Ironman training week 26 - Specialty plan week 1

First week of the last 8 week block, which means things are getting close and it's time to build up that last little bit of fitness and then hopefully be ready to accomplish something cool in August. Basically a solid month of hard long distance training to go.

How'd week one go? I'm having some trouble remembering given my last two days were spent mostly doing stuff like the below, but I'll give it a shot.

Swim: 8500m
Bike: 226 km
Run: 57 km

Not bad!

Monday: 3000m swim; 8km run

Getting some stuff done on Monday because I'd had a rest day on Friday and wanted to space things out a little bit for the week. Early morning swim (finally managed to haul my ass out of the door early enough to get in a 3000m weekday swim!) felt pretty good.

Then an easy 8k in the evening, which I barely remember, but I do really like the Welland finisher hat. It's a nice lightweight fabric and a colour combo I don't have in another hat, so it's going to see a lot of use I think!

Tuesday: FTP test

Usually Tuesdays are intense, so this was a change. The new FTP test on Trainerroad only takes about a half an hour, and it only really hurts for maybe 8-10 minutes as you ramp up your effort as high as you can until you fail. Got a solid 10 watt increase leading into the last block, and I was glad to have had a day of mostly rest leading into the test.

Wednesday: 14k run; TR-Whorl

Woke up to the sound of an absolute downpour outside, but by the time I was dressed and ready to go it had passed over and it ended up being a dry run, other than the puddles. Solid 14, can't complain. Then in the evening I did what would normally be the Friday night easy spin, but with all the schedule rearranging I was doing for the week it made sense to get it done a little earlier.

Thursday: 130k bike;  6k run

No point in hiding your age when you are a triathlete - they just write it on your leg anyway.

Riding around in circles on a beautiful day

 A little bit different than usual. Thursday was my birthday (cue balloons) so I took the day off work and went for a long solo ride. Not going to lie, I got pretty bored by the end, but I was satisfied to get in the distance.

Nothing tastes better 100k into a ride than a can of ice cold Coke.

Short run in the evening, nothing fancy, just keeping the legs moving. And earning my cake!

Friday: 4100m swim

damn it should have turned on the backlight. I swear, I did swim 4100!

Birthday celebrations continued Friday morning when I went to the pool to do my age workout. I've always wanted to try the age x 100s swim, but until this year I didn't have access to a pool with long enough hours for the time it would take to swim my age.

In the end, swimming 4100 felt surprisingly easy! I guess all this consistent swimming is paying off in endurance. I swam the 100s on 2:15, which gave me a pretty generous 15 seconds minimum between each one, which I chose deliberately to try and be consistent across the whole swim. It worked out well; I did all but one 100 under 2 minutes and was pretty consistently on 1:57ish for most of them. I did take a short break halfway through to chug a bottle of sports drink. Better to stay hydrated, even in the pool!

So although this was more of a novelty thing, I'm glad I did it because it felt like a good confidence boost. Decent mental training, too, because that is a bit of a grind.

Saturday: Polar bear + 9k brick run

I was really, really not looking forward to this one. In order to avoid taking my bike up to the cottage for the weekend, I had to get up at 5 to get the 2 hour tempo ride plus brick done before we left.

Now, I love my trainer. I love Trainerroad. But I LOATHE both early in the morning. I would much rather swim or run in the morning. Something about getting up and getting on the trainer is just awful. But sometimes you just have to suck it up, and that's what I did. 2 hours tempo, one bathroom break in the middle. Did not enjoy it, but I did it.

Expressing my feelings about the weather when I ran into Amy during my brick run

And then the brick, which uggggggggh. It was a really, really hot and humid weekend, and about halfway through the brick that really hit me. The last 4k were pretty miserable. I had to lie down for about 10 minutes when I got home and then guzzle about 2 liters of water before I started to feel like a normal person again.

But then we drove to the cottage and got to do this about 5 minutes after we arrived and it was BLISS.

Kid jumps off dock for the first of many

Sunday: 20k long run; 1400m open water swim

The cottage isn't air conditioned, so that made sleeping Saturday night just super fun. So it was with great reluctance I pried myself out of bed at 5 am, but I knew if I didn't go early the run would just be a complete disaster. The humidity level was completely insane and even at 5:15 it was feeling pretty warm.

Fortunately, my brother was game for the run and willing to slow it down to stay with me, so we did two 10k loops. I actually managed to keep my heart rate pretty well down for the whole thing, and even with how hot and humid it was the run felt pretty good!

I have a little bit of regret about not tacking on another 5k at the end to at least get to two and a half hours, but when we got back to the cottage at the end of the second loop the lake was just too tempting.

Really how every run should finish

Later in the morning I did a short open water swim, mostly just so dragging my open water swim gear up with us wasn't a total waste of time.

Open water action pics via my mom

Lake creature emerges successfully

There was a lot of boat traffic on the lake, though, and even with my swim buoy I wasn't entirely comfortable with how close some of the jetskiers in particular were coming to the shoreline. Plus the lake was really choppy and the wake coming off the boats was making for some challenging conditions. So a half hour seemed like plenty to earn myself some lunch and an afternoon of relaxing by the water/on the swim dock with a few tasty adult beverages!

swim out to dock, dry off in sun, swim back to land, enjoy tasty beverage. Repeat!

Fabulous week capped off with an amazing weekend with lots of time spent swimming and relaxing with the kids. A great start to the summer of Ironman and the last training block. Bring on the next week!