Training

Last Wednesday was the day — the 10,000 season-kilometer mark on the bike fell. Somewhere on the Rhine levee, doing 45 km/h — fitting, I think …

Or: life almost came to an end… I was incredibly lucky on Wednesday — by just a few very, very tight centimeters I managed to avoid a head-on collision with an oncoming car. I was on my way home from a bike session, riding at around 40km/h in aero position between Horrenberg and Dielheim, when a silver Opel Zafira appeared just meters ahead of me on my side of the road — overtaking two (!) cars at clearly excessive speed despite no-passing signs. Why I happened to look up at exactly that moment I’ll never know, but thank god I did — I could just barely grab the handlebar properly and swerve those crucial centimeters onto the grass verge. A head-on crash at that point would not have been survivable — we’re talking a combined impact speed of at least 120km/h. ...

… or life and training in Germany on Indian Standard Time … 3.5 hours offset to IST (Indian Standard Time) — that was my world last week. Meaning: very early mornings, early work done, off just after lunch, and in bed by 7pm. Once you get used to it, it works — but getting there is pretty draining and anything but fun. What was on the training plan? * Monday: 1h swim * Tuesday: 1.5h easy GA1 bike ride with a few short intervals * Wednesday: 3.5h bike with lots of race pace effort, followed by a 1.5h brick run — all in insanely hot temperatures * Thursday: easy swim session * Friday: 2h run * Saturday: 1.5h swim with 20×200m as the main set — phew * Sunday: 5.5h bike with a 15-minute brick run ...

Monday: early morning shake-out swim to recover from the previous day’s effort Tuesday: 1h run with short pick-ups, plus an easy 1.5h bike ride Wednesday: climbing at the Königstuhl — threshold intervals of 15, 17, and 25 minutes, followed by a little fartlek through the Kraichgau; topped off with a 1.5h brick run, including the obligatory final kick. The session was absolutely epic, but also brutally hard. So hard that by Wednesday I already knew I had no business going to the pool on Thursday. ...

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. ...