Miami Preview: Part One

Okay so my last post was a little bit more of a season review and what the overall feeling was heading into Miami, now for what the training specifically has looked like the last month and a bit. I will try to give some details but I won't include what my swim workouts have looked like since that my coach's intellectual property.

Oct 3-9: I did 32 hours of training this week which tied my season high. The week included 23 km of swimming over 6 days (one was a technique session with my coach so not huge volume); 540 km of biking highlighted by an over-under threshold session on the bike, 4x15' at race wattage, and capped the week off with a 172 km ride from Thornhill to Trenton on Thanksgiving. That bike ride was done immediately after a 21.1 km long run which progressed gradually to close to race pace, and with about 40 km left in the bike I felt it big time. I wasn't able to stop at a gas station to get a refill on my bottles, and had to go a couple hours without anything. I ended up bonking very hard and was swerving around the road until my Mom came and got my some fluids to fill my bottles with the Infinit Mix. I ended up finished the ride quite strong which was surprising given how out of it I became at one point during the bonk. I was literally so weak feeling that I couldn't physically manipulate my hand to change the gear on the bike. Running this week was pretty good with 100km of mileage including the long run, and then two workouts on the Tues and Thurs which included some long tempo/threshold intervals and strength work on hills.

Oct 10-16: This week was a much higher intensity type of week but still 25 hours of training. It included 18 km of swimming over 5 days but a lot of high end speed work; 300 km of biking highlighted by a VO2 max interval session on the bike with 400+ W intervals (8 W/kg), some threshold workouts, and then a massive session on Sunday which was 2 hours on the trainer with 4X20 minutes at close to FTP (90%). This workout went incredibly well and my fueling with the help of my custom Infinit formula was perfect, no cramps, no bonky feeling, no GI issues. Ran another 100km or so this week including 2 fast workouts: one was 2k/1.5km repeats at 3:04-3:10/km, the next was a tempo run on a trail right into 800s (the last one ended up doing 1km and split 3:02/km). The week ended with a solid win at the Burlington 10km where I was basically using the race as a workout and tried to stay as relaxed as possible throughout. I ended up running 33 and the effort level was perfect - comfortably hard.

Oct 17-23: This week was probably my best week of training of my build. 27 hours of training which included 20 km of swimming over 6 days (one technique session with coach); 310 km of cycling over 6 days including a threshold session, that same VO2 max session of 400+W intervals, a big over-under high end threshold session alternated by 95-105% FTP, and then a big long brick workout on Sunday which was 2 hours straight of around race wattage, right into a 10km uptempo run. This week's running (about 100km total) was highlighted by a 25 km long run, a 2x20 minute tempo run, and then the best workout of the build so far 10X1km where I averaged around 3:10/km, and the final kilometer repeat was 2:58 after already about 15km of running - suffice to say I was pumped.

Oct 24-30: This was a smaller volume week especially on the bike due to a incredibly painful infection I got in a sensitive area which I won't go into the details about, but the week ended up being less than 20 hours of training including about 20km of swimming over 5 days, only 136 km on the bike because of the infection however one of those was 60x30 seconds all out/30 second recovery which made the normalized power and work level extremely high - around 300W NP for 60 minutes of work. Running was also impacted by the infection but managed to put in a tempo workout on Wednesday, and then Thursday got through 5x1 mile where I averaged 5:20 per mile (about 3:18/km), and ran the Niagara Half Marathon on Sunday which still gave me about 100km on the week. The race went okay. My mindset going into the race was to treat it as a workout with Miami only 2 weeks after, so I was intending on running about 1:13:50 (3:30/km) and ran 1:13:47 so pretty much bang on what I planned. My only problem was that I wanted this to feel pretty comfortable, and while it did feel very comfortable for the first 15 kilometers or so, the last 6km was an absolute sufferfest. Two thing went against me: 1) I wore shoes that are intended for 5km racing, and because of it by 15km my calves were absolutely shredded. I was running in a group with two other runners and we were trying our best to help each other out by switching the lead every 1km since we ran into a stiff headwind start to finish which on its own made the effort level higher than I was intending, but then the added calf issue meant I had to back off the pace and drop back off these two at 16km which was a little demoralizing. My right calf in particular was so sore I thought I was going to tear something so I really backed off the pace these last 5 km. The second issue was I was depending on the on-course nutrition because I didn't have something to carry my infinit along with me, and the on-course hydration was some 0 calorie nuun stuff which I think is great for staying hydrated during the daytime, but now during a race I want some carbohydrates, not to mention at one of the aid stations the volunteer pulled the cup back from me as I reached for it for some reason meaning I got nothing for pretty much the entire second half of the race. Anyways, with this I was suffering the last few kilometers from a lack of sugar and hydration and the quads, hips, and everything was starting to feel wonky. So basically I hit the time I wanted, but not how I wanted to do it, not to mention my calves were pretty much incapacitated for two days following the race. Luckily in Miami I am wearing a Skechers shoe with more cushion, and that I am more used to racing in -- plus it's bright Miami Orange!

Oct 31- Nov 6: No running monday or Tuesday thanks to the calves, but two big bikes outside those days (ya I said outside) just to get the feel of the road once again. The first was just long and steady and the second was 9x3minutes at threshold wattage (the last one was 3 minutes at 312W). Overall biked 300 km on the week, swam just under 24 km over 6 days, and ran just under 75 km for 25 more hours of training. My big run workouts were on Wednesday which was 12x2 minutes, then on Thursday did a 12 km progression down to race pace (each split gets faster and faster), and Sunday did a 24 minutes of intervals (2,2,3,2,4,2,3,2,2,2) with short 30 sec recoveries between each on an extremely hilly trail which made the overall RPE very high. There was also a brick workout on Saturday.

Nov 7-Race Day: This week I'm tapering so just a couple hours per day of training.

My Gameplan for Race Day to come in part 2, stay tuned. I hope this gave a decent look into what my training looks like, and some perspective on day to day workouts. Like I said at the start I'm obviously not going to go into crazy detail on every workout since I don't won't to devulge too too much to competitors.