Philly weekend goes well as we approach final preparation for the Ironman - Part One

Confidence is up at the moment following a solid week of training and capped by a productive weekend with my coach and the staff at Cadence Cylcing and Multisport in Philadelphia.

Downtown Philly

This week I had a gentle swim on Monday and a 2 hour endurance ride and 30 min recovery run on Tuesday. The swim was pretty uneventful but the ride was really satisfying. I went back to the evening ride at Wakefield after a break of a few weeks. There weren’t quite as many people as when I first went along but there were still probably 15-18 in the A group. Those people who have read some of the earlier posts may remember that the first time I did this ride I was dropped unceremoniously during the first acceleration. This week I watched the same thing happen to a couple of guys who clearly didn’t understand the difference between the A and B groups and instead of getting dropped I actually found myself at one point 4th wheel with the rest of the pack struggling to catch us and it felt good. After the ride I kept going for another 25 minutes before the recovery run because I felt so good.

Wednesday was a long swim (3.7km) and went fine although the last 1000yrd set was a bit slow and I suspect I lost count and did an extra couple of lengths. Thursday was a very hot and humid day (95 deg with a heat index factor well in the 100s) and I was down for a 2 hour endurance ride with 3 x 15 min lactate threshold efforts followed by a 45 min run with 4 x 3min zone 5 (that means almost flat out) efforts. With the heat and tired legs I was dreading this session. I took my bike out at about 5.30pm and headed to hains point to do my LT intervals. I was pleasantly surprised how good I felt and was able to hold 45 minutes of LT work without too much difficulty. During the ride home the heat really attacked me and by the time I got home I was pretty dehydrated. I had to shotgun a couple of pints of water before the run and almost inevitably the large volume of fluid gave me stomach cramps when I tried to run. I kept walking running for 20 minutes trying to shift the cramps but everytime I sped up they came right back. I limped home defeated after a little over half an hour of trying to get up to speed.

Friday was a much anticipated Day Off but included a very long and frustrating 5 hour drive to Philadelphia.

Saturday morning with no racing and staying in a hotel would seem to be the ideal time for a bit of a lie-in. Instead Holden asked me if I wanted to meet him at 6:15am at the Cadence store to do a local 8 mile time trial before we headed out on the Cadence group ride. I do not know what has happened to me and for some reason my normal sensibility escaped me and I whole heartedly agreed to meet him. Wendy and Ben dropped me and my various bags helmets and two bikes at the store. After some bike maintenance Holden and I headed off to the Art Museum where the West River Time Trial starts every week. This is local time trial where you take a number and cycle 4 miles up Martin Luther King (River Road) before turning around and coming back. When you get back you call out your number and the organizers post the times on a Yahoo group.

It is a really great little TT and it is very kind of the organizers to give up their time in this way. Holden was number 40 and I was 41. The riders all went off 30 secs apart. I asked Holden what HR I should aim for and he told me to just go as hard as I could for the duration. I set off and my thighs immediately started to protest. I ignored my legs and kept going. I was suffering and I was really glad to see the turn around point at the Kelly Drive Bridge. On the way back I really started to suffer. I knew I would never catch Holden but I did catch the guy who had set off a minute in front of me. By that stage I was dribbling a bit and I kept looking down which entirely defeats the purpose of wearing the aero helmet as it then sticks up in the air like a sail. By 6 miles I was weaving and when I saw the curb I would try and veer left and when I saw the solid white lines I would try and veer right and that was the only level of thought I was capable of. As the trees cleared and I could see I-76 I thought the finish was just around the corner but I was wrong and I still had a mile to go. The finish is back up a short little hill and by the time I crossed the line I struggled to shout out my number.

I couldn’t stop to get my time as the Cadence group ride left at 8am but I later found out I did it in 19:21 which I am more than satisfied with. Holden got an 18:21 which put him about 4th fastest on the day. It took me 20 minutes to recover as we headed back to the store and even at this time in the morning it was already very humid and starting to get hot. Back at the store we met up with the other 8 guys or so who were coming out and headed off. The ride went out on a bike path for the first 45 minutes and I spent the time chatting to a Dane who was studying in the US and who was also a keen runner with a sub 2:50 personal best in the marathon. After we left the trail I found myself in Valley Forge and the scenery went from bland to beautiful in only a couple of minutes. Valley Forge was really stunning with fantastic open vistas and fields. Unfortunately the views came at a cost and that cost was hills.

