SwimTraining

Ironman Training – Week 1-2 – April 29 – May 12 2019

Posted by Derek on in BikeTraining, RunTraining, SwimTraining, Training, Weekly Review

The first two weeks of my 30-week training plan is in the bag.

The first week was a bit of a mess. When I look at the TrainingPeaks colored boxes, I only had 2 green boxes and I had one missed workout. The saving grace though was that I did get to do the Saturday PlayTri open water swim. I am still grateful that I found and joined the club as these swims continue to show my how unprepared I am for open water swimming.

The second week was much better as I manged to get all green boxes across the board and I ended the week at exactly 7 hours of training time.

I would have like to have gotten in a 3rd swim day, either in the pool or at the Saturday open water swim, but things are a bit hectic as the kids are near the end of the school year and there are various events I need to attend. Unfortunately this will be the same for the next two weeks, but once school ends at Memorial Day weekend, things should settle down.

The one thing I am proud of though is that I have been doing all my pool swims without my floaty pants. It’s been a bit tough, but I can tell I am getting fitter. I managed to swim the first 500m continuously last week Wednesday.

Ironman Training – The Beginning

Posted by Derek on in BikeTraining, RunTraining, SwimTraining, Training

After taking 2 weeks off where I basically just did a few workouts to keep active, my Ironman Arizona training starts on Monday.

I plan to use the Be Iron Fit book. The book contains 3 different plans, each 30 weeks long. After reviewing the plans, even though my goal is to just finish the Ironman, I plan to follow the Competitive program for the running and cycling. In looking at the volumes, I am comfortable in how they start off and also with the peak weeks. I also figured that if life gets too hectic or the load too much, I can always drop down to the Intermediate or the Just Finish plans as they all follow the same phases. In the early weeks, I may also run or bike a bit more than the plan as the plans start off with rather low volumes. For example, the first workout is a Z2 run for 30 mins. I may run 45 mins (4 miles) instead.

The swimming is where I will deviate. For the swimming, I will be following the Just Finish swimming plan. In looking at the swimming in the Competitive plan, it is just too much too soon, especially with the drills. Now, I know the swimming alone in the Just Finish plan also will not help me in my Ironman, especially after the rude awakening I got in my 70.3. So, I plan to supplement the two-day-a-week swim sessions with a 3rd swim session where I just swim continuously and also with Saturday open-water swim sessions with PlayTri at least 2 days a month.

So for the plan’s swims with the drills, I will do those without using my buoyancy shorts. For the continuous swim, I will use buoyancy shorts and for the open water swims, I’ll use my full wetsuit. I would thus be swimming 3 or 4 days a week and in a mixture of with and without buoyancy help.

The one part of the Be Iron Fit plans is the focus on Z2 training. It is a type of training I love to do and it is what I think would best serve me in my quest to complete an Ironman. I will use HR for the Z2 running, but for the bike, I will use power for the Z2 cycling.

Open Water Swim Practice with the Playtri Club

Posted by Derek on in SwimTraining, Training

There were two things I was going to try and do to help improve my swimming and ensure I’m better prepared than I was for my 70.3 FL. One of those was to do more open water practice.

Playtri has a Playtri Club that among other things, does a weekly Saturday open water swim. During these swims, they have coaches that actually coach and teach you the skills needed to successfully open water swim. I wanted to practice with them before my 70.3 but the timing just wasn’t good. They only do the swims starting in late March and through September. When they started, there were only two Saturdays that I could have attended before my 70.3 and for one of these, I was out of town. I foolishly decided not to bother to do the one available practice. I don’t know if it would have changed the outcome, but I would have at least been just a bit more prepared.

I went to my first swim today with them, paying the drop-in fee of $10. I wanted to try them out before joining the club ($99/year) as I wanted to ensure that it was worth it. The lake where the swims are done is almost a one-hour drive so I would have to drive a total of two hours to do a one-hour swim.

The net result is that it was totally worth it! There were two coaches there, one worked with the advanced swimmers and the other worked on skills with the beginners. I obviously joined the beginner group. We practiced sighting and drafting on another swimmer’s hips. I need a lot of work on the drafting as I found I would easily lose the swimmer, but for the sighting, I started off rather rough, but after enough laps and practice, I saw a definite improvement during this one session.

Another benefit is that I got to swim in murky water where you can’t see anything and the only times you can see is when you are breathing. That was one of my issues in FL. I even got tired on the last lap and flipped over on my back to take a breather. This was good practice for an actual race.

While I knew I was not really prepared for the swim at 70.3 FL based on how it ended, this practice opened my eyes even more and I know without a doubt that I was not prepared.

I will be joining the club and while I will not be able to swim with them every Saturday, I figure I should get at least 2 swims a month and possibly 3. That will be a lot of practice between now and September when the stop the sessions.

Ironman 70.3 Training – Week 19 – April 1 – April 7 2019

Posted by Derek on in BikeTraining, RunTraining, SwimTraining, Training, Weekly Review

This was my second to last week before my race. As expected, the workload was greatly reduced. There were a couple notable highlights though.

I was in Florida for the week and our company took part in the Mercedes Benz 5K Corporate Run. I used this to replace a planned tempo run. It was also great practice for running is warmer and more humid conditions. I managed to run the first mile in 9:40 which is a new fastest mile for me. I ended up running the 5K in 32:44.

The second highlight was my bike ride on Saturday. At the start of the ride I felt great. Even though it was supposed to be a Z2 ride, I was able to comfortably generate more power and not feel as though I was working really hard. So I decided to keep that up for at least 20 mins to see if I could get a new FTP. I ended up going pretty and for 30 mins and then I backed off and did the reminder of the ride at Z2. After the ride, both Garmin and Training Peaks reports a new FTP of 187. This is up from my last FTP of 167.

I am sure I could have gone even harder for the 20 mins so my real FTP is probably higher. Perhaps I will consider doing a proper FTP test after my race.

My run on Sunday was a bit disappointing. I was expecting to feel much fresher and I also felt a bit lethargic. I have a feeling that I was paying the price for my FTP-level 30-min ride segment on Saturday.

I am not into the last week of my training. I barely have any workouts. I have to careful what I eat as I’m not burning as much calories as I would in a typical week