Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Brick Workout

Haven’t done many brick workouts. Well, I haven’t done many bike to run brick workouts. I’ve been doing mostly swim to run bricks, which are much easier. The ride was on the easier side today, usually my thursday rides are a bit slower as I try to give my legs a break from the harder effort on the bike on Tuesday. I rode with Julie and Heidi this morning and Heidi is just getting on the bike for the first time in a while. She did ok, once we explained a few things to her about what gears to be in and when. When I got home after the ride I threw on the sneakers and headed out. As usual the legs didn’t really like it, but within a half mile they relaxed a bit and I was able to hold a nice steady pace. I wanted to try to keep it under 8 minute miles for the entire 6 miles. I have to remember to tell myself to breath more, at mile 4 I felt like I was holding my breath! I kept telling myself to just relax and run, took another half mile or so to settle back down and get my pace back.

The Ride
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95837367

The Run
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95836121

Weight: 160.8

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Swim and Run morning

Got to the pond at 4:45 this morning for a double crossing. The water is starting to warm up and make it a little uncomfortable to be in a wetsuit. I could still feel the cold water with my finger tips when I pulled through the water though. The next few days are going to be very hot so Friday will probably be a wetsuit free day.

Did a short run after the swim. Easy pace to start and then pushed pretty good on the little hills on the way back.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95638259

Weight: 159

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Tuesday morning TT

Went out for my tuesday morning 20 mile time trial this morning. I wasn’t sure what to expect after the long ride and run over the weekend. I did take it easy yesterday and just swam 2.5 miles to give my legs a bit of a rest. I really wanted to make sure that I pushed hard the entire ride, the hills I was going to stand and power over today instead of spinning up and I wanted to focus more on pushing on the downhill and flats. Sometimes I work so hard to get up the hill that I just coast down the other side or I don’t push hard enough on the flats. I kept an eye on my power meter the entire ride and tried to make sure I never went below 200. It was harder to do than I thought it would be. Overall it was my fastest ride of the year, power was a little lower than I wanted. Must have been the extra air in the tires that gave me the higher speeds at the lower power output.

After the 20 mile ride, I did an easy 10 mile ride through town for a cool down.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95422989

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95422981

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

IMLP Training Weekend

This past weekend we headed up to Lake Placid to ride the course and do some training. Lake Placid is quite a drive from here in MA. The car GPS says 5 hours, but with the stops for lunch and the ferry, it is longer. I did like going the way we went up through NH and VT and crossing the ferry. I travel on the Mass Pike so much that if I can go a different way just to see some different scenery it is worth it.

Saturday morning we were scheduled to head out at 7:00 am for our course ride. It was pouring, I looked out my room at 6:30 it was just coming down in buckets and I was not happy. My thoughts were, I’ll do one loop in this crap and that will be good. I just wanted to see the course and know what to expect. We waited until 7:30 when there was a tiny break in the rain and headed out.

Lake Placid to Keene – This is definitely one of the hardest parts of the course, you have to climb for 10 to 12 miles and then you have the killer decent. The decent in pouring rain is rather frightening, lucky for me it was dry the second time around because I was thinking after the first time and it was pouring that I wasn’t going to see that again until Ironman. I’m glad the rain let up so I could do it again in drier conditions.

Keene to Jay and Out and Back – This part of the ride is rather enjoyable and will definitely be the time to take in as much nutrition as possible. I’m sure people will be hammering away on this part of the course, but it seems to me that you would want to be in control here and save your legs for the next section.

Jay to Willmington – I think this may be the toughest part of the course if the first section isn’t. It is just a very long climb and steep in a few spots. I didn’t feel like I needed to get out of the saddle on any sections of the course so while I say that there are some steep sections there is nothing that you can’t shift down to an easy gear and spin up.

Willimington back to Lake Placid – This section is easier than I thought it would be, not that it is easy, but it certainly not as hard as other parts of the course. Coming through High Falls Gorge it is important to stay down in the aero position as you are going into the wind. Once through that section though there are few more climbs but nothing killer. The Bears are not bad at all. I didn’t even realize I had gone over them the first time.

The bike course is definitely a tough course and I will really need to pay attention to nutrition and keep myself from working too hard on the hills.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/94827005

Sunday morning we went out for a run on parts of the run course. The run is two loops like the bike. The run is pretty much a down hill followed by a long flat, easy rollers stretch and then back up the hill. I can imagine that the second time down the hill my quads are going to be screaming at me. I did 13 miles on Sunday and my legs felt a little heavy from the ride the day before so I didn’t try to push too hard. Kept my heart rate down except for the last push up the hill.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/95129794

Very happy I went up for the training weekend. The weather sucked for that first loop on the bike, but other than that it was a good time. It is so important to know the course you are riding and running or at least know the major portions of it.

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Mirror Lake Swimming

We are up here in Lake Placid, NY for the training weekend. Long drive from MA in the pouring rain, but not too bad. At around 4:30 after we put all our stuff in the rooms we headed down to Mirror lake for a swim. The first thing you notice is that they have lane lines!!! Well, they have bouys all the way across the lake for the kayak/rowing people to race. The triathletes stay right on the line to avoid being run over by the fast moving boats. Let me tell you, they are FAST moving. While you are swimming if you breath and see them the next time you breath they are out of sight. The water temp felt like it was about 68, would love for it to be that for Ironman. Not sure how far I swam, I’ll have to see if I can figure it out on google maps. I felt good, just like at Patriot. Tomorrow, a REAL LONG bike ride.

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

No long run this Wednesday

Heading to Lake Placid this weekend and will be doing a long run over the weekend so today was just a swim and short run. I was going to do a double but ended up taking pictures of the pond for about 20 minutes so just did a single crossing instead. Then ran 5 miles with Heidi, pretty quick pace, under 8 minute miles for the entire run. Last mile was under 7 minutes.

