Road to IRONMAN Blog #16 — a 3.8km swim, 87mile ride and a 11.5 mile run
The 2 rest days this week tricked me! As I’m getting around to writing this at half ten on Sunday eve, I’m feeling the effects of the weekend’s training.
The training during the week wasn’t easy, but not crazy, however I had a feeling the weekend’s sessions would be fairly demanding. I kicked off on Saturday with a planned 3.8km swim, for which the outdoor marine lake had perfect conditions. I saw another swimmer busting out the lengths and holding a nice pace, who also had a 70.3 Ironman swim cap on, so I decided to latch on which helped knock out a few of my own lengths. I was super happy with this swim and completed the planned distance in 1hr 23min, although given the slightly swervy lengths I suspect this was over the 4km distance, so I’m very happy with that!
Sunday came around and it was time to get the 5hr ride done in combo with a 1hr 45min run. I was feeling comfortable with the ride and also very happy with the distance, feeling less excited about the run to come, which I think is the longest I’ve done off a ride and had some tempo sections to it. And I was right. After about 30 secs after setting off I realised I had left my water bottle at home, but figured “I’ll be fine”, not quite. I started off with a fairly quick pace, for me, as instrucutred and got the first two miles done in sub 8min/mile average pace, the scenery was gorgeous with the sunset, but it was the last miles that were really tough. Feeling very dehydrated and just aching all over, I was very happy to be done! In my mind I had a 11mile goal, which turned into 11.5miles, I actually got ~10/75 miles done by the 1hr 45min mark but decided to carry on for a moment to reach the 11.5 mile goal.
My week looked like:
Monday: rest day
Tuesday: ~40min swim, 1400m, 30min recovery run, 3 miles.
Wednesday: 1.5hr turbo trainer session, 21.81 miles, average power 127W.
Thursday: recovery/easy spin turbo session, 40min, 9.55 miles into a 1hr run, 6.08 miles. Didn’t quite have the energy to get 7.5miles nor a sub 8min average pace this time.
Friday: rest day.
Saturday: 3.8km swim planned. Result 4540m (taking Garmin swim distances with a pinch of salt) 1h 23min.
Sunday: 5hr ride, 87.18 miles, planned 1hr 45min run, ended up being 1hr 55min and 11.5 miles. The run was very scenic along the coast with the setting sun.
This week during some of my training I’ve been listening to a couple of episodes of a podcast that a friend recommended — The Rich Roll Podcast, hosted by Rich Roll who’s a vegan ultra endurance athlete. I listened to most of the Meatless Meat Moonshoot episode with Bruce Friedrich — which was pretty fascinating to hear about the developments in the cultiavataed meat space. However, whilst I was out on this Sunday evening run, I listened to the episode with Hellah Sidibe who recently ran across the USA (on plants) - 3000 miles in 84 days, which is rather incredible!
At the start of the episide Hellah talks about pushing past his own limits during this achievement and shared his thoughts on how we are all more powerful and capable than we might think we are. I agree. Whilst I’ve felt that I can acheive my Ironman, when I think of some of the workouts and distances I’ve done, I do think it’s kind of nuts for me as 12 months ago there is no way I thought I’d be in a position to ride a 100 mile bike ride or run 7.5 miles in under an hour or some of the longer run distances and feel reasonably alright the following day. This is something that others also talk about — David Goggins lives by this and is shared extensively in his book.
I agree, I think we’re all incredible capable and can achieve more than we perahps think we can, I don’t ‘live by this’ everyday, but deep down I know and believe this. I think it’s about getting outside of our comfort zones, thinking how can we really go for it and then go and make it happen. So with that, perhaps we should all challenge ourselves to push past on our limits, get uncomfortable and see what we can achieve!
Thank you for reading,
Cal :)
