the ride took us much longer than I had hoped makes me realize that the weeks I projected 16 or 18 hours really will be 18 or 20 hour weeks. The 20 hour week will be 22. But, I’m ok with that. I just need to get in the miles and get plenty of sleep and feed my body right and it will get me to the finish line!

How was your week? What is your favorite post big workout meal?