The Ironman in 2019 thread

Radial head daniel. I went over the bars when a car cut across the front of me. I’ll have a look at Weymouth just now :slight_smile:

Ouch. I’ve been there having smashed my right olecranon while mountain biking in 2012. I wasn’t actively training at the time but it still took a lot out of me just recovering. @Nate_Pearson did his collar bone a while ago and reflected recently on the podcast* that you burn a lot of energy just repairing a fracture which hampered his training a bit, but getting back on the bike didn’t take long. If it were me I’d probably stick to the tri plan but omit the other disciplines as you suggest.

That said, you’re on a high volume plan so are probably a beast, and you might just bounce back and be able to turn up the cycling intensity :laughing:

I had a period last year when I couldn’t run because of injury and ended up doing the Sustained Power High Volume Plan for the 6 weeks I was off running and my bike power was great coming into the early season last year.

That worked well for me as it happened as I was coming off the SSB anyway but I would definitely consider it as an option. Obviously whether it would work will depend to an extent on what your plans are for the rest of the year and how it all fits together.

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Thanks Julian, I was thinking Sustained Power HV as well.

Damn that’s gotta hurt!

I’d agree with the others, @rjessop makes a good point too. For now recovery must be primary. Food! Protein, carbs, calcium I suppose too…naps. Make your working environment support you recovery.

For fitness I’d be thinking “maintenance” at best. When you’re ready just do some of the thirty minute rides - underplay it. Get off way before you need to. Walking rarely gets mentioned here, but if you can’t run a thirty minute walk does some good.

I will swim slightly against the tide and support the bike only plan idea. Turn down the intensity to 90% at least, and swap in the race appropriate workouts as you see fit. I’m a big fan of the tri plans but only if you are swimming and/or running.

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After 7 weeks of running being quite stagnant it seems to have taken a massive leap this forward, not sure what it is but hopefully it continues.

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I do have a Garmin, haven’t been plugging in the workouts to my watch. Rather, I will just write them down and mark the interval I want. Then when I hit the lap button I have “repeat on” on my screen and just go when that gets to where I want it. I found that I just don’t feel my watch vibrate as much as I would need for that method.

Bilateral breathing is something I’m working on often. Last week one of my swim sessions was sets of 200s with each progressive set adding 50yds of breating to my least favorite side until I was swimming 200 only breathing to that side…that was an eye opener. I’ll take a look at the OnSpeedo analysis. CSS test tomorrow!

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A little late to the party but I’m training for my first full distance- Ironman Canada at Whistler. I have several years of experience with many sprint & olympic distances and one half Ironman. I’m new to TR but have really enjoyed becoming familiar with it over the last 3-4 weeks .

I’m just over 3 weeks into base training and I went with full distance low volume since a bad cold kept me from training for several weeks.

I plan to finish out the base and transition to full distance build; probably give mid-volume a shot.

I will finish it off with the specialty plan but will have to cut off about 3 weeks since I got a late start.

For those with TR experience, should I consider any modifications to my plan or stay the course? I plan to include several outdoor rides to try and prepare for some of the elevation gain on the course. I’m still working on my nutrition plan but have really appreciated insights from these forums and the TR podcasts.

Also, who else is signed up for Ironman Canada?

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There is nothing wrong with tailoring the plan to your needs, after all the plan you can follow is always the best. I for example did long distance LV last season and substituted almost all weekend long rides outdoors. I tried to emulate the prescribed workout as much as possible, but sometimes opted for lower intensity and longer duration to test position and nutrition over 5 hours.

Cutting specialty short will not ruin your day, but make sure to not cut the earlier weeks so you don’t throw off your tapering.

And finally IM Canada. Never been there, but it’s high up on my list, could be a sweet destination race and finally a chance to visit Canada!

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Did swim CSS test today… 6:52 400yd and 3:13 200yd…about 20 seconds faster on both than first CSS test about 3 weeks ago! I think a lot of this has been my technique improving, been feeling much smoother in the water. Also feel as though I had a sudden jump in fitness last week in all 3 disciplines. Amazing feeling.

Probably could have paced the 400 better…my last 25 was 6 seconds faster than my average split before that. On the 200 my left goggle leaked and completely filled with water…probably helped me push hard to finish so I could see again lol

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About a week ago I completed my bike fit and now I can comfortably bash out 90 minute training sessions in the extensions, which is a massive relief! I should hopefully be able to go much longer outdoors for the usual reasons, but I’ve not found an opportunity to spend time on our outdoor velodrome yet. The downside is that I’m pretty sure I should do another ramp test to account for the fit but I don’t have one in the plan until April :grimacing: Better sub out one of the workouts I guess! I was coming back after illness the last time I tested anyway so I’m probably training at least a bit low.

I should probably re-test on my road bike too (as advised in a different thread) as that is out of date; I joined my club for our group ride on Sunday and while it wasn’t easy and I wasn’t dancing around afterwards I don’t think it was quite 0.89 IF/269 TSS difficult. The 0.89 IF for 3+ hours in particular even including breaks seems unlikely.

Swimming is going fine I guess, I’ve moved up into the middle lane in our club swims but haven’t done a CSS test in a long time so can’t relate my current speed in a meaningful way :slight_smile:

Running is getting better as I’m now using my watch to force myself to slow down on ‘easy pace’ base runs. It’s difficult to run* at 6:32/km when it’s cold and windy :cold_face: :laughing:
*more of a slow jog really. I bet you fast runners could walk at that speed!

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Knocked out a new 100m PB of 1.35 this morning which is a leap of 7 seconds. Also got enranged at both the selfish cow who refused to move from the fast lane while doing breaststroke holding up the three people doing crawl and the lifeguard who refused to have a word. Going to win the £154 million tonight so I can have my own pool.

