Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.
55 days to Ironman Frankfurt, and the training is getting harder…
Training Week 9 was the last in a three-week loading block that pushed the intensity pretty hard at times. Lots of race pace and above — which is brutal, but also incredibly satisfying.
The week started with a rest day on Monday. Tuesday morning brought a one-hour run with short sprints, hill repeats, and tempo intervals, followed by a 75-minute bike ride in the evening — fairly easy with a few small intervals.
Wednesday was the first highlight of the week: a 3.5-hour ride with 4x40min at race pace, followed by a 1.5-hour run with a strong finish. Surprisingly it went pretty well. On the bike there were no problems holding the pace or the watt output. I started the run easy at 4:40/km, and the final push at 4:10/km felt comfortably hard. The session cost me some energy, but I recovered relatively quickly and wasn’t nearly as wrecked as the week before.
Thursday included a one-hour swim with some race pace work and plenty of easy aerobic effort — a “recovery” session, more or less.
Friday morning was strength training at the gym, with a 2.5-hour run in the evening. That went smoothly and without drama, aside from getting rained on four times briefly and once thoroughly — finally some rain!
Saturday was basically a rest day, though the 1.5-hour swim with 40x100m was quite demanding.
The crowning close of the week and the whole loading block was supposed to be the longest session of the season so far: a 5.5-hour bike ride followed by a 30-minute brick run.
End-of-week totals: 19.5 training hours — 2.5h swimming (~8km), 10.7h cycling (340km), and 5.5h running (69km).