Monday: unplanned rest day — the body was just too wrecked… Tuesday: well recovered, out on the bike for 75 minutes in the morning; a brisk 1.5h evening run, which ended up a soggy affair courtesy of a thunderstorm Wednesday: climbing at the Königstuhl — threshold intervals of 13, 15, 17, and 20 minutes, followed by a 1h run with a final kick… that was hard Thursday: 1h swim, or something like it… I was still pretty wrecked from the day before ...
Or: what did it actually take to show up at the start line on Sunday reasonably prepared? After pulling the numbers together I was genuinely shocked by how much of my life I’d burned through for this — not meant negatively, I did all of it voluntarily and very, very, very, very happily. A few general notes first: Season start: early October 2010, unstructured, with alternative sports like inline skating Structured training start: mid-January 2011, calendar week 3 All data from season start through 22.07.2011 I train by hours, not kilometers — so all figures are in hours, with kilometers as a side note in parentheses And now for the facts: ...
The week kicked off on Monday with a well-deserved complete rest day, and Tuesday’s 75-minute bike ride contributed nicely to recovery as well. On Wednesday there was one more longer brick session on the schedule: 3h on the bike with 2h at race pace, followed by a run at race pace and above. For the bike we were prepared for rain and rode the cross bike and MTB accordingly. Particularly annoying in hindsight was that we somehow managed not to get wet … Oh well, at least the cross bike got some use. ...
The last big training week before the Ironman started as always with a swim session on Monday morning — unfortunately not a great one, so I called it after 25 minutes. I had the body position of a brick, zero power, zero technique; carrying on would have done more harm than good. Tuesday brought an easy GA1 bike ride of 75 minutes, including 6×90 seconds at threshold. All in all an easy session and exactly what the legs needed to open back up. The lingering fatigue from Sunday was finally gone. ...
It was supposed to be a rest week — and at least sports-wise, it was. “Fully occupied due to various external factors” describes it a lot better though… The week started with a complete rest day on Monday — the first one in three weeks. Tuesday I went for an easy 45-minute run, but the legs weren’t great. Nothing was really clicking. I’ve noticed this often after a complete rest day. At this point I’ve reached a stage where I recover much better with light movement than without. ...
The week started as always with a Monday morning swim. For once it went really well — no surprise, since I’d barely trained the day before. Tuesday started very early with a 1.5-hour easy bike ride and ended very late with a 1.5-hour fast run. The 10s were back on the program — they start out fairly easy but get increasingly brutal as they go on. They did their job: the next day not much was working. ...
Last week started Monday morning with a one-hour swim that got harder toward the end than originally planned. Not surprising — I was nowhere near fully recovered from the efforts of the day before. On Tuesday I tried a run format I’d never done before: 100 minutes split into 10 blocks of 10 minutes each. Every block consisted of an easy portion and a tempo run segment, with the duration varying throughout. I started with 9 minutes easy and 1 minute at tempo, the second block was 8 minutes easy and 2 minutes tempo… all the way to the final block: 1 minute easy and 9 minutes at tempo. That was pretty brutal toward the end, due in part to the weather. The last 30 minutes I got absolutely drenched and arrived home soaked through. The 1.5-hour bike ride later that day was doable in dry conditions — more of a recovery spin. ...
The week started Monday with an easy swim — legs and arms were still pretty beat from Challenge Kraichgau. In hindsight I could have saved myself the trip, since I lost my swim cap, goggles, and swim watch at the pool. The first two I can live with — I have more than enough swim caps and the goggles were already well-worn… but the good swim watch, that really wasn’t necessary. ...
After two very busy days I finally got around to digging into my SRM data from the bike leg at Challenge Kraichgau. I mainly wanted to understand why, despite higher watt output, I was slower than last year. My questions were answered — more on that in a moment. First, a look at the power comparison between 2010 and 2011. The yellow curve shows 2010 values, the red curve 2011. The curves are about 3 minutes apart — mentally shift the red one slightly to the left. ...
… Home again ‘cross the sea I am sailing stormy waters … That was the theme of today’s bike session. So much wind, me and my TT bike = an absolute blast!!! If anyone was wondering who was riding back and forth between Dielheim and Balzfeld five times — that was me. I would have happily done it more, but the session was only supposed to be 1.5 hours. Why did I do it? Because I wanted to sail… ...