SBR Utopia Season II - OPEN (Page 9)

It's finally here, exciting. 

Best of luck.

You'll do great, enjoy the day!

YO

Have you tried anything but the Cobb/ISM?  I tried both a couple seasons ago and didn't like either of them, and am currently on an arione knockoff.  Maybe that type of saddle just doesn't work for you.....

Hey, I was 21 of 23 at Oceanside... You're fast enough to get on the fastest feet for a draft and to let them act as the spear thru prior waves.   Then on the bike you've got lots of opportunities for legal slingshot drafting!   Silver linings...

Regardless of how everything goes, I'll call it a huge victory to reach race day healthy!  Hope you get through the taper madness and on to the race.  Best of luck!

That is awesome Ben! i am not sure my hard ones would be able to match your easy ones these days - I need to get serious about getting back in the water regularly. How soon until you get to put all your monster training to the test?

I love those days.

Awesome Job, Neil. I think we discussed in the group running a fade in distances under 10k for open races (I have found that it works best for me - the math just never works in my favor to run a negative split in shorter distances). You ran what sounds like a perfectly executed fade to me. I would be interested to see how that strategy works out for you once 5k/10k season rolls back around?

Awe, come on Kim! Hope the foot is feeling better today? I too have found moving to be a dangerous sport.

Hi Jason, I am a little late to the game on this, but as a person that has switched to doing a lot of base-zone running for the past 3 years I thought I would chime in. I didn't do it to teach my body how to burn fat more efficiently; like you I sort of think those kind of processes take care of themselves. I did it so that I could simply run more without getting injured or beat up, and have found that I am now running much faster at an easy pace than I have in a very, very long time. Have I gotten more efficient at burning fat? Who knows? One thing I know is that I have gotten much more efficient at running; running easy no longer means running slow. The biggest efficiency change that has occurred is that my leg turnover is higher but my carry is shorter, at least at speeds over 7mpm. While not intentional, this is the outcome of running very hilly routes in my base zone and walking if I had to to maintain that effort. Not being one to really like walking during my runs, my body just naturally found ways to get more efficient, but none of it was consciously on purpose on my part.

while I have never thought of "fat loading" I do have a carbohydrate "stacking" strategy that I have used for years for ultra-endurance racing (anything that is going to be over about 9 hours) that involves carbohydrate depletion beginning about a week before an event (so by default a high protein & fat diet) and then jamming a whole bunch of carbohydrates in ("stacking") during the 3 day lead-up to the event. I am aware that there is a lot of research that cuts both ways on this strategy, but it seems to work for me - even a placebo works if you don't know it is a placebo.

All that said I think all the nutrition talk that often goes on is way overblown - in my experience endurance performance (or lack thereof) is governed primarily by fitness, mental preparedness, and plan execution. If I can be brutally honest (hey, we are all friends, right?!) to simply blame nutrition for a poor performance always seems a bit of a dodge to me.

I know I wasn't on the list of invitees to this question, but as someone who did a lot of specific computrainer work training for Oceanside in the form  of 1 hour threshhold and V02Max work, I think it had a huge impact, more so than the long rides, I think.  That's where I built fitness, I just used that fitness to get my rides to 4:00 etc.  The answer (for me) is it's not an either/or. I used the midweek stuff to crank out FTP work, the weekend ride to get miles and hills in.

btw, my training structure for IM is currently very similar to the HIM, still doing 2X week on the CT, about 1:20 and 1:00, with longer rides on the weekend than I was doing for HIM.  No idea how that will pan out, but we'll see

Yes, the shorter workouts will most certainly help, and will likely help quite a bit so long as they are not so short they become mostly anaerobic or neuromuscular. So basically taking a a few minutes or more. Keep working at a variety of intensities to improve the various aspects of aerobic performance, as seen in the TP chart. People can get hung up on the long ride for long races, but it's more to put in a lot of aerobic stress. While it's true that one needs to adapt to the position and other support areas need some building up (like neck & shoulders), it's not so much to get used to putting out power for a long time, though it does help to at least have *some* experience with that before getting to the event.

My training changes little by what events I may have coming up. It's focused more on across the board aerobic improvement and I adjust it according to what I think needs the most development. In the weeks leading up to a race there might be some race pace or effort work, but that's not more than a few workouts a week.

Bingo to the Bold! And FWIW you should be seeing improvements in both your run an cycling endurance due to your hard interval sets in the pool as well. I think this is a HUGELY overlooked benefit of hard intervals in the pool. A hard 100 in the pool in theory has the same cardiovascular impact as a 400 on the track, but just try and do descending 20x400 around the oval and see how trashed you are the next day. In the pool you can do it day after day, on the track, not so much.

