Since last week's Race Simulation, I've had a really good week's worth of training involving 7.7km swimming, 174km of riding and 49.3km of running. Definitely one of my better weeks. Total training time for January adds up to just under 49 hours.
Tuesday night I ran 20.6km with the Triathlon Club as part of a long run training session. Afterwards I was understandably quite stiff and sore, but recovered reasonably quickly and felt quite good when I ran again on Thursday. Unfortunately Mark was not so lucky. He ran just over 17km and pulled up with a very sore achilles. It was so sore, he missed every other session for the week (which was always planned as an easy week). But worse is that it means he won't be able to race the Olympic Distance triathlon at Sandringham this weekend. Mark tested his achilles with an easy bike ride this morning to ascertain whether his achilles can hold up to doing the swim and bike leg (and skipping the run) - as of yet, I haven't heard how this ride went (fingers crossed).
Talking of dodgy achilles, Peter did his longest ever training ride this morning - 182km to Sorrento and back averaging over 30kph. After riding so fast and pulling up so well, his confidence for Ironman (in 7 weeks) has taken a major boost.
This morning's session for Elaine and myself was a Brick session (ride and run). Elaine rode 50km and I rode 60km and we both ran just over 10km off the bike. The bike ride was roughly 8km at race pace following by 4km of recovery - repeating for the whole ride. I was very happy with my ride efforts. My average power for the race pace segments was 240, 240, 260 & 238 watts (target was around 240). Obviously the 260 watts segment was a touch high, but this was due to trying to avoid getting mixed up with large packs on Beach Rd.
In the last 3 brick sessions I have really struggled to find Half Ironman run pace. Today it just all seemed to fall into place as I averaged 4m25s pace for the 5km out (with a tailwind) and 4m35s pace coming back (headwind). My 10km split was 45m23s - I ran an extra 600m to cooldown. Elaine also had a great run completing the 10km in a fraction over an hour, but the run included a slower cooldown section.
Today's session has given me a lot more confidence for the Half Ironman Geelong. Before now, I had no proof that my planned pacing was even close. In this morning's session, all my effort segments on the bike were done with a average heart rate in the low 140's and my average heart rate for the run was only 152bpm (I had an alert set every time my HR went over 155).
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