153 days until IMCdA…
Lap pool @ Virgin Active Randburg, South Africa
This was a different week of training – a good mix of endurance + intensity
18 hours total mainly swimming + biking
Monday long (4:20) ride with 7 x 10 min tempo intervals. To give you an idea of tempo interval wattage (231,233, 236, 232, 226, 242, 246). Followed by 40 min transition run. I was still quite sore from the previous day’s half marathon so I ran very slowly.
Tuesday swim 3000m mainly consisting of 12 x 100m intervals @ approx 1:32 s/100m + some pull sets with paddles + drills.
Wednesday swim 1000m TT 16:40 – I didn’t pace myself very well, I need to work on that. I also need to improve my endurance, I tend to get out of breath in the pool with harder efforts.
Bike intervals (1:10) tempo + threshold. A short but intense workout on the trainer.
Thursday 1 hour hilly run workout. My knee gave issues at the end of this so I cut it short and skipped runs for the remainder of the week. Most likely caused by the steep 3km downhill at the end of my sunday half marathon… just need to ice & not run for a few days.
Friday 1 hour of bike intervals – mainly 9 min tempo (for me approx 230W) with a few 1 min threshold intervals thrown in to “flush the legs” and some steady riding in low 200’s (watts). 30 min recovery MTB in evening.
Saturday I entered a 3km open water swim event. This was a non wetsuit swim – I’ve actually never done a stand alone open water swimming race (except for once when I was 16 years old). The mass start was actually a lot more civil than your typical Ironman event – I only had contact a few times before getting some space. The one thing that did surprise me was the lack of directional skills in most of these swimmers. I had expected them to be more competent than triathletes. I tried to follow a few feet but due to their zig zagging all over the place I decided just to swim it alone, with no drafting. The course was 3 laps of 1km. I just swam steadily for the first two laps and then gave it my all on the 3rd lap. The results haven’t been posted online yet, but I think my time was around 56 / 57 mins which was disappointing since I was expecting to do it in around 50 mins. On the plus side, this has spurred me to work harder in the pool and to incorporate some more OW swims in order to get really good at sighting & direction.
Sunday long ride (192km, 6:20). This was a tough ride, TSS of 374 (TSS is Training Stress Score, which is a measure used by TrainingPeaks to determine training stress of individual workouts and training stress over time). To give you an idea of typical TSS, my TSS for the bike leg of Ironman Switzerland last year was 258, Vineman was 285 and Challenge Henley was 324. So this was a tough workout!
Overall a good week, my #1 goal right now is to let me knee recover and get back to running ASAP!
