OK - so life dealt me some cards that pretty much hosed my build phase for Timberman. Work changed from home office to a long commute, and a construction project at home sucked up a couple of weekends. So from about mid May to the beginning of July, I was pretty much cramming workouts into the weekend (I know, not a good idea but it was the best I could manage).
Now I am back working home office, but long hours (11 per day on average). My base has held well, especially for the run and swim, but biking is still a bit weak. So I am trying to figure out the best way to structure workouts to ramp up for the race without burning myself out. I am currently managing 3 x 3000 or so swim during the week, a couple of 6-12 mile runs, and if weather and work allow it, I can get one 1.5 hour on the bike (still some construction work to finish up in the evenings). Weekends was planning one long bike (70ish miles, mixed hill and tempo riding) and was cosnidering doing a 3 sport brick on the other day - gunning for about 1000 m swim, 50 bike and 10k run.
Any advise? Should I put more long miles on the bike instead of trying the brick? Longer, flatter rides would require driving about 40 minutes from my house to get out of the mjaor hills. I am not sure I can cram much more into the weekdays between work and home life.
I am pretty much MOP, and was trying to hit the 5:30-5:40 for my first half. Still possible?
I’d say the best thing you can do is get some good long rides in on weekends. I’d try to get 3 or 4 70-mile rides in between now and Timberman. Then run for 15-30 minutes right after the ride. You can probably get by on a lot less swimming if you are crunched for time. Also, I would not worry about my time if I were you; just worry about having the endurance to complete the day and let your time take care of itself. Then you’ll start getting some good data that you can use to improve in future 1/2 IMs. There’s a great article on pacing your first IM in the archives at Coachgordo.com
Still possible. Don’t freak out. Stay on the consistency as much as you can, get out there as often as is feasible. The weekends you describe will help a lot - though I suggest the following:
throw something more like a 90min. tempo into your saturday ride. sustained pretty hard riding is key for a half. do a T-run once or twice before timberman.
ditch that sunday swim. two reasons: 1. 1000 meters, whats the point, and more importantly 2. you are already really time constrained. it takes longer to get ready for a 1k swim than to do it. not worth it. do the sunday workout instead as an AM bike ride and a PM run if you can, you will get more fitness benefit.
do an LT workout on the bike during your weekday bike ride
Your weekday schedule sounds like you are doing all you can, and frankly it looks like plenty. Will it be enough to meet your time goals, well, who knows. It is def. enough training for you to be fit enough to do a half. Your speed during your training sessions will give you an idea of what you can do in the race.
See you at timberman, hopefully!
If you dont have the time to do really long stuff, why not work on medium length/high intensity stuff. Do you have an indoor trainer? your swimming is probably fine, and the running is probably okay, I would stick to the 12 miler and do two six milers. LAst year I poppeda 5:51 half IM and I wasin a situation similar to yours.
Good advice - but the thought on the swim on sunday was I would use the local Olympic course for training. It starts in a lake with a roughly 75m swim lane, so the time to set up is no more than the time to drive their anyhow. Then would do two loops of the bike course, followed by a relatively tough trail run.
However if you think bangning out a longer ride in the morning followed by a PM run (what distance would you suggest - I tend to run miles rather than time) I will work that into the mix.
You’re doing way more than I did and I was able to finish my first HIM this year comfortably under 6 hours. I only swam about 6-8 times all year before the race and had done a relative handful of bikes. I did run a marathon and had a fair base on my running, but I badly blistered my feet in that race and was only able to run 5-6 times in the month before the HIM.
I think you would be better off doing a long ride instead of the brick. Maybe a short run after the long ride to see how your nutrition plan worked - 3 miles max.
Likely you are a much better runner than I am so you should have no problems reaching 5:30-5:40 if you have a good nutrition plan.
I just got done with a similar experience. I had a sick child most of the month of May and between long drives to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (which is an amazing institution) and worrying about my daughter left me with very little training time. She is feeling back to normal now so I cranked it up for the month of June and did some long rides and runs on the weekends and immediately went up to 15-20 hours each week. I raced the half in Peterborough last weekend and blew up on the run for my slowest time ever but would likely have done better if I hadn’t “crammed” so much in June. I would recommend just getting in quality whenever you can and do a few “longish” type rides if possible and then pace yourself more conservatively than I did last weekend
Glad your daughter is doing better. I was at University in TO for way too many years, and yes it is a great place. I used to sub-contract with some researchers there who needed so gross anatomy preparations done for research.
What do you think casued your blowup? What type of taper did you pull? Was it over training, nutrition, heat? I will be starting my drive up to T’man on Tuesday, will get there Wed, and hope to cycle part of the course and check out the run course Thurs and Fri before the race on Sunday, so I will have a fair bit of down time.
I just think the 3-sport brick is liable to leave you pretty thrashed without so much additional fitness benefit. Especially where the swim is only 1k. It seems like what you are doing is more of a quasi-race-simulation than it is a training session. My view is that 99% of what we need to do as triathletes is get fitter; this is best accomplished by training. Not that a race simulation never has value, but they seem to me to be a kind of “false specificity”.
I think you would be best served by doing your proposed 50 mile ride in the AM with some zn3 time in there, and then an hour run in the afternoon. That’s a pretty solid day right there. If you get a chance to squeeze in a sprint tri instead of that workout on one of the weekends leading up to the race, so much the better.
I didn’t do much of a taper at all. I did a hard swim on Friday morning for an hour and then an easy bike ride for 45 minutes in the pm. The day before I did an easy half hour ride and half hour run. The rest of the week was a “normal” 2-2.5 hours each day. So much for common sense Actually, my goal was just to train through it and get in my first race of the year (maybe not a great idea to pick a half but I’ve done so many over the years that I thought I could pull it off). As it turns out, the heat and wind and tough rolling course along with my “cramming” and lack of any real rest leading up to it forced me into shuffle mode on the run … I also went too hard early and overestimated how quickly I was getting in shape since I’m still about 10lbs over my normal race weight
I now have 3 weeks to “cram” some more for my next race which should go better. By the end of August the training will no longer be “cramming” and I should be back on form. I may end up racing the Esprit 1/2 in Montreal if I can drop 10lbs and get fitter over the next month.
