Road to IRONMAN Blog #12— Some pretty solid training!
This week was a great week of training, I got back into outdoor swimming and put some (for me) really good distances in, as well as some long early morning sessions and an average sub 8 min/mile run for 7.5 miles over an hour!
Whilst I stayed at home this week and my family were living it up in Ibiza, I managed to get some really good training in. My schedule and results were the following:
Monday: 1 hr swim, which I opted to do outdoors this time and with the nice weather we had, it was actually pretty pleasant & a nice start to the morning and soooo much nicer than it was back in January! I swam for ~1hr and got ~3000m in! Then in the afternoon I had a 1hr run to do and covered 7 miles.
Tuesday: This was a nice session out on the bike in the afternoon, some tougher hill climb work to hit the effort levels and then some faster sections on the flat. 1hr 15 planned, covered ~16 miles in 1hr 19min.
Wednesday: I had a funny feeling this was gonna be a tough one as it had to be a brick session and given the durations, this meant either an early morning or evening session and I’m not a huge fan of evening workouts, so an early start it was. Into a ~50min ride with 8 sets of 30 sec sprints, which I thought would be reasonably easy but was actually pretty tough! Then afterwards I had a 1.5hr run. This was tough, I was already feeling kinda spent after the ride, but managed to come in just shy of my 10 mile goal with 9.43 miles, all before 9am, so I was pretty happy with that. But I still contemplated my decision of getting up at like 5:20am to do this when I was in bed at the alarm went off!
Thursday: What a bliss! Rest day.
Friday: had a 1hr swim to do, which I was planning to do outdoors, but as I drove down, I realised the outdoor lake was drained! So I then did this in the pool, arrived a bit late, got a 40min ~2000m swim in instead, which was ok.
Saturday: this wasn’t too bad in terms of duration, but a tough mix of exercises: 40 min swim, 2hr bike ride, 45 min run. I got to the pool a bit late as I was trying to get my new axle set up for the turbo trainer (harder than it should have been!) got ~30 mins and 1500m in which was decent, then my 2 hr ride went really well and I got 38.76 miles in, just over 2 hrs(the flatter route helped get my average speed up to 18.9mph and get close to 40 miles, so I was very happy with this!), then into the 45 min run, I covered 6.22 miles and went for ~54 min to make up the time I missed in the swim.
Sunday: As I woke up could feel the results of the exercise from yesyerday! I had a 1hr endurance run planned and I sort of went for it. Based on how the run went yesterday, I was aiming for 7 miles in the hour, but close to 30mins I’d hit 3.75miles and I started thinking about 7.5 miles… I had a 1 min walking break at the 30min mark so as I got near the end I knew I was going to have to run fast. As I saw see the mileage hit 6 miles, I was like ‘it’s go time’ and those next 1.5 miles were tough, but I got it done and hit the 7.5 miles sub 60 mins, which I was super happy with! It ended up being (I think) my first sub average 8 min/mile run at 7:58, especially over a duration of an hour!
I’ve always done my training that I’ve been assigned for the Ironman, unless I’ve been ill. There’s definitely been times when I’ve just not felt like training, whether that’s been due to less than ideal weather, feeling a bit tired at the end of the day and still have the training left to do, however there’s one thing I’ve taken away from the early morning starts, in particular.
This ties in with David Goggins’ book I’ve read a couple of times now, which I know I reference often! But when I wake up for these early morning workouts, I often think “ugh! I do not want to do this!” I then go to think, “mhm well maybe there is way I can do this in the middle of the day and work later or just do it in the evening, it’ll be fine and better than this”. But after I spend a minute trying to talk myself out of it, aside from knowing that those alternatives aren’t really ideal, I think to myself, this is giving in, taking the easier option and will be going back on the decision I made last night to do this workout in this morning. And that’s the thing that makes me stick to it and get up and do it. I feel like not doing this, is just taking the easier and more comfortbale option. And if there’s anything I’ve taken away from Can’t Hurt Me, it’s that we should probably charge down the harder decision, confront that feeling for comfort and make it happen!
I’m not saying this as an ego sort of thing at all! Nor that everyone else should get up early and workout! I would like to share as perhaps it could be of use for you reading this, whatever your own personal challenge might be. In the words of ‘David’: “Life is one big tug-of-war between mediocrity and trying to find your best self.”
And with that, a huge thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts too, please give me a shout on the usual platforms or let’s connect on Strava! On to this week!
Cheers!
Cal
