Weekly Review

Weeks 14 and 15 were the first two weeks since getting back from Vacation in Trinidad. My training went well except for the swimming.

One of the weeks was spent in FL for work. In the past, I would swim in the small hotel pool, but for the last couple trips, this was hard as the pool was normally rather busy with kids and vacationers. For this trip, I decided to try a pool that wasn’t too far from the hotel but which had proper swim lanes. The pool was very nice with a lot of available lap swim lanes. The downside though is that it was closed for 2 of the evenings due to weather. So for that week, I only did one swim. It was a long one though. I plan to continue to use this pool for future trips and hopefully the weather will be better.

For these two weeks, I had two long bike rides of 4 hrs each. On the first one, I started to get cramps at around the 2.5 hr mark. I had a bottle of HotShot which I decided to try for the very first time. In all, I was quite happy with it. The cramps didn’t stop instantaneously, but by about 15-20 minutes are drinking it, my legs felt normal. The taste was interesting!

For my other long ride, I started to get cramps at around the 2 hr mark. Rather than wait, I drank a bottle of HotShot immediately. Again, the cramps didn’t go away instantaneously, but after about 15 mins, my legs felt normal. I did start to feel the cramps coming back at around the 3:30 hr mark and so I ended up cutting the ride short and only riding for 3:45 instead of the full 4 hours.

While the HotShot seems to help, I’m very concerned about cramping, especially since they came back about 90 mins after drinking the HotShot. I hope this is only due to the hot and humid weather and that once the cooler weather returns, it wouldn’t be an issue.

My running has not been going great either as I seem to be unable to run for any length of time without taking walking breaks. To offset that, I am doing a lot of run/walking, but for the runs, I pick up the pace and run them at a 8-9 min/mile pace. So in the end, my average pace per mile is around the 12 min mark.

My training is now at the half-way mark with 15 weeks down, and 15 weeks to go. At a time when my confidence should be high, it is very low with a lot of doubts starting to creep in as to whether I can actually do the Ironman. While the running has been hard, I’m not too worried as I expect the run leg to be a lot of walking anyway. I’m happy with the bike except for the camping. The real concern is the swimming!

This week I’m going to try and different poo at a 24 hr Fitness where I’m not limited to a one-hour lap swim time as I need to stat swimming for longer than an hour.

The last 10 weeks of training has been a mixed bag, but overall I think there was more good than bad.

I got some nice long rides of 50 and 60 miles done and some long runs of 7 and 8 miles. The worse part has been my swimming as it has been very irregular, especially for the weeks where I travelled to FL. Being summer, the hotel pool has been rather busy and I had to cut some of my swim sessions short.

The worse part of my training has been the last two weeks while I was on vacation in Trinidad. I took my bike with me, but only managed to get one good bike ride in and even then, it was only for 19 miles. I got a few runs done and one really good swim session. It was rather depressing watching my fitness number on Training Peaks drop.

At this point, I have 17 weeks of training left. I decided to drop from the Be Iron Fit competitive plan to the intermediate plan and I really need to buckle down and get my workouts done. I have been doing the just finish swim workouts which only does two swim sessions a week, but I plan to do three

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.

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