2 months have passed since the last post — a lot of time for plenty of highs and lows, training and much more. What happened in the past 8 weeks? First, 2 weeks of recovery from Challenge Roth — including a relay ride leg at Heidelbergman and a 342km cycling marathon. Admittedly not exactly recovery in the traditional sense, but it was fun. Right after that it was back into structured training as preparation for Ironman Hawaii. ...
In 6 days the first season highlight arrives — Ironman Lanzarote. Bags are packed, Tuesday we head to the Canary Islands for the second time this year. What can we expect? Simple question, complicated answer. I won’t be making any time predictions — the conditions there, especially on the bike, are just too unpredictable for that. Overall I feel pretty well prepared — training went as planned to 99.8%. Thanks in no small part to the weather, or rather the complete absence of winter — can’t complain about that. ...
Lanzarote extreme. It’s Sunday, February 16th, 2014. It was to become one of the most memorable riding days of my life… The conditions: better weather than the day before, fewer rain showers, but still more than enough wind. So much wind that I thought multiple times about whether to even get on the bike at all. Four hours on the bike — why do I do this to myself. 60-80 km/h winds as the baseline, gusts happily exceeding that. ...
The days in Vegas went by faster than expected — a few more impressions to close out the chapter: Since yesterday I’m in Kona — the view from the bedroom is stunning: The first training session was on the agenda today. Together with the HHT crew, we rode out along the Kona Coffee Road to Kealakekua Bay, then continued in the water to the Captain Cook Monument and back the same way. ...
3 Ironmans in 90 days — preparations for the final IM of this year have begun. The two weeks right after Ironman Copenhagen fell into the “doing nothing” category, at least in terms of sport. That said, the recovery factor wasn’t really there either — even 3.5 weeks later you don’t feel particularly great… Still, you don’t want to show up completely unprepared to a world championship, so training had to begin again. The first week looked like this: ...
… are behind me — now it can finally start. What have I been doing over the last few days, and what’s still to come? Monday: 45min swimming with a few short intervals Tuesday: 45min running with 4x90sec fast Wednesday: 45min cycling with 4x90sec fast Thursday: 20min swimming, 1h cycling with 2x90sec fast, 30min running with 2x90sec fast Friday: rest day / travel day Saturday: 15min swimming, 30min cycling with 4x30sec fast, 15min running with 4x30sec fast The tension is slowly but surely building — but it’s a positive tension. No nerves yet; the experience lets me approach it all very relaxed. I have respect for the distance and the race, but no fear of it. ...
And last but not least — the marathon, naturally only after you’ve properly warmed up 😉 Running has become my absolute favorite discipline. On one hand because it’s probably the most honest of the three sports — on the other because I’m just pretty good at it now and it gives me a huge amount of joy. After setting the bar pretty high last year with a marathon of 3:09:20h, I’ll need to work a bit harder this year to top it … ...
Part 2 of the race preview covers the second discipline in triathlon: cycling. A lot depends on equipment here, and to avoid falling behind I’ve upgraded again … but more on that later. First things first though — form. Without it, the best equipment is worthless. Thanks to my almost 4-week training break in February/March I’m missing about 1,000km compared to last year — yet the form doesn’t seem too bad. Or to put it differently: I’m at least at last year’s level. The recent races and training results suggest that at minimum. ...
Swimming — the discipline with perhaps the biggest question marks? Good question, next question. For me it’s still the biggest mystery box — some days it goes really well for my standards, other days not at all. I honestly don’t know why, otherwise I’d have fixed it by now. Let’s hope Sunday is a case-1 day and I have a good one. If I do, a time just under 1h should be possible. My swim form is similar to last year, where I managed just over 1h. ...
What an amazing week … low volume in terms of load, the number of sessions was also reduced a bit … short and fast was the motto. That’s a lot of fun, especially when you can’t stop grinning during the ride 🙂 What was on the schedule? Monday: 1h aerobic swimming Tuesday: 75 easy minutes on the time trial bike Wednesday: 3h cycling and 45min brick run. The bike part consisted of 30min warm-up, 1h at race pace -5%, 0.5h at race pace -3%, 0.5h at race pace, and 2x10min at race pace +5% — it ended up being the fastest training session of my life (34.8 km/h average). Already during the ride I had a big grin on my face and just thought the whole situation was absolutely great. The brick run was equally just fantastic — the legs ran on their own and I had to hold myself back from going too fast Thursday: 1h swimming, without a wetsuit and therefore pretty slow Friday: 45min easy running Saturday: 1h continuous run and 75min easy aerobic swimming Sunday: 1.5h cycling and 30min brick run — plus a déjà vu. I broke my average speed record from Wednesday by another 1.3 km/h — things just clicked. The run was also insanely fast. And that grin again ….. The déjà vu was on the Rhine levee, just before the airfield, when for the second time this year I was attacked by a buzzard! Fortunately I saw it coming — the sun was perfectly positioned behind me so I could see the shadow. After two attempts the bird luckily turned away without actually touching me. Next Sunday is the day of days — when I’ll put everything on one card. Form seems to be there, especially comparing Wednesday’s and Sunday’s sessions to the same ones from last year. ...