Weight: 162.2

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Legs still sore

My legs are still a little sore from the half-ironman this past weekend so my ride wasn’t as hard as I was planning for it to be. Still it was a good ride, started out slow and rode the first half the ride in a gear less than I really wanted to be in. That allowed me to loosen up my legs and get my hamstrings feeling better. After about 7 miles in I started pushing it a little bit more. On the way back I started getting my power numbers up to what I had intended to do for the entire ride. It was a good first ride after the race.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/93873139

Weight: 163.8

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Back to training for IMLP

Went to the pond with the idea of doing a double this morning. Water temp was 72 and I was cold after 1 crossing without the wetsuit, so instead of freezing myself I cut that short and headed out for a little bit longer run than I planned. I had intended to only run 5, so I did 7 instead. There was quite a bit of talking this morning as we were all chatting about the Patriot race over the weekend so I was behind on time as well.

The run was ok, my legs are still sore from Saturday though. I find the best way to get rid of that feeling is to get back out there, ride and run. I felt pretty good on the way back in, but will need to stretch out tonight.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/93663127

Weight: 163.2

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid Race Triathlon

Patriot Half Ironman Review

Saturday morning was the Patriot Half-Ironman. It’s a good warmup race and a good point to figure out where I am with my training for the Ironman. Learned plenty of things from this race. Hopefully I will be able to correct them for Ironman.

The Swim

I was in the last wave for the swim, for individual racers, behind me were the Aquabike. This is the first triathlon I have been in where I started so far back, usually I’m one of the first waves and come out of the water and all the bikes are still racked and then everyone passes me. It was a little different for this race, the wave starts were seperated by 4 minutes, so it was fun to pass the yellow caps, by the first turn, at the second turn started to pass white caps and as I was coming into the shore I even passed a few of the orange ones. I just relaxed for the swim, kept my breathing even and didn’t push. My pace was 1:30 for 100s. I think that is easily maintainable for Ironman. If I had pushed hard I couuld have taken at least 2 minutes off that, maybe more, but I don’t think it would have been worth it when I got to the bike. I was the 5th person out of the water in my age group, that’s out of 72.

Time 0:31:34

T1

Uneventful transition, took my time and made sure I had everything and headed out.
Time 0:02:39

The Bike

I knew the bike course was flat and going into the race I had set the goal of 2o mph for the ride. I felt like that was reasonable. When I had come out of the water Julie was there, she started 8 minutes ahead of me and so we started out on the bike together, sort of. She blew past me and I could see her out in front of me. I was keeping my cadence high and spinning to get my legs warmed up after the swim. Julie probably stayed about a half mile in front of me for the first few miles, then I caught and passed her on one of the slight inclines on the course. Which followed her passing me on the downhill. I have to say she had an amazing bike ride. I just couldn’t believe how easily she passed me and would get so far out in front then we would come to another incline and I would finally catch and pass her. That happened for pretty much the whole ride, maybe I just don’t try to push myself enough on the downhill or she isn’t pushing on the uphill. I don’t know, but she needs to pull more on the Sunday rides!!!!

Learned many things on the bike ride. One, I need to work harder on my tuesday and thursday rides to increase my biking fitness. Two, drink, drink, drink and make sure to take more salt sticks. I lost a lot of electrolytes during the race and became dehydrated. When I finished the race I though I just pushed too hard on the bike. Having looked back on it and weighing myself when I got home from the race I learned that I lost 4lbs. Far too much weight to lose during a race and that is AFTER having a large milk shake on the way home and drinking a couple bottle of water after the race. NOT GOOD! Third, don’t mix ice with your drink, it dilutes it too much! Four, water bottle exchange, make sure to squeeze ALL the water, Heed, or water you get into the tank. I ran out of water with 5 miles to go on the bike. That caused problems on the run.

Time: 2:45:42

T2

This was another uneventful transition, the one thing I did learn from it was to make sure that I have my watch find the satellites earlier in the day so that when I start the run the watch is ready to go!
Time 0:02:27

The Run

After letting myself get dehydrated on the bike the run was not good. I knew I was in trouble about a half mile in. I was relaxed and running and the watched said 8:30 pace, but I felt I was running too hard and couldn’t catch my breath and backed off. I could feel my quads tightening up and at the time I thought I had just pushed too hard on the bike. Looking back, I was dehydrated. From this point on I ran from one water stop to the next and then walked through them taking ice and water, mixing them and drinking it to cool down. I took a Salt tablet as well as two gels on the run. The result was one of my slowest half-marthon times ever.

Time 2:02:31

The race overall was very well supported and run. I would definitely do the race again. Even though I didn’t do well with my nutrition I was still able to set a personal record for a half-ironman. I also had a personal best on the bike ride at 20.3 mph. This was the first event of any distance that I was able to maintain over 20 mph. I still wonder how I was able to maintain 19.3 on the Timberman bike course that is much hiller.

Total Time 5:24:50

Weight: 160

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

A different bike workout

I tried something different this morning on the bike. I wanted to start out with a hard effort going as fast as I could out and on the way back ride at a more comfortable pace. Well, I accomplished the second part by not the first. I should have been paying more attention to my powers numbers than my speed. My speed on the way to the end of Middleton Rd. was 20.5, which seems good, but really is not that great considering my average watts were 223 and should have been closer to 250. That tells me I need work on pedaling harder on flat or slightly downhill grades.

The ride back felt good, and I was able to relax my hands and upper body in the aero position. It’s surprising how much faster you can go when you are able to relax.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/92751867
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/92751861

Weight: 163.2