Stumbling Across Your Limits - Recognising those Junk Miles

Today Coach Dave made a rare discovery.

He finally found my limits and gave me a session to do that was a bridge too far.

My current block of training, leading up to Ironman Cairns, is all about the bike.  With Taupo out of the way for the year, and goals for that race well and truly met, the pressure is off for Cairns and I have the luxury (!) of experimenting with the race plan and trying something new.  During our Taupo de-brief I identified a prime goal for Taupo in 2014, and that is to try and crack 6 hours for the bike leg.

I've done some analysis of my relative performance in Taupo this year compared to the other girls in my age group and identified that I'm only around 2km/hr off the pace in terms of achieving a 6 hour bike split.  And, given my love for the bike, it's something that I'm pretty comfortable with hammering myself on in order to achieve that goal.

So Cairns will be a bit of an experiment this year - I will go completely against the current ironman wisdom of pacing the bike (holding back, even) in order to maximise the run leg.  In Cairns the plan will be to hammer the bike and accept that it will likely mean I'll suffer on the run.  We're only going to be interested in the bike split result and whatever happens on the run, happens.

Instructions sorted!

This training block, then, is all about building my strength and speed on the bike.  To do this, Coach Dave is starting to play around with sessions focusing on low cadence, high gear, hill repeats, and 1km high cadence sprints.

We started it off, then, last Sunday with a 4 hour ride at Kurnell.  The routine was on each half hour I would do 5 x 1km sprints in the big ring with 90+ cadence and an easy 3 minutes between each sprint.  It was a good session, and hard.  

On Thursday morning I did an early morning ride to Taronga Zoo where there is a popular stretch of road that cyclists use for hill repeats.  It's around 1.5km long and climbs 73m, providing a steady gradient of around 5%.  My instructions were to do the first rep in the big ring on the front and lowest gear at the back.  The next three reps would be in the next gear up on the back.  Considering that my instinct whenever I hit a climb is to drop to the bottom gear, and spin with as little load on the legs as possible, this was a noticeably more difficult exercise and I was definitely feeling the burn by the time I got home.  

On Friday evening I did a wind trainer session with the instructions to focus on the glutes and hammies and, to achieve this, I lowered the cadence and used a higher gear thus making sure I was engaging my legs for the full pedal stroke and using strength and power rather than relying on cadence.  Again, it was a tough session.  

Saturday morning arrived and it was our club run, a 13km jaunt around Chatswood and Artarmon and about 500m of climbing.  With my return to NRG I have moved up into a faster group and so, for me, there isn't too much "social" about this session.  And, in St Pete's words, I was "killing" the hills - so, again, the legs weren't getting much respite!

So those sessions, plus bootcamp and a couple of swims, added up to a reasonably tired irongirl heading to Cronulla this morning for another 4 hour bike session of 1km sprints.

And it showed.  

As I did the first 30min warm up I could tell immediately that my legs didn't have a lot of spark in them.    In fact they had no spark in them whatsoever.  I was determined to give it a go, however, and so got stuck into the first sprint.  Did that, although didn't feel 100%, and set about making sure my next 3 minute break really was "easy".  Into the second 1km sprint and it all turned to custard.  After 500m I blew up and just had no gas left in the tank.

At that point I realised that there was no way I was going to be able to manage any quality sprints for the next 3 hours and so I started tossing around the alternatives.  And this is where it can get tricky to figure out what to do.  Do you tough it out and do the time on the bike, i.e. do the 4 hours so I've got the distance logged, or do you write it off and go home?  There's a fine line between the two and what you don't want to do is log junk miles.  

I initially decided to carry on and try doing the 4 hours so I could at least get the time logged on the bike.  However as I pedalled over the two small rises on the lap, I realised that even this wasn't going to be a goer.  I was feeling flat and lethargic and all I wanted to do was head back to the train station and go home.

So I did.

