Just finished a pretty intense few days of training, including an Ultraman “Race Simulation”. Over Friday, Saturday & Sunday I put in approximately 90% of the overall Ultraman load (and exceeded the elevation gain I will experience in the race), which gave me an initial taste of how I will feel come race weekend, as well as a very good sense of how prepared I am currently and where I need more work. Overall I am super pleased with how I handled the heavy load and am feeling great as I embark upon the final 2 months of hard training before I begin my taper. Here’s how it went down:
Friday: I put in a 7500 yard swim workout consisting of some hard long distance repeats — a series of 800’s and 500’s interspersed with sets of hard 10×100 repeats. Jumped right out of the pool and onto my bike for 4 hours of very hard climbing in high heat. I tackled some of the longer and more challenging climbs in the Santa Monica Mountains, including (if you know the area): Piuma — a laboring 7 mile / 2 peak climb that never gets too steep but doesn’t relent; Rock Store — a very steep climb (about 3 miles?) that gets tougher as you go; and Kanan. Felt really strong and had no energy dropoff. Did a good job of making sure I took in 300 cals / hour, all liquid — Perpetum and Cytomax.
Saturday: Joined 2008 Kona qualifier and fellow barrister Dave Meyer for a 7 hour 115 mile ride. We covered a wide variety of terrain, including some good ascents (Latigo & Portola), descents (Route 23 into the Valley) and flats (Westlake, Lake Sherwood, Hidden Valley, Lynn Road, Las Posas and PCH) across both high heat and cold heavy fog. We took a few too many pit stops for my liking, but overall a very solid long day in the saddle. Started to get a bit lightheaded the last hour and a half, so need to work on taking in more solid food earlier and more consistently in the day on my long rides. But felt great to hold pace with Meyer, who is a very good cyclist and has a higher power output and lactate threshold than I do, based on my most recent test results first week of August. So this was a great confidence boost and evidence that my cycling is improving significantly, as (based on Dave’s power meter) we were throwing down a consistent 200 watts without my HR climbing out of Zone 2. (115-130 bpm). Overall, a very good day.
Sunday Morning: With VERY heavy and fatigued legs, I put in a super solid 2 hour / 15 mile run in the morning. Felt great and negative split my loop, finishing strong while remaining in my Zone 2 (125 – 140 bpm). Could have run another hour at this pace, which I built to a sub 8:00 / mile. Definitely one of the better runs I have had in a while, all the more satisfying in that it was done in the wake of several very difficult preceding training days (including a hard 15 mile train run on Wednesday).
Sunday Afternoon: Another 1 hour Zone 2 run. In general, these double run days are very difficult for me, as I get quite fatigued in the afternoon. And today did not disappoint. The first 15 minutes were horrific — my legs were just cooked. But after this “warmup”, all my base training kicked in, I loosened up and felt just as good as I did in the morning. Concentrating primarily on good form and swift cadence, I again negative split the course and finished very strong. An hour later however, my legs were shot — dead tired.
Monday: My race simulation was technically over but still another hard day on the bike. Meyer and I embarked from Glendora (east of Pasadena) and headed straight up for the next 3 hours to the ski lifts at Mt. Baldy. What an incredibly challenging and scenic ride. 22 of the 28 miles of climbing through the Glendora Pass were on a gorgeous road closed to vehicle traffic — no cars, banked turns, great pavement and breathtaking views. Just a few cyclists, a couple badass land-lugers and one coyote to keep us company. We climbed above the snow line into the idyllic Alpine village of Mt. Baldy and finished the last 3 miles of the climb on very steep (15% grade) and trecherous switchbaks all the way to the ski lifts at 6350 feet of altitude. I felt like I was in Switzerland. Cool clean (but thin!) air, log cabins and that unmistakeable pine scent. After a brief rest we headed back down — and what took us 3 hours to climb only took us 1 only one hour to descend, averaging 28 mph despite rollers and a few climbs! Again, no cars & banked pavement — the most fun I’ve had on a bike in a long time and so refreshing to traverse new terrain. It was epic!
Nutrition: For the most part I handled the nutrition / food intake aspect pretty well, although I need to take in more solid real food on the long rides. I have to start eating more than just bars and Perpetum and get used to real food. So I still have some experimenting to do here.
All told, the past few days have given me a huge confidence boost going into Ultraman. That 52 mile run still has me scared stiff, but I’m getting there….Today I’m tired, but not too bad. Ready for more…..