The first 40 minutes of the ride had been very gentle but now I sweated my way up the climbs. I was tired but I was also happy at how quickly I was recovering after each and every climb. On the way back in to town, this time going through some very nice neighbourhoods, I found myself toward the front pushing the pace and feeling pretty good. There was one 7-8% climb that seemed to go on for ever but I had a 12-27 cassette on the back wheel so I just shifted right down and spun easily up the hill. When we got back to the store Holden suggested I keep going so I cycled back to the hotel to meet up with Wendy and Ben.

Manayunk Arts Festival

We had arranged to meet up with Holden at St Joseph’s University for some swim training but not until 4pm and despite the mornings activities it was still only a little after 11am so we decided to check out the Manayunk Arts Festival. The festival was pretty interesting and it was a shame that I had to go swimming as Smirnoff had a couple of tents and there was another booze tent and the other white meat (pork) roadshow. It was bloody hot and beer, cocktails and BBQ pork seemed a lot more appealing than more exercise at that stage. As we headed back to the car and I pushed Ben up a hill my legs were screaming and I wondered how the hell I was going to get through a swim workout and then some LT testing the following day.

Ben taking advantage of Holden's Mahoosive Shoulders

Luckily for me I managed to get Holden talking so the endurance swim he had planned had to be curtailed and instead I had a fairly easy 30 minutes in the pool where he got me to work on a couple of things. He again reiterated that we were not going to change anything before Lake Placid. He was happy with my stroke which although far from perfect was perfectly good enough for Triathlon. I explained how frustrating it was that I was not getting significantly quicker in the swim legs and he explained how swimming was not like the other two sports and more effort does not always get you the results you want. Swimming is more intuitive and at some stage it [my stroke] was likely to click for me and I would get faster but at the moment I was perfectly OK doing what I was doing.

He made me kick for a couple of lengths making sure that my legs were very relaxed. For the Ironman I am not to kick very hard at all. I am going to rely on my arms for propulsion and the floatation from the wetsuit combined with a very light kick to keep my body up. After the kicking we looked at my catch and pull to make sure that it was looking OK. The first thing he noticed was that I was tensing my legs which in turn was pulling the leg buoy under water and making me less dynamic. I was told to relax and let the float bring my bum to the surface. When I relaxed I did feel a lot lighter and was able to concentrate on my stroke. If you think you may be doing the same thing with a pull session instead of pushing off with your legs just float in the water and let the float do its work before you start to swim.

Holden was pretty happy with my pull and upper body movement. I am a little inflexible and stiff through the shoulders and back but I have a reasonable Natural Recovery (swinging your arm forward like a windmill rather than the more deliberate bending and then thrusting of the arm that you see a lot of ‘classically’ trained swimmers using). I was however losing a lot of efficiency by not catching enough water before the pull. Just like rowing you can only pull against the water that you have ‘caught’ with the paddle. In this case the paddle is your arm. The trick is to fully rotate your shoulder so that your arm is entering the water as far in front of you as you can reach and then after gliding through the water and just before you lose your momentum you try and achieve an EVF.

When I say EVF a doctor may think of Erthrocyte Volume Fraction, a photographer of Electronic View Finder and a dyslexic of help getting pregnant but a swimmer who is up on the latest acronyms would think of an Early Vertical Forearm. You can only pull on what you can catch so catch much and catch early you must (in a silly Yoda voice). You want to get your forearm, not just your palm, down and as vertical in the water as possible without sacrificing your reach. When you get the hang of this you are using your lats a lot more in your stroke and after only a few minutes of trying my forearm and lats were both aching.

When you have a good catch you can then pull hard against the water and get into the mindset that you are flinging the water you have caught behind you as you propel through the water. All sounds a bit Zen but I must admit when I thought like this I did feel a lot quicker through the water. We are going to work on this over the next few weeks just to improve power output without really changing the stroke and to condition the muscles I am going to rely on at IMLP. We are not looking to increase in water fitness or work anymore on the kick and a lot of these last few swims will be pulls.

Swim over Holden went home to check on his dog and we headed out to take Ben to the Art Museum steps so that when some 'classic' movie channel is running Rocky we can tell him you've been there. We then went to find something to eat before getting back to the hotel where all of us pretty much slept like a baby, especially Ben.

I know there are a lot of pictures of Ben for what is supposed to be a Triathlon blog but then he is cuter than most triathletes and it keeps his Grandparents happy.

…… To be continued.