Month: March 2011

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Spacely Sprockets and Cogswell Cogs

My bike came with an 11-28 cassette and it seemed fine to me, never really paid much attention to the numbers. I just figured bigger one is easier smaller one is harder, let’s ride!  Well, for sometime now I’ve noticed that when I would shift from the middle of the cassette up I would lose quite a bit of speed/power. At one point I even thought I was skipping over a gear and would take a look down to see what was going on. It is kind of a weird feeling when you shift from what seems like just a little too much effort in the legs to quickly spinning crazy fast and losing speed. I took a look at my old bike and noticed that I had a 12-25 cassette on that one and that bike always felt pretty good shifting through the gears.

I ordered up a 11-25 and put it on the bike last night before my morning ride. I can say that it made a big difference and the shifting is more smooth, my legs don’t spin out of control when I shift up from 19 to 21 or 21 to 23. Granted this won’t make me faster, but it should help keep my cadence more even when going through the gears.

In other gear news, I checked with Quarq yesterday on my order and the new crank with the power meter should be in next week. Looking forward to riding with power outside to keep my effort at a more steady pace. Many times I don’t realize I’m pushing as hard as I am until my heart rate goes way up and by then it is too late. That is something I really want to try to avoid on the long rides and at Ironman.

Today was another active recovery ride, so not much to report on there.

Weight: 166.6

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

The run report

Went out on the usual Wednesday morning run with Julie. We have been doing 7 miles for the past couple of weeks now. Usually do about and 8:15 pace. At mile 2 there is a pretty good hill and I usually push up it pretty hard and then slowly jog while Julie catches up on the downhill. Well, today I got to the bottom of the hill and look back and Julie is WAY FAR BACK!!!! What is up with that? I guess maybe her legs are still tired from the 20 miler she did on saturday.

That was the last run before the half-marathon this Sunday. I should be ok, I’m thinking I will do between 8 and 8:15 pace for the half. Of course, that depends on the weather and conditions, there are predictions of snow coming in for Friday and part of the half-marathon is on a dirt road. That could get pretty ugly if it is a lot of rain/snow.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/76132044

Weight: 165.5

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Active Recovery!

This week is an Active Recovery week for the bike performance improvement program. I’ve been kind of looking forward to it. So today was a 45 minute ride at no more than 60% of my CP30 or threshold power. So, yeah, it was pretty easy! My heart rate average was 120 for the ride. Looking forward to a similar ride on thursday morning. The idea behind the easy week is the testing that is to come on the weekend, need to have fresh legs for that.

Weight: 167

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Monday swim

Had a good swim this morning. Short fast intervals again. although the first 500 seemed to be just one long set! I barely had any rest at all on that one, but after that I was fine.

For the first 3 months of the year I’ve done 84,750 or 48 miles swimming twice a week. That’s a pretty good start to the year, considering that I’ve only done more than that in a 3 month period twice before and that was training for the Kingdom swim.

500 warmup
800 pull
500 – 5×100 on 1:30
500 – 4×125 pull
750 – 10×75
500 – 10×50 on 1 – fast down easy back
Total: 3550

Weight: 165

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Dehydrating on long rides and the week ahead

Today was another long endurance on the CompuTrainer. Again at the 3 hour mark my legs started to feel tired. Last week when it happened I thought it might be nutrition, but I seems to be taking in plenty of calories. This week though, I tried doubling up the Perpetuem in 2 of the bottles and just plain water in 2 of the bottles. I went through all 4 bottles in 3 hours and refilled one with water at the 3 hour mark. I would have thought that was plenty of fluids, but I weight myself after the ride and I was down 2lbs. My conclusion is that riding inside I’m warmer and not getting the cooling affect of the wind that you get outside so I’m sweating more. Next long ride I will try to consume more water per hour.

This coming week is a recovery week on the bike program and it couldn’t come at a better time. This weekend is the Great Bay half-marathon so it would be good to save my legs a little bit. The bad part is that saturday morning I will be having to do the Critical Power test. I’m not really too worried about my time at the Great Bay, it probably won’t be as fast as last year, should be under 1:50 though.

Weight: 163.2

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Short Run

Did a short run with Julie today to help her finish up her 20 mile training run for the Boston Marathon. We held a 8:40 pace for the 6.5 miles, not bad for her considering she had already done 13.5.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/75154227

Weight: 165.6

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Swim Sprints

I enjoyed the swim workout today, everything was pretty short distance. So even though I’m working hard it is only for a short period of time and then I get to rest 🙂 I was pretty beat after the 75, 50 and 25s though so 200 pull was more of a cool down for me.

500 warmup
500 pull
500 free
750 – 10 x 75 on 1:15
500 – 10 x 50 on 1:00 (fast down easy back)
250 – 10 x 25 on 30 (sprint)
600 – 3 x 200 pull
Total: 3600 yards

Weight: 166

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

More long Intervals

This morning was another good Session 2 workout. My heart rate slowly made it’s way up to just below 160 for the first 20 minute interval and was pretty much at 160 for the entire second interval. My legs felt pretty good this morning starting out. I noticed that if I make an effort to get my cadence up high right away it is easier to maintain rather than starting out at a lower cadence during the warmup and then trying to rasise it. My average cadence for the ride was 92 and that felt comfortable.

 

Week 14 Session 2 Chart

Weight: 166.4

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

The running zone

Out for a run this morning with Julie. We pretty much ran the entire 7 mile loop at Julie’s pace. There is a hill on the loop just as we start mile 3 and I pushed it there and she dropped back a bit, but caught back up on the downhill. This was a pretty easy run, heart rate stayed below 150 for the most part except for the few little hills. My wednesday morning run is going to have to start early though so I can get a couple more miles in next week.

It’s time to start adding on some more running or rather longer runs to the plan. Last week was a total of 11 hours training, not bad, but only about 1 hour and 45 minutes of it was running.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/74640180

Weight: 167

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

More Intervals

It’s tuesday again, and that means more intervals on the CompuTrainer. Not just intervals, but short high intensity intervals that suck the life out of you. I did ok until that last interval, I just didn’t have anything left in my legs at that point. The beginning of the workout felt pretty good, each interval I could see my heart rate climbing and the second to last it really got up there, but I made it through. Then the last interval, not sure if I just wasn’t mentally ready or my legs were just done. It is about an hour into the ride so I just may have had nothing left. It was better than last week where I only made it to through 3 intervals before my legs had nothing.

Week 14 Session 1 Chart

Weight: 167.8