As to increasing your FTP to increase endurance, if nothing else it gets you off the bike course faster at the same effort, so maybe you don't need so much "endurance." In some ways "endurance" is a relative term: for where I am fitness-wise at the moment I feel like pulling off a successful HIM is much harder than a successful IM even though I have a lot of "endurance" in the way it is generally considered. The HIM distance is just plain harder on my body as well due to the much harder "Steady State" effort for both bike and run: 85%+ FTP on the bike (bracketed against HR) and 95%+LTH on the run. A HIM is raced much closer to the edges than an IM (for me anyway) and therefore has a much higher potential for failure. So if I were to be targeting a HIM at the moment I would do much less "endurance" work (I have no problem sitting in the saddle) and a LOT more threshold work in the immediate lead-up due the harder effort at which you race it. For IM I am much more rigorous in my periodization. Strength block, then Threshold block, then finally an Endurance block in the immediate lead up. Each of those periods of course include maintenance work in the other areas, but they are pretty well focused on the task at hand. The first two are targeted mostly at developing physiologically (muscular and cardiovascular systems respectively) while the endurance block serves to "dial in" the race day plan: really figuring out where the edges are relative to these two systems so you can then stay WAY the hell away from them, at least until about mile 18 on the run. If you have managed the day well, only then is it time to see what you can really do.

Rusty (and others)...thanks for the input. 

My questions were mainly regarding the bike...if lower zone training on the bike would increase my body's efficiency at burning more fat instead to preserve glycogen stores.  I had a feeling the answer was no...or that there is at least no proof of it...and that simply increasing fitness is far more important (however you accomplish that).  I do plan to do all my running in lower zones to not only build up volume but to also prevent injuries...or at least see the injuries coming a little better so I know when to back off.

For now, I'm pretty much going to keep my 2 mid week rides almost exactly the same as my HIM training.  One 2 hour ride (35 minutes solo at HIMish effort) followed by a 1.5 hour hard group ride with roadies.  Then a 1.5 hour ride that may be a group ride or interval workout (2x20's or 5x5').  With a long ride on the weekend, I'll probably be in the 150-190 mpw range on the bike which seems a bit low...but lots of intensity in there.  I could add a 4th day of biking, but I honestly think I need the 6th day of running more.

Jason - I think that is a solid plan. With where you seem to be now spending as much time as you can on your feet during your lead-up is key IMO. Also, I would not be afraid to throw some longer "up-tempo" intervals in even on your long bikes - especially during the latter half of the ride. Only during your bricks (I imagine you will be doing them?) do you really need to practice your IM pacing. You have enough experience under your belt that I wouldn't feel compelled to do those big monster long runs or bricks that a lot of folks do; I have found that long runs over 2.5 hours demand way too much recovery (as opposed to the value of frequency). Longest brick would be about 4:00~4:30 on the bike and maybe as much as 1:45 on the run. That is enough to tell you everything you need to know about pacing & nutrition and won't leave you shelled afterward. and that would be about 10 days out from the race and I would begin my taper the next day. Honestly I learned the most from my long swim/bike bricks (1:10 OWS followed by 5:00 on the bike and only a short 15~20 minute easy run-off). For me at the end of that little 15 minute run I know if I have it or not. Lastly, the best advice I ever got about IM training was to just delete all the screens on my devices that show speed or distance and instead do everything by time and effort (unless of course you are on the track). This will set you up to really get a good feel for the effort you putting out and it will keep you from chasing numbers that really have no meaning. And I know it usually gets set up as a power vs. HR debate for training, but I have found that for IM training it is useful to watch both especially later in the game. In my case anyway HR becomes an incredibly accurate proxy for effort after about 2 hours. If I only watched power for both my IMs I would have under-performed in my first one and completely blown up in my second. Spend your long efforts on the bike getting really familiar with the relationship between the two (as well as cadence - its a factor) if you are not already.

It probably goes without saying, but I am incredibly excited by the opportunity you have and cannot wait to follow along. I think you got your spot in Kona in about the most fun way possible: it is a complete surprise, it changes everything as to how you thought your summer would pan out, AND you have to kind of crash-course in IM training strategies. I think you have both the skills and the smarts to do things a little differently from how many first timers go about it. It is going to be fun!

Rusty, thanks for all of that.  I really like all of your ideas.

At this point though, I really haven't decided on a lot of details...especially when it comes to long bricks.  My focus now is to just ease my way back into training and not to go overboard with anything just yet.  My #1 goal is to have fun with this, and I'm not sure how my body is going to respond to the increased training load.

I really like your idea about capping long runs at 2.5 hours.  My mind tells me that's not long enough (having trained for 3 stand alone marathons in the past), but I also have to accept that a stand alone marathon is very different from an IM marathon.  The recovery costs just seem too high for 3+ hour runs for someone like me.