Full Vineman 2014 Triathlon : Official Thread (Page 6)

Kate, thanks for the Boston review.  I won't be going next year as my qualifying race is after the 2015 deadline, so that would put me there in 2016.  The good news is that would mean plenty of time for planning, reservations, etc.  I too have aged up since my last marathon, but still will have to get a slight PR to get to Beantown.

Rita, I've been going with a plan of Infinit liquid nutrition and Payday candy bars during training, taking in the Infinit every 15 minutes but substituting 1/3 of a Payday on each hour.  This works great for me during the ride and I don't feel hungry at all, but like you, after long rides once I get off my appetite rapidly returns and I HAVE to eat.  Most of the time the body is calling for carbs, but sometimes it wants a healthy helping of protein as well.  I make a post ride/run recovery shake that consists of 8 oz Almond milk/1 scoop of protein whey/ 2 scoops of Hammer Recoverite/ one banana/1 tbs cocoa powder.  That satisfies the immediate need, but I know that in 30 minutes I'll be hungry again.  My go to place here is Red Robin where they have a bottomless side serving of regular or sweet potato fries.  The servers there know me by now and when they take my initial drink order they tell me the sweet potato fries will be there soon, and they are - well before the entrée arrives!  I found that if I don't pay close attention to the caloric needs I end up without energy pretty quickly and subsequent workouts are much harder.  I use an app on my phone called Lose It to track calories in and exercise and it helps a lot.  Last Friday my caloric need was about 5000 calories and I am sure that if I had not been tracking it, I'd have come up short.  There are plenty of evenings where I have to have extra stuff to top off the tank, but it is really worth it.  OK, I'll get off my soapbox now . . .

So my training plan is ramping up, moving from solidifying an aerobic base and now kicking that aspect up a notch while also building strength.  Most workouts thus far have been Z1/Z2 with the emphasis on good form.  Based on the Maffetone training I'd done in the past, I tried to keep things really at the z1.9 level, but now workouts are solid Z2 with forays into Z3 for intervals.  It has been a real education on how much more work it is to gain a little in speed!  Today was a two and a half hour ride on a course of flats and rolling hills and I was amazed at the difference in RPE to stay in the mid z2 range.  I feel like I've done my work in getting the cardiovascular system in good working order, but now the legs are going to have to catch up!  I may have to go back to doing TrainerRoad for my shorter rides to build strength and the longer ride to keep the endurance aspect in good shape.  Anyone else got this type of thing going on?

He who created hill repeats should be forced to run them for all eternity.  Plan today called for a 50 minute run that included hill repeats - 4 x 2 minutes.  Turns out I have a perfect hill for this at a local park and it looked like this:  Hill Repeats (Note, I was using imageshack for images, but they've done away with their free service.  Tried using Flickr here, but can't get the actual image to show up on the post.  Any suggestions for a free site that works, or how to make Flickr work?)Actually went well and was a bit of a confidence booster after reading some race reports and comments about the hills on the course.  Lots of training miles left to build up the rolling hills endurance!

Looks like I'm going to be able to break away and ride the course again this week.  Going to do 70 miles which will start in Guernville at T1 and do the first bike loop then the run course then back to T1.  I'll be able to see if they've done any repaving on the beginning of Westside road and will report back.  Only downside is that it is supposed to hit 90 degrees that day.  Let's hope race day is a bit cooler . . .

Rode the course from Guerneville around the first loop, then on the run course, then back to Guerneville, 70 miles with my training partner.  Was disappointed to find that they had done no repaving of Westside road on the early part of it, but they have done some further down which is really nice.  They also repaired what was a REALLY bad road to bridge transition on Chalk Hill road (caused an accident in the 70.3 last year).  Glad I rode the run course to get a feel for it.  Starts out relatively flat but the hills they show in the elevation map do deserve respect.  You really do need to do at least some hill training for this course.  There are lots of trees there that provided shade when we rode it at about 11:15, so hope that holds up for the later runs.

Swim area.  OK, don't panic but river is low as expected.  You can see where the dam will be put in place for the race, so it should be OK.  But just to give you a taste of what the area looks like, here are some photos.  The first was taken at 7:00, so pretty close to what it will look like at starting time in July.  The second is looking back at the start area and the third is an upstream shot that shows where the turn around buoy will be located:

Now if I could just figure out how to hold the phone so the finger doesn't appear in the shot . . .

When I did the Vineman 70.3 last year, I found these videos that preview the course very well.  There are 4 of them, with the bike being split into two separate videos. http://viewtherace.com/california/ironman-vineman

Notes on the bike course videos:  They are for the 70.3, but will really cover 90% of the 140.6 course, specifically the full first loop.  The second loop portion not shown is (I'm estimating) about 8 miles of rolling hills.  A good portion on that is on a section that has been repaved and is right now smooth as glass, with a fantastic downhill portion that can be fast.

Notes on the swim course video:   My understanding is that the swim is the same, just 2 laps.

Notes on the run course.  Ignore everything past mile 4 as that is the approximate turnaround point for the 3-lap run.