Iron Training Week 8 - Mike D.

Grace found me in week 8. I had a good ramp up all week, but I couldn't help but question myself every day knowing the task I had ahead of me on the weekend; a 1 hour swim followed by a 3 hour run on Saturday and a 5 and a half hour swim on Sunday. I'd only ran and rode farther than that once in my life and I never did it on back to back days. Here's how it went.

Saturday run and swim. I got down to Mission bay @ 7:30 and got in the water around 7:45. Hammered out my 4000m swim, took a 20 minute break to change and prepare for the run, and then I hit the road aroun 9:00. I've been running an 8.5 mile lap around the bay for the last few weekends and it's been different every time and never easy. I got done with my first lap and felt pretty good. My legs felt light and I felt plenty fueled and hydrated. Lap 2 also did not seem like much of s struggle except that the sun had started to come out and heat things up a bit. I finished lap 1 and still had about 4 miles to go. I backed it down a bit, stopped for a minute to refuel my water bottles, and finished the run at 21 miles. Once I stopped, I felt my calves were pretty worked and immediately stretched. It helped get me mobile and I spent the better part of the rest of the day recovering. I knew I was not going to get back to 100% after that effort, but gave it a good effort and got to sleep early knowing I had done my best to get ready for the 100 miles I had to put in the next day.

Sunday bike was on the Santa Ana River Trail and I got rolling around 7:30. That trail is great because the terrain and wind is super similar to the AZ Ironman course. It also has zero full stops which simulates a race condition. After about 70 miles of my ride, I still felt really good and was at a 19.4 MPH average. Not only was a riding pretty fast, I also felt really good. All of my 4+ hour rides up to this point had not been all that fun and I was starting to doubt my resolve on the bike. This effort really helped me to get my groove back and I was ecstatic for the rest of the day. I finished my ride at 100.2 and averaged 19.2 MPH on the entire ride.

Training totals for week 8:

Swim: 6 miles

Bike: 130 miles
Run: 32 miles

Next weekend is going to be even harder than this one was. It's the last of my build weeks before I get to start tapering down and making final preperations for the event which is about a month out. Can't wait to get through that and relax a bit. My body is getting through these big training days, but I can tell I'm pushing my limits.

To help with recovery, I purchased a Compex muscle stimulator. It uses electric pulses to clear lactic acid, relax the muscle, and enable a faster recovery. I'm not sure how to measure the benefit, but it is definitley helping and I am a believer.