It's happening ... again !!!
It's been nearly 3 years since my last Iron and I've learned a lot in that time. I'm hoping that some of this is going to help on the day !!
I'm fairly set on a 10 week plan for the race with 2/3 weeks tapering down. I recently read an article that split out the average Kona qualifiers training for their qualifying races. 7 miles swimming, 235 miles biking & 48 miles running.
Looking at that it seems a lot! However I'm currently already doing 6-8 miles swimming per week. I'm building up the bike nicely, hoping that some decent TT results should make things easier and running I will gamble on getting right off a lot less than that!
Since my last blog I've been slowly upping the bike time. Trying to get to 8 hours a week consistently - but failing due to other commitments! Have averaged about 120 miles per week with a couple of decent long rides. It's getting there and I'd say I'm ahead of last year. I've also started using Zwift to spice up the turbos and it's definitely helping. 90 min rides are pretty easy on the old brian cells which are rattling after 10 mins normally.
Haven't done much in the way of structured high quality but the tempo seems alright and I feel pretty strong. Once Ely 25 is done in the middle of January I'll have a good idea of what I need to work on. I don't think it's going to be rocket science though, some long tempos, hills & short fast efforts - the usual shit - along with some easy miles to build base.
Swimming is still going well, I've been determined to not let that go as it usually gets shelved for the other sports. I've lifted from around 12 miles per month in the pool to around 25 and training pb's of 15.40 for 1000m and 6.00 for 400m within sessions feeling good show that it's really coming together. The plan really is to keep doing the same sessions until the lakes open up and then get longer open swims in for the last few weeks. It ain't broke !! Ideally I want to swim my 400s at sub 6 pace for an entire session (not a one off, I could piss that now) and to swim comfortable kms in sub 16s (which I'm already doing).
Running was a total disaster in 2015. I'm finally injury free at the minute so the plan now is to build run fitness. I am spinning this completely on what I would normally do and the plan for now is to do a short interval session (200s) a progressive run to a hard pace and a long easy run. The long runs will be at a very easy pace just to build time on feet. I'll also do another steady run per week. Since moving my running routes are limited as there's not street lighting. Great trails for morning runs but shit roads when it's dark!
Main aim to to build to Cambridge half and hopefully go 1.19.xx there and build to decent marathon shape by IM. I'll probably build in a really big week at some stage and back off the bike / swim to help get there.
The house renovation is well under way. Every day we have painters, plumbers, chippys & sparkys in. Training wise it's a massive pain in the arse as I need to be around a lot and we don't get much time to relax. It's part and parcel though and once it's done I am sure it will be lovely !! We've already done loads. The main problem has been finding crao that the previous owners did that has caused no end of grief. Every cowboy within 100 miles must have worked here when they were doing stuff!
So that's that. Pre-Ironman training, the stage where I'm building fitness so that when I hit those big numbers my body doesn't collapse!! Feeling OK, still building fitness. Going to be an interesting year!!
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