I think most guys and gals training for
Ironman use some sort of a training calendar. I have a free one that
my training partner found or stole and was kind enough to share with
me. Its pretty basic; Tuesday run an hour, Wednesday swim an hour,
Thursday bike and so on. I guess I am pretty happy with it. I used
it in my last Ironman and it worked out OK so it must be good. My
only complaint is that there aren't many days off in this calendar
and I end up inserting some when I get tired or I feel like it.
The problem with training calendars is
that they don't issue directives on effort and anticipated result.
Maybe its wrong but I feel like the calendar should give me a pointer
or two on how much effort I should put out. For instance, I biked 4
hours today, its my long ride for the week and I rode in a group of
four. We climbed 3500 feet in 60 miles, most of the ride was pretty
chitty chatty, running at a slowish pace, then throw in five or six
hills just to keep it interesting. It was a good ride, not a huge
effort but not a cake walk either.
So my question is this: Was that the
right thing to do? Should I have pushed harder? Everybody in the
group could have gone a lot harder. Should we go 100% all the time?
Or, should we just put in hours and slow down when our legs start to
burn? Or, should we just ride a flat ride at an easy pace then go to
dairy queen and order the whole ice-cream menu? The bigger question
is, how do we maximize our return-on-investent in preparation for IM
Arizona?
When I swim with the gang, we do send
offs. Send offs suck. I don't know why we do them but one of the
guys I train with seems to think they are a good idea so we do them.
We didn't vote on that. If you don't know, send offs are timed
distances in a pool. Sometimes we do 30 second 25's. That means we
swim 25 yards as fast or as slow as we want to, but you have to start
the next 25 yard swim in 30 seconds. So the fast guys (not me)
finish in 20 seconds, then they get 10 seconds of rest. They never
get tired. Losers. I go as fast as I can, I finish in 27 seconds,
turn around and I hear one of the other guys say 'go'. Off we go.
Or we do 4 minute 200's, but its the
same deal. The fast guys finish in 3 minutes, they rest and scratch
their junk and wait for me to finish, I finish in 3 minutes and 55
seconds, turn around and go again. You get the idea. The thing is,
that is all we do. We do send offs. So think about it, our swim
workout is essentially sprints with short rests between. My heart
rate wanders between 75-99%. Our bike rides are the opposite, they
are long distance constant hart rate deals somewhere in the 80-85%
range when we are working hard, or 50% the rest of the time.
Somebody needs to rethink that. One way or the other is better. We
should do that.
I almost forgot, I was riding this
morning and I tried to take a corner too fast without stopping
pedaling. My pedal clipped the ground, it lifted my rear tire off
the ground an it skewed my path into the weeds. I was OK, but it
just reminded me that my bike skills are only second to my skills as
an astronaut.
Then, a couple hours into the ride I
hit a super bumpy section of road. My water bottle came off and
almost took out the guy behind me. I'm pretty amazing on a bike.
The only girl I saw on the ride was
sitting in a ditch, her bike about 10 feet away. She and I ride
alike,
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