On Sunday I did a very easy 50km ride and my knee pulled up with no pain at all. This weekend I have gone back to using the foam roller to keep my quads and ITB under control - something I forgot to do when I had the hip injury. I'll need to keep using the foam roller for the next 2 weeks and hopefully with the reduced training load during my taper, my quads and ITB will end up in great shape for the race.
This morning I ran for 2 hours and covered just over 21kms. On one hand it is great to be able to get in another long run, which means that my knee is definitely on the mend (and the hip is pretty much fully healed). Of course 21km is way under the planned 30km long run. But the more frustrating aspect is that it took me 2 hours to run a half marathon and whilst I could have run significantly faster if it was a race, I did not feel like I could run another 21km at the end. Considering I did this run fresh, it would suggest that my aim of a sub 4 hour marathon in the Ironman after a 180km ride is no longer a possibility. I still believe I could achieve this with an uninterrupted block of training, but the injuries have simply robbed me of the required mileage (in fact I believe I could go close to 3h30m). And without a sub 4 hour marathon, the chance of doing a respectable Ironman time has gone, which is extremely disappointing - but maybe good that I am realising this now.
It is not all doom and gloom. I ran the 20km this morning with no nutrition or hydration (I did eat breakfast beforehand). In the race I will be grabbing food and drink every 2km, so hopefully this will make a significant difference. Running a touch slower should also help.
This afternoon I dropped my bike into Cyclespeed to get serviced and had another massage with Burkey. The usual muscles were tight - ITB, quads, calves & hamstrings - but nothing was too bad and in general I seem to be in reasonable shape. I have one more massage booked the Thursday night before the race. Burkey is booked solid with massages for the next 2 weeks, hopefully his magic hands will hold up under the strain.
This week I'll do a couple of 10km runs and concentrate more on swimming. Saturday I plan to join a group swimming the Ironman course at Frankston. Sunday will be a bike ride at the club Velodrome session - this will be my only bike ride before the race. The velodrome will be a good location to test my bike post service and make sure everything is working perfectly. I've got the race wheels (and tyres) on the bike and I won't collect any glass whilst on the velodrome. I will avoid riding on the road with my race tyres. 90% of the Ironman bike leg will be on Eastlink and it would be almost impossible to pick up any glass on Eastlink. So any puncture experienced during the race is most likely glass picked up in the week beforehand or on the couple of roads in Frankston that lead to the start of Eastlink.
In summary, this first week of taper is on reduced training load with a focus on swimming (ironically it will probably be more training than last week). Next week will be an extremely easy training week.
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