Ironman Training Week 21 – Breakthrough Week

Monday – As usual, we started the week with Masters Swim. The Monday/Friday coach usually incorporates shorter intervals with more speed work and he lived up to this assumption. After the warm-up and a kick drill we went into a set of 6 x 50 on base followed by 3 x 100 that built from easy to medium to hard. We repeated that set and added on a hard 200 at the end, with rest. Then we repeated again but this time with two hard 200s at the end. Nearly the entire lane got out at 7 a.m. so I was left to lead the last hard 200s. I had two people behind me and they couldn’t keep up on the 200s! I was doing them at about 1:35/100 and feeling good. We ended the workout with a total of 3,300 yards of swimming. 

That evening I opted out of my scheduled yoga session and instead went to the bike store to buy a new cassette for my bike so that I can actually spin up hills. Mike and I had a nice evening together and relaxed and spent some quality time that finally didn’t involve swim/bike/run.

Tuesday- As soon as we woke up Mike announced he wasn’t going to do the beach intervals and I have to admit I was relieved! Instead we ran down the coast and I decided to make it a tempo run. I ran the first mile super slow (uh 9:45 – I was dragging) but then picked it up and did 4 miles at tempo which was about 8:15-8:30, and did 1 mile cool down at around 9:10 min. I felt really strong which was a relief since last Tuesday I totally bonked and had a mini mental breakdown. After 6 miles of tempo running, I came home and did 10 minutes of core/upper body. 

That evening we had scheduled a 2 hour spin, joking that we were going to celebrate the fact that it was exactly 2 months until the Ironman. However, it took longer to get on the bikes than we had planned and our lasagna was ready to be taken out of the oven (amazing Ironman training fuel – $12 for a huge frozen lasagna at Costco that provides at least 2 meals EACH) when we hit 1:45 so we decided to call it a night. Both of our legs were lagging and it was hard for us to get our heart rates into zone 2 without feeling some major burn on the legs. In the end, we completed 1 hour 45 minutes of spinning. 

Wednesday – Back to Masters Swim. The Wednesday coach is definitely more focused on endurance and he didn’t let us down. After a 400 warm-up and a kick set, we went into  3 x 500 at Base +5, then 3 x 300 at base and 3 x 100 at Base -5. Again, Base + 5 felt dreadfully slow to me. I keep wondering if I should move up a lane on Wednesdays but I’m not sure if the next lane would be too fast. I focused a lot of form during this workout. In the end, we swam 3,700 yards. 

That evening we got back on the trainer. We had scheduled an interval workout a la The Sufferfest, but when Mike came home and I was lying on the couch he suggested that we switch it to a medium effort spin while we watched TV instead. I agreed since I was feeling tired. However, once on the bike I actually felt really good. I have given myself permission to make it a 60 minute spin, but ended up completing  90 minutes of spinning. 

Thursday – Asia and I nearly skipped this workout due to rain the night before, but luckily (or unluckily depending on how your look at it), the rain was gone when we woke up at 5 a.m. for our 90 minute run . We got just about 10 miles in during that time and as usual, once we started running it wasn’t so bad. The mornings have gotten warmed and the sun comes up earlier which makes it more manageable than the mid-week long runs we were doing back in December and January and in preparation for the Surf City Marathon.

After work I did 65 minutes of P90X2 Yoga. I had planned to do an open water swim that evening but it was canceled due to rain. I had an appointment near my house after work and didn’t feel like driving all the way back to the gym that has a pool which is near work, so I did yoga instead. I rationalized the skipped swim with the fact that Masters Swim is an hour and fifteen minutes each time which could be the equivalent of three separate swims. Not sure if that really counts when you are training for a 2.4 mile swim, but oh well.

Friday – Wonderful rest day. I love rest day!

Saturday – We had wheels rolling at just after 7 a.m. for our BIG ride – 91 miles of riding including 4,000 feet of climbing! Once again, we pretty much looped through Rancho Santa Fe, Rancho Bernardo and San Marcos, making one large loop and one small loop before heading home. I felt really good on this ride and was feeling strong even til the end. I took in slightly fewer calories this time than last week’s 83 mile ride and I think that was better for my stomach. In total I had about 1,400 calories over just over 6 hours of riding and about 7 hours 15 minutes out on the road (due to stopping at lights, waiting at the meeting points for the others and water/bathroom breaks). Per hour of ride time, that’s 233 calories/hour but over the entire ride it’s just under 200. My favorite part of the ride was getting to eat my new favorite mid-ride snack – the peanut butter, banana, NUTELLA, sandwich. It is simply glorious. After we made it home, we went out for a 2.5 mile run. During this ride I kept making reference to the first time we did the Pizza Port brick (40 miles with 1,500 feet of climbing and 3 mile run) – it was literally exhausting. It is quite incredible how far we’ve come and how riding 44 miles and running 3 miles back then was just as exhausting as riding 91 and running 2.5 now. It was really a great to reflect on how far I’ve come in such a short period of time.

Sunday – It was also strange to think that last year when we were training for our first marathon that we were quite nervous in anticipation of our 16 mile run, which would be the only workout for the entire weekend. Sunday morning Asia and I got in a 16.3 mile run and 1 hour spin brick workout, the day after a 91 mile ride and 2.5 mile run brick. And the craziest part is that the 16 mile run wasn’t even that hard! It is truly incredible what the human body can adapt to hard training. The highlight of the run was when we stopped on the coast in Carlsbad to watch 2 large whales that were close to shore! There were also several dolphins swimming along the coast. I love San Diego!

Here’s a video I took during our run of the whales! You can really see them in the beginning – they look small but they aren’t!

Weekly Totals:

• Yards Swam: 7,000
• Hours Biked (Door to Door): 11.5
• Miles Run: 34.8
• Core/Strength: 1 hr 15 min
• Total Time: 20.75 hours

Thoughts

This week was kind of a breakthrough week for me. After having some struggles mentally last week with balancing life with Ironman training and also a particularly bad run, I cut out one workout this week and tried to listen to my  body a bit more (i.e. turning Tuesday’s run intervals into a tempo run and Wednesdays bike intervals into a moderate spin). I think this method paid off because I felt good throughout the week and my long ride went really well. I really feel like we’re in the home stretch now. We have recovery week next (woohoo!) then three more BIG weeks which will be pretty  much the same as the last three but with longer bikes and runs on the weekends, and then a recovery week and a three week taper. Mike and I keep joking that we’re going to be bored and not know what to do with ourselves after the Ironman because we’ve become so used to  working out 2-3 hours on a weekday and 7-8 on Saturdays, 3-4 on Sundays. I’m pretty sure we’ll figure out ways to fill our time – i.e. more sleep and social activities.

Going into Ironman training, I thought I”d be more exhausted from Ironman training peak weeks such as these, and surprisingly, I haven’t been as dead to the world as I thought. One girl who did CdA last year told us that we’d “fall asleep in our spaghetti” at night from exhaustion, but so far I think my method of managing my time and workouts has been working. Don’t get me wrong, my legs feel heavy and sore today and I didn’t jump out of bed with excitement to get in the pool this morning, but overall, I feel good. I attribute a lot of it do sleep – I make it a priority.

How was your week? When was a time that you were amazed at what your body could handle?