And because I'm a bit of a data freak I couldn't resist looking at the Garmin download to see if there was any possible explanation.  What it showed is that my average and max speed for the first sprint was almost identical to last week.  However the telling statistic was that I couldn't get my heart rate up to where it should have been.  My max and average heart rate were both around 10 bpm lower and my cadence was about 15 rpm lower than last week.  And that trend repeated in the second sprint as well.  So it confirmed to me that I was simply too fatigued to get any benefit out of the session and I did the right thing by closing the door on it and coming home.

And while I was disappointed that I couldn't nail it today, there was a positive in that I recognised continuing the session would have likely set me back.  And it helped Coach Dave identify my current limit so he could adjust things accordingly.

The moral of the story, then, is to remember that you can't expect to nail every session 100%.  There will be ups and downs along the way and the key is to trust your gut instinct and go with it.

Never Underestimate the Break

What a great few weeks.  Ironman is so big that people tend to be scared to take any time out for fear of losing crucial conditioning for their A race.  The fear of not achieving one's goals tends to have people training like their lives depend on it.

Indeed having a two week complete break away from training a little over two months out from Ironman Cairns would probably seem insane to many Type A ironman athletes.  And yet that's exactly what I've done.  And while it's obviously too soon to know what effect it will have on my results come June 2, my mental preparation has definitely improved.

At a time when I am supposed to still be in my off season and focusing on recharging away from the triathlon scene, I am looking forward to another ironman and committing 100% effort into each training session.

The last couple of weeks, then, have been full on - dominated by double workouts (morning/evening) so 5.00am alarms were the norm and epic rides to make things interesting.  What follows then are some of the highlights of the last couple of weeks:

1. Running home from work.  My trip from home to work usually requires a train and bus ride, and takes about 45 minutes, depending on traffic and the number of students who wish to share the journey on a particular day.  I worked out, however, that with a bit of forward planning, I could easily run home from work a day or two a week to add a bit of interest.  It is around 9.5km and involves a slight incline for the stretch along Anzac Parade to the top of Oxford St, followed by a descent down to Circular Quay before climbing up and over the harbour bridge to Milsons Point on the other side.  It's an interesting run, with plenty of scenery changes along the way and the second time I did it I added a 5km loop around Centennial Park turning it into a 14.5km run.

2. Swimming with modified paddles.  One of the hardest things to get used to since moving to Sydney has been the prohibition placed on paddles by all of the pools.  One of the ironman coach's great swim aids is paddles, used to add resistance to your stroke and thus power.  However it seems that people can't be trusted not to clonk each other on the head with them and so, unless you are in a privately hired lane (i.e. in a swim squad) you aren't allowed to use them.  So I've muddled along, quietly ignoring the swim program instructions whenever they mention paddles.  That was, until last week, when I found webbed gloves at the pool shop.  These are a pseudo paddle in that they provide some resistance to your stroke but are made of stretchy fabric so won't do any damage if you hit someone over the head with them.  The worst thing about them - well, have you ever tried to put on wet knickers?  Yep, easy to get on when dry, a nightmare when wet...

3. The Epic Club Run.  Last weekend St Pete and I joined Northside Running Group.  A great bunch with the same culture and philosophy of the club we left behind, the Christchurch Marathon Clinic.  Their open day was down at Balmoral Beach and, because it was too early for the buses, we decided to run there and then bus back.  Of course going anywhere from Milsons Point requires scaling the proverbial mountain and so that's what we did.  Except Balmoral Beach is at the base of another proverbial mountain.  So it was a 6km run up hill and down dale and then we started on the actual club run, another up and down affair.  Such a scenic route, however: around to Chinaman's Beach, up the hill to Mosman, down past Taronga Zoo and down to Bradley's Head where we followed the walking track along the coastline to Chowder Bay before heading back over the hill and dropping back down to Balmoral Beach. All up 19km ... the bus ride home was bliss!

