7 Weeks to Sub 8 Iron distance triathlon
Next week, the title will be 6 weeks to sub 8...
The only problem with committing to a series is you find yourself getting yelled at by your girlfriend for writing Substacks at 8pm on Easter Sunday but needs must. Anyway, happy Easter everyone. This week’s post is meant to be dedicated to “The bike course” but that’s going to require a more in depth analysis so I’m going to write a blog on my bike fitness and do the course next week.
My training week
The TLDR is I’ve done 3 hours of swimming, almost 9 hours on the bike and 48km of running. Most of you will probably read this and think “there’s absolutely no way he’s doing a sub 8 hour Ironman off that”.
Away from the headline stats, this week I had one day off on Tuesday (though it wasn’t particularly restful as I had a day trip to Paris so was on my feet all day) and it’s been an extremely busy work week. As we work with a lot of clubs and race organisers, we find public holidays quite a busy period as people are free when they’d otherwise be at work. I did 3 “important” sessions this week - everything else was easy pace.
Threshold TT into brick run
4.5 hour ride with Ironman pace riding with a run off the bike
My longest ever run (27km at 4:04/km)
I’ll talk through each of these bike sessions in some detail…
How unfit is it possible to be?
In order to go sub 8 hours, instead of asking myself “how fit can I get” I’ve taken the approach of “what’s the minimum level of fitness to go sub 8”. The answer I got, from wind tunnel test results that I’ll speak about next week, is an LT1 of around 300W in order to be able to ride at 280W comfortably in the race. In order to achieve this, I need an LT2 around 370W or higher.
On Thursday, my session was 8 times 10 minutes. I progressed the power from 300 to 370 Watts and took a lactate measurement at the end of each interval. All of these felt sub-maximal, I wrote down my RPE at the end of each block and the highest it was (after 370W) was a 7 out of 10 and my heart rate here was about 84% of max heart rate. The lactate values are quite interesting and validate my feeling that I could have gone way harder (which is good, the session was 8 x 10 minutes threshold not 8 x 10 minutes as hard as possible).
The bike session can be viewed on Strava here. My average power for the whole ride was 277W for 2.5 hours, the normalised power was 302W and my average heart rate was 157bpm.
After this ride I went for a run, the session was “alternating 200s” as 200m in zone 4, 200m in zone 2. My average pace was 3:55/km for 9k off the bike which felt really good considering it was such a hard ride. Session prescribed by The Running Algorithm of course.
A long ride with a club TT
Those of you who aren’t Brits won’t be familiar with the club TT but imagine a small group of (mostly) blokes meeting up in a lay-by in spandex onesies to bend over and pin each other before cycling away as fast as possible then we all meet up in a car park after, rank each other off (to find the winner) and make excuses about being slow.
I had a 4.5 hour ride with 2 x 50 minutes at Ironman pace planned. Instead I did the intervals slightly differently due to towns getting in the way so I did 40 minutes (295W), 20 minutes (290W), 25 minutes (294W), 24 minutes (as a club TT - 349W).
The entire ride is here, and after I got home I jumped off the bike and headed out for 6km in zone 2 which I tried to take a bit easier knowing what was coming next.
I felt good on the run, finished it at the shop and drank my weight in chocolate milk. After this came my longest ever run.
It’s dawned on me that a marathon is very long
The Running Algorithm gave me my longest ever run and it was 27km. I did it too fast which is why the adherence score is so low.
The main thing I was pleased with is that I managed to consume 90g/hour of carbs on this run and held a decent pace on a set of very tired legs (the above ride was Saturday, this was Sunday). I think add a taper and carbon shoes and 4:00/km is looking very doable.
I’m definitely on the lower limit of being able to achieve a sub 8 hour Ironman (it could be 7:59:59 for sure) but after key sessions this week around a lot of work, it’s starting to feel possible.
Next week’s blog will be how I use my wind tunnel data, myWindsock and the special suit that I’ll be wearing on race day! I better finish up here and get to my dinner. See you all next week.