JohnnyKay and Fred Doucette's HIM/IM focused Mentor group-CLOSED (Page 61)

I would do two 60-90 minute hard rides during the week (intervals or very hard group rides), then do a long ride (40-50 miles) on the weekend.

When doing tri specific training, I usually only ride 3x per week.  The bike is my strength, so I'm just trying to polish it up.  I spend most of my focus on the run during tri training.  My tri season is basically over this year...with the exception of one race I'll do at the end of this month for fun...so right now is my bike focus where I actually try to make large fitness gains on the bike.  To do so, I ride 5-6x a week.

IOW...I think riding 3x per week is adequate for tri training.  It's what I have done for Olys and my HIM.  But I'm not really expecting to see any huge gains in speed or fitness by riding 3x per week.

On the contrary...I have been running 5-6x per week during tri training because the run is a weakness I've been trying to work on.  And I run that often because I do expect to see (and have seen) improvements on my run while tri training.  If my strengths/weaknesses on the bike/run were reversed...I suppose I would be more in favor of riding 4-5x per week and running 3-4x per week during tri season.

Ok, time to brag a bit.  Worked all weekend, at a new hospital 45 min from home and as a result came home exhausted tonight.  I was determined to get a 56 miler in today NO MATTER WHAT!!!  Got home, took a half hour nap then began preparing for my ride.  Pumped up tires but the front tire little presta valve popped off and the tire went flat.  Fixed that, headed out then 1.5 miles into the ride "pop, wum wum wum".  Guess I didn't do very well fixing the tire.  Proceeded to change tire again, sweating buckets, only to find the CO2 cartridge on my bike was already used.  (I put in on there during my last race so I wouldn't be littering when I changed my flat).  I forgot to replace it ( I did not have a spare (usually I carry 2).  So with head down low, had to walk bike back home (felt like walk of shame).  Started to get a case of the F@** it's.  Got home, after walking in gravel with socked feet.  Feet hurting and cut in a few places.  Pump not working now and it took me at least 5 minutes to fix the darn thing.  Finally pumped up tire, found 2 more cartridges, headed out and had one of my best rides ever....  it's little victories like this that make IM training really meaningful.

Happy 4th to everyone!!!!!

That's impressive - I may have bagged the ride, thinking the gods weren't going to let me ride that day.  Glad it turned out to be such a good ride.

I'm guessing I'm the only one working today since I'm north of the border.  Enjoy the holiday.

Fireflies are the best...my 6yo daughter loves them too!  Happy 4th!

Also got in about 2.5 hours of training.  70ish minutes of easy running, and 80ish minutes of hill climbing on the bike.

Caps off a solid 5 days (Thu-Mon) of training.  205.16 miles, 11,375 feet of climbing on the bike, and about 12 miles of running thrown in as well.

Nutrition question - I ran out of Gatrorade the other day before a ride, so I just went with water and a couple of gels.  Not a long ride so not a big deal, but it did make me wonder if I "needed" a sports drink for my HIM.  Last time I used Infinit, but this time I plan to live off the course.  They'll have Ironman Perform, but I'm wondering if I could/should use just water + gels. 

I'd read that you should probably be taking in between 1.5-2cals/lb of bodyweight.  So for me, I'm looking at between 225-300cals per hour.  Each gel has 100cals, so it makes sense to supplement with the Perform, but I just find I get really sick of sports drinks and the sugar, etc. after a couple of hours.

Thoughts - prior good/bad experiences?

It's not so much the sugar, and more the sugary taste that builds up over time from the sports drink.  My only HIM to date, I got off the bike and then avoided the Gatorade and gels at the aid stations because I couldn't stand the sugary pastiness that had built up in my mouth.

So are there suggestions for how much to take in on the bike?  At just over 150lbs, I think my 225-300Cal/hour guess should be reasonable, but would it be better to try and take a couple of gels per hour + less concentrated drink, or regular drink with 1 gel.  I know I need to test these out to see what works - but I also never seem to run into issues when training, just racing.

Anything else to be taking in on the ride/run?

I don't know what to tell you about the 'sugary pastiness'.  If it's only the sports drink that causes it, then go more with gels (or, perhaps, try another sports drink).  You could always use some salt tabs if you want to avoid sports drink altogether but still get some more electrolytes. 

You need calories (carbs) and fluids.  Some electrolytes are also probably a good idea.

I don't like to tell people to mess with something that works.  But, I admit, I find it odd that it would be easier to wash down a gel than a sports drink.  You could easily 'chase' Gatorade with some water if you needed to 'wash it down'.  IDK, I guess since I don't find this to be a problem I don't worry about it too much. 

I agree gatorade is easier.  No doubt about that.  But I also feel gels and water is more versitile.  With gatorade, you're committed to drink X amount of fluid to get Y amount of calories.  And if you're getting bottle exchanges with powder mix gatorade, you never know how strong/weak the mixture is.  With gels and water, you can play around with your liquid to calorie ratio more.  If you feel you need less calories but are thirsty...just take one less gel and drink more water.  If you feel you're hungry, but are not thirsty...take a gel with just a small swig of water.  With gatorade...to get 100 calories, you generally need to drink 3/4 of a 20 oz bottle.  With gels, I can get in 100 calories with as little as 4 oz of water to chase with.

Also...if I carry 2 flasks with 4 gels in them each for a HIM, I'm not committed to taking them.  I can always switch to all gatorade if I feel like it.  It's much harder to make the switch from all gatorade to 8 gels if you didn't bring any gels with you.

In the end...I'm pretty sure I'm overthinking things.  If you use something in training...it should generally work in races.  I don't think I lose time by using gels...but as I mentioned before, for road racing (bike), I would use gatorade because you can lose the draft, miss an attack, or cause a crash fiddling with gels.

Making things overly complicated is part of the fun.  If there was a set in stone, one way to approach this sport, I likely would have lost interest a long time ago. 

I just want to make sure I have enough in the tank for the run after the ride - I won't really duplicate that effort in training, so that's why I'm trying to figure out if the 1.5-2cal/lb/hr is a good bet, and what others use for this distance.

Ultimately I'd like to follow your advice and keep it as simple as possible...

@155 lbs, 300 cal/hr worked well for me.

Thanks Jason - did you experiment with going over/under this amount at all during training?  Also, on the run did you stick to this same intake, lower/increase it?

A rough 'rule of thumb' is about half of your bike intake on the run.  Note "rough" and "rule of thumb", so obviously some experimentation around that area is a good idea.  300 cal/hr on the run would be too much to digest for most people.

I "loosely" experimented with 300 cal/hr on the bike during training.  I think the most I actually got down during a 3 hour training ride was 800 calories.  But I didn't have to run afterwards, so it wasn't that big a deal.  My stomach is pretty tolerant, so I wasn't worried about another 100-200 calories total being a problem.

As for the run, I think I took in ~4 gels (from a flask) and maybe the equivalent of 1/2 of a can of coke for a 1:52 run.  So about 450-475 calories.  I don't think I needed that much though.  I probably could have got away with 350-400.