Team Roadworks - the Epic Ride

4. The Epic Ride.  Why do a 3 hour ride when you can do over 6 hours?!!  An opportunity came up to join iron virgin Bel on her 140km big ride and so (with Coach Dave's blessing) I ditched my program and joined her and the gang for an epic day through some roadworks, out to Parramatta, up to Berowa and back.  2200m of climbing (thanks Sydney!), 125km and 6hrs 14min later, and I was ready to do a spot of channel surfing from my favourite couch.

5. The Solo Epic Ride.  I now know my initiation as a Sydneysider is complete.  On Saturday I successfully negotiated my first solo ride from home to a completely new destination, with only my iPhone and Google maps for guidance.  Woohoo!  I headed north with the aim of reaching Palm Beach, a settlement at the end of a peninsular around 40km north of home.  It was a great day for a ride and once I got out of the main city area (and the traffic volumes lowered considerably), the scenery just got better and better.  Palm Beach is gorgeous and obviously a great spot for surfing.  On my way back, however, I took a wrong turn.  A major fork in the road gave me a choice of heading towards Dee Why or Sydney.  I wanted Sydney and so veered right however soon realised my mistake.  Never mind, I thought, this road is going to Sydney so I may as well see where I end up.  It ended up being a gem of a road - it was the Wakehurst Parkway which wends its way around the northern side of Narrabeen Lakes.  Flat(ish), smooth, forest-covered, and it eventually brought me right back to the Spit Bridge at Manly - familiar territory.  83km ticked off in 27degrees - whew!  A quick text home once I crossed over the Spit Bridge ensured I had an ice-cold home made banana smoothie waiting in the fridge for me when I got home.  St Pete truly is a saint!

6. The Ton.  To complete the weekend I needed to tick off a total of 200km riding.  Saturday's solo epic ticked off 84km, so I just had to do 116km on Sunday and so joined Bel for a drive down to Brighton Le Sands to do a flat ride.  We were joined by Mark, a fellow Ironman NZ 2011 finisher, for a flat-ish ride that included a couple of loops out to Kurnell, a tour of Cronulla and then an expedition across and through Miranda and Gymea.  All up we managed to tick off 100km and managed to take in some great scenery of the coastline at the same time.  And because I'm hardcore (a.k.a. a nut!) I got home and jumped on the wind trainer to finish off the final 16km and seal my 200km goal.

So, that's been the last couple of weeks.  Training has been hardcore, but I have no doubt I've coped better than usual thanks to my 2 weeks off.

Never underestimate the break.

Flat Training Rides in Sydney - Kurnell Loops

Training for an ironman event such as Ironman NZ or Western Australia, which have relatively flat courses, can be a bit of a challenge in Sydney.  The terrain is generally hilly and finding a stretch of road that is relatively safe from traffic and not littered with traffic lights is nigh on impossible.

The answer to this is a circuit out towards Cronulla called Kurnell loops.  If you are reliant on public transport like I am then, no worries, it is easily accessed by train.  Just jump on the Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra line to Cronulla and get off at Caringbah, two stops before Cronulla.  It takes 50 minutes from Town Hall station.

Go up the lift from the platform (or carry your bike up the stairs) and start riding, heading left away from the station.  Veer left at the first lights and you will start heading down a hill.  At the next lights turn left and you will go under a bridge, through another set of lights and then soon after reach a roundabout at Captain Cook Drive.

Turn right at the roundabout onto Captain Cook Drive and you are at the start of your first lap.  The road takes you out to Kurnell, a suburb of Sydney on the edge of Botany Bay and right under the flight path for Sydney International Airport.  Heaven for a plane buff, but reminds me of the opening scene of The Castle!

At Kurnell you will arrive at another roundabout where you can go right or left and do a small loop around the suburb, ending back at Captain Cook Drive at which point you head back out to the start.

The road is relatively flat, with the exception of a couple of small rises, and about 90% of the route has a decent sized bike lane alongside allowing for decent stretches of time trial riding without having to worry too much about the traffic whizzing by.

The full loop is around 20km and there is generally enough two-wheeled company around for any cars to have to take notice of your presence.  After you complete however many laps you need to do it is a relatively easy ride back up the hill to the railway station.