Peak Training Week 3

And this weeks stats are:

Cycling Miles:  156
Running Miles:  41
Swimming Miles:  2.2 (Only did one masters session this week -- traveling...)
Weight Training:  2*20 minutes

I spent my birthday (today) cycling for 5 hours with an ending temperature of 99 degrees.  Then I got off my bike and attempted to run for 60 minutes.  My pace was pretty nice for a training brick, under a 9 minute mile, but I felt like crud.  Jamie and the kids were meeting me at Whole Foods for a celebratory microbrew and pizza feast and instead of running past it for a mile and a half and turning around, I ran right in and chowed down.  So much for my hour long "brick."  I did, however, make myself finish it after we ate.  By that time it had rained and cooled down a lot, and I felt SO much better.

I am really frustrated with my cycling.  I've gotten so much faster with running since I started triathlon in 2010, but my cycling has gotten slower and I can't figure it out.  Today my final average pace was 15.8.  Granted it was on the bike trail and there are just so many stop signs that it is impossible to get a good speed going for a long period of time, but two years ago I regularly averaged 16.5 - 17.5 out there.  My race pace was about 18 - 19 mph, and I haven't seen those numbers at all this year.

Swimming -- also frustrated.  I have done so much more swimming - Masters 3X per week! -  and I still feel slow as a turtle.  Actually the turtle might be faster if we had a race.  Our coach is great, and when he helps me with technique I get faster for awhile, and then I always seem to forget the skills and go back to how I was swimming before.  After the December marathon I may really focus on swimming 5X a week... I need to get some technique improvement or I'm never going to get any better.

I'm having nightmares about not finishing the race by midnight and ending up with a DNF.  I know I need to really get more cycling fitness, which has been a lot easier to do now that school is out.  I need to cycle between and hour and 90 minutes every day, I need to do more bricks, and I need to do a couple more 100 mile hilly rides.  I am terrified that it is going to be 100+ degrees on race day.  Today was close and my run was awful.  Sure I felt fine after the pizza stop, but it's not like I can just pause the watch during the Ironman and sit down for a leisurely dinner and then finish the race.


I've got a Half Ironman race coming up on Sunday and I guess that should help me gauge how I'm doing a little bit more than just from training.  My last 70.3 was 6 hours 28 minutes.. we'll see if this one is any better.  


Finally, I've been doing some reading on my Nook to try to motivate me during this peak training phase, which is just exhausting.  I'm reading the new book by Chrissie Wellington called A Life Without Limits -- it's fantastic and she does a great job explaining the history of Ironman.  She tells of Julie Moss, the 23 year old graduate student who competed in the 1982 Kona race and nearly won before her body gave out on her in the last yards of the marathon.  Though she didn't win and was unable to even walk, she crawled to a second place finish.  The below video is a big part of what inspired many to train for Ironman -- it's truly amazing.