Sunday, May 18, 2008

Sunday: 5 mile run

Today was an easy day as the final day of my recovery week. 5 mile. 9:09 min/mi.

I haven't felt that great the last couple of days. Have felt low on energy and low on power. I believe this has somewhat to do with the decrease in volume as my body has probably been shutting down and repairing itself. However, while this is ok during training, I can't afford to feel this way at the time of the race. And so I am going to need to experiment somewhat and figure out how best to taper.

Tomorrow marks the halfway point in my training. There are 24 weeks to go until the Ironman. And so tomorrow, I start my training in earnest. I begin with a 4 week tempo training block. The block proceeds as follows: 2 days on, building up to 2 hours of tempo riding by the end of the block; and then 2 days recovery. That gives me 12 sessions of tempo riding, and then a recovery week. I will ride the hardest I have ridden yet during this block and so it is important to stay focused, but also listen to my body. Tempo riding is done at 154-158bpm; 70-75rpm.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you do the other 3 days of the week? Also, you said 12 total tempo sessions in 4 weeks, but you only indicated 2 sessions per week which is 8 total. Am I missing something?

Ironboom said...

Perhaps I could have been more clear. I'll post what my training blog looks like which will help. For the tempo training block, I don't go schedule the sessions by week. I schedule a total of 6 sessions of tempo. Each session consists of 2 back-to-back days of tempo rides, and then 2 days of recovery rides. That is one session. And then repeat that 5 more times. So at the end of the block, I will have done 6 tempo sessions (which includes 12 tempo rides and 12 recovery rides). The last tempo ride falls on the Monday of the 4th week, with Tuesday and Wednesday completing the block with 2 recovery rides. Thursday through Sunday of that 4th week will also be recovery.

For example, the first 2 sessions look like this:

Monday: 56 miles w/ 90min T
Tuesday: 56 miles w/100min T
Wednesday: Recovery
Thursday: Recovery
Friday: 90 min T
Saturday: 100 min T
Sunday: Recovery
Monday: Recovery