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don’t we all love a morning like that :roll_eyes:

Hey all;
I’ve been MIA.
Send good vibes, prayers & whatnot pls:
I was driving to work two Saturdays ago, hit black ice on an off ramp from a highway, swerved twds the concrete barrier, overcorrected & slid across the left lane, hopped over the ditch, bounced off the embankment & swung around 180° w/ the car leaning into the ditch.
Car is most likely a write off, we’re still waiting to hear the assessment.
I am fine physically, with exception of the irritating return of my previously rehabbed & stabilized hip/quad issue. I have severe anxiety to begin with and have been experiencing sudden onset of what feels like a pounding heart for a minute, sometimes twice an hour when I’m not being active. I’m going to be wearing a heart monitoring device to make sure it’s not anything serious.
Hip issue: went to physio. Got poked & twisted. She dry needled my shoulder muscle that’s been twinge-y for several months to reset it & looseded up some upper back issues.
Cool fact: she is also a long distance triathlete, so she “gets it”.
I have dental appointments this week to extract two teeth (side effect of being sick for 3 yrs & not taking care of myself), had to get it done before my first race in two weeks or else it’ll probably flare up due to low immune system during recovery from a race. (I was on two rounds of antibiotics in the span of two months)

I’m on week 6 of 12 for base.
Feeling like I’m watching the skipped workouts piling up, but the good news is, before the accident I bought a fitness membership and was able to use it. Before my social anxiety would have kept me at home.
The day after my accident I went & did a 1h20min run followed by a 1500m swim, as my physio friend (she works w/ Olympic athletes) said movement would help me not to stiffen up.
I’ve taken this week off to process the accident and next week is sort of a write off.
And then I have a week before my team event.

The good news: my custom team buffs have been ordered and I’m getting custom decals of my team logo as a wrap for my fork!

Going to enjoy the fact that I have more athletes advocating for mental health this year at the season opener than in previous years and that I didn’t hit anyone else.
Also, we were planning on getting a bigger car anyway but The Husband said to keep it for a big longer since I’m a new driver; I’d probably dind it up some more & it could be my “bumper car”.
Yup!

Blessed to be alive with no major issues.

PLEASE be careful on the roads, especially in the mornings & evenings. The road looked clear, the snow was melting on the grass.

Cheers.

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Just swim over them and consider it practice for a mass swim start.

Well done. At a pool I swim at last year (while my daughter swam with a coached group in the next lane), there was a woman who, at about 3m from the wall (where flags would be, would do a little dolphin dive and cut from right to left across the middle to the wall. Without. Caring. If. Someone. Else. Was. In. The. Lane, let alone right behind her. She, of course, would grab the wall pause for some random amount of time and then push off. There were times when I was swimming into the wall and she’d push right off. There was of course much more and it wasn’t just interfering with me. Her willful ignorance, or willful interference, was too much and I talked to the pool manager who talked to her and she was kicked out of the “tempo” lane. Fun times in shared lanes.

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Update time!

I have finished 8 wk of HIM base HV (with MV bike). Here are some reflections.

  • Had excellent compliance with the plan
  • Was sick for 3 days with a cold. Took it easy coming back with endurance, really good way back. Next time I will take an extra day off just to be on the safe side.
  • I came off SSB2 and felt that the Tuesday was much to easy so I substituted for harder VO2max. This got me a nice progression and I finished with Spencer+2, Kaiser and Shortoff +4. Downside was that this left the legs a little extra tired and I should have gone a bit easier.
  • I decided mid-way to modify the plan because I couldn’t ride outside for long rides and >2 hours on the trainer were not attractive. I switched to the Thursday and Saturday workouts from the SSB2 plan, but going back to the last few weeks instead of the first. Even though I just came off SSB2, the workouts left my legs in too much pain and it would have been easier to just follow the HIM base progression for probably the same result.
  • bottom line: stick with the plan and trust the progression.
  • Extended the sunday swim for 1h15 to 1h30 instead of a 4th session throughout the week (logistics), felt good.
  • moments when I struggled were definitely days after I was out for dinner/drinks. I spent too much money but it helped me re-calibrate my values: I prefer to be fit and get a good workout instead of being hungover :+1:
  • before HIM base I combined strength sessions with a workout but now they were getting too long to do that after work etc. I will need to find a better way to get my consistency back here.

Today I started HIM Build HV with the Ramp (257 → 268 for 4.1 W/kg, starting at 231 in October). I feel fit and look forward to it. Unfortunately I have a little run niggle, most likely due to new shoes :roll_eyes::scream: and will not run this week to heal up… I hate this about running but the great thing about tri is that I will just add extra easy bike/swim.

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So this is me taking my first shot at triathlon this year, i’m planning on doing 2 sprints and an oly…the training plans are 1 round of sprint tri and 1 round of oly tri (the oly ends right about when my A race oly happens).

After a year like that, would it be too soon to consider doing a half distance the next year? I’m considering HIM Muskoka. Or would it be better to do a few more Oly’s in the next season before jumping up in distance considering the level of training that will be required…?

Thanks

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I did 2 sprints my first year in triathlon, then an oly and a half the second year. In retrospect, I totally wasn’t ready, but I survived and wasn’t last :slightly_smiling_face:

It really depends on what your goals are and if you have any particular background in any of the individual sports.

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Last year was my first year in tri and did an Oly and then 70.3 about 2 months later. Not sure your background, but I’m 26 and maintained staying fit primarily through lifting and occasional CrossFit-like workouts but hardly ever any endurance stuff and definitely no swimming lol. I knew I would really only have a couple years of tri before I had to take a long break so wanted to go big. Loved every minute.

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