Year Four

Fazz

Thursday

Swim - Easy 2.2km as 200's and 400's. Drills, sighting, easy swimming slowly for a change.

Bike - Turbo Power work - 1 x 20min Sweet Spot, 1 x 10min Sweet Spot straight into 1 x 5min IM pace and cool down. Sweet spot as 273w and IM at 225w.

Calves still tight. Story of the last week.
Massage imminent.

trinewbie

Look like Fazz is dead from overtraining

Fazz

Ok i didn't die from over training, picked up a couple lessons in Thailand and got down to the hard work.

First 2 weeks were finding strength back and bit of fitness.
That took me to mid August with 4 weeks left to do proper work.
Lost Sheep was smack in the middle so rather than taper properly i tried to maintain training load and take a day off the week before and couple easy days before race.
Tanked miserably, prob a combination of re-finding fitness with no taper and accumulated 4 weeks of high vol work.

Was most notable on the bike, i held good power for first hour and was on target, then wheels came off and i died a death.
Run was used as an ironman effort with negative split attempt which went well.
Form felt ok but legs were fatigued so was grand training day basically.
Shame as originally this would've been my A race so I did want to race well, but i didn't want to sacrifice training load for the ironman esp as had 2 easy weeks on hols only a month before.

So left any negative thoughts in Kenmare with some vodka/captain morgan, and reviewed my training and the geeky tss/tsb/atl figures to realise I was nowhere near tapered and couldn't expect much else.

The good side was i didn't have any fatigue, or foot cuts/blisters as i wasn't going hard enough.
So training continued at a good level straight away but i didn't run till Tues-Wed.
The next 2 weeks saw me ready to hit some proper ironman efforts and all went well.
I had done a few 4-5 hr bikes at 65-75% FTP, with short runs off and no problem bar hydration.
I wasn't drinking enough and left myself gasping during run.
Now i did a couple 3hr bikes at ironman effort with a longer run off at closer to race pace.

No issues so i finished on Saturday with a metric ironman.
Biked a bit further than planned at 135k but kept watts down a bit for first 2.5hrs then last hour at ironman watts.
Again not enough hydration due to a technical mechanical temporary issue on bike (fuelselage cap screw sheared and need to remove to fit fuelselage.
Anyway, off bike for 15 miles, first 6 too hard but felt comfortable so went with it.
Held pace next 9 then for a good days work.
Sunday was easy swim and bike.
Today was last of work with long hilly run, bike threshold hill reps and medium swim.
Turned out to be near a reverse metric again but short on bike.

Anyway, I'm cooked now, nothing more to gain so taper and watch the diet time.

I'm using training peaks and after previous failed tapers and doing some more research I'm now on track to reach positive tsb of 25 for race day. Ive raced in negative all year so i should be itching to go!

Will be positive about 5 days before so this is much diff to any race this year, and should give me my best chance to deliver whatever my fitness allows on race day.

It's been hard waiting to reach peak at end of season, so I'm looking forward to racing and leaving it all out there.

Hydration will be key for me and my training lessons have been valuable here.
I'm relatively dialled in for bike, and willing to back off a little if needed on the day.

I'm looking forward to the run strangely so bring on the dark place, though i reckon i may see it on the bike too...

I've 2-3 time goals, but at the same time know anything could happen on the day.
The goals are based on wind, wetsuit, and whether i need to dial back effort at times to make it to the end.
It's a hilly bike, with probable winds so not likely to be a fast course.
Its a new course, so don't know how fast bike will be or what top age groupers are likely to race. Maybe 9:15 ish.
I'll try stick to my plan and see where i end up, first step is to race at planned levels and go from there adjusting as needed.


Top pro's may be around the 8:20 mark at a guess.
And there are some top pro's racing, Timo Bracht and Tim Don to name two.

Should be fun.

hf4z6sqo7vjngi

Fazz wrote: »

I'm using training peaks and after previous failed tapers and doing some more research I'm now on track to reach positive tsb of 25 for race day. Ive raced in negative all year so i should be itching to go!

How deep into a minus TSB figure you coming back from? My best race was in Barcelona and i had similar TSB numbers around +27 coming off a low of -80 at start of taper.
Glad i am not the only TSB/CTL/ATL geek around here:)

tunney

Alaya Uneven Nag wrote: »

How deep into a minus TSB figure you coming back from? My best race was in Barcelona and i had similar TSB numbers around +27 coming off a low of -80 at start of taper.
Glad i am not the only TSB/CTL/ATL geek around here:)

You do know that TSS, TSB, CTL and ATL are arbitrary makey up metrics, with zero grounding in science?

NP is the same, however its close enough to NZAP to be useful.

hf4z6sqo7vjngi

tunney wrote: »

You do know that TSS, TSB, CTL and ATL are arbitrary makey up metrics, with zero grounding in science?

NP is the same, however its close enough to NZAP to be useful.

Next you will be telling me Santa is not real!

Fazz

Alaya Uneven Nag wrote: »

How deep into a minus TSB figure you coming back from? My best race was in Barcelona and i had similar TSB numbers around +27 coming off a low of -80 at start of taper.
Glad i am not the only TSB/CTL/ATL geek around here:)

-60 so not as bad as you there.
But its been 6 weeks of 1,100-1,400 tss so much needed recovery as would normally drop every 4th.

I didn't use TSB properly at all this year, so will be interesting to see what difference it makes or feels like.

Fazz

tunney wrote: »

You do know that TSS, TSB, CTL and ATL are arbitrary makey up metrics, with zero grounding in science?

NP is the same, however its close enough to NZAP to be useful.

They may well be, but having raced at -15 or worse all year I'm looking forward to trying something new and hopefully feeling fresher on the start line with that itching to go feeling everyone talks about.

Imo it seems useful to my training and racing having reviewed so worth trying something different.

interested

The very best of luck out there Ian