Perspective

I've been analyzing and over analyzing my training like never before lately.... I guess because I put a pretty specific goal out there, which I've never done before. It's a challenge, and it's SO incredibly hard to put training times, paces, HRs into perspective with = race pace.

My bike rides have been pretty incredible lately... avgs are higher than my entire history of cycling (ha - that makes it sound like I've been riding forever!). But, in the end how do you make an 18.3mph training ride = 20.5+ race day?

I keep going back to the fact that the first time I did Soma I trained at about a 16mph pace and pulled off a 19mph race pace - 3 years ago.... I have come a lot further on the bike in that time.

And, running too - although my miles are very very minimal (had my peak running mileage this week of 19.5miles) they are getting faster. I actually negative split my long run this week by over :30 (sub 9min pace) for the last half of the run. But, since I have never had a great run split in a race, it's really hard for me to come up with a run time in the race.....

I know a lot of this is lack of confidence, which I'm trying for. I guess in 5 weeks I will no a lot more.....

So, yesterday I had a 3:30 ride on tap, with a :30min transition run after. All my training buddies were MIA so it was going to be a big mental day for me. My legs were TRASHED. With those 240 lunges, 8x400s, a couple bike rides and my longest run since CDA the day before I was a little worried. I've also been having some issues with muscle cramping for a couple weeks. I think I got behind on my hydration and salt intake, and I was paying the price. I actually had a calf cramp wake me up one night, and it was sore the next day. This is usually not something I ever have?

So, anyway... I had picked a route that would have me climbing for the entire first half..... Then I had a nice 10ish mile descent - and ending pretty flat.

My legs were worthless right from the start, so I started coming up with things to occupy my time. Thank You Garmin! I added the lap view to my screen so I basically played with that and did math in my head all morning. I started with the warmup... a nice flat start, then about 8 miles of climbing.

13.86miles, 1120ft ascend, 720 descend, 16.8mph - avg HR 124 (yah.. I was having a hard time getting going...)

The next portion was pretty much all up - straight up Pima road
9.63miles, 870ft ascend, 100ft descend, 14.9mph - avg HR 152 (I was GLUED to my Garmin. My legs were KILLING me and I kept fading. If I fell below 150HR I made myself stand up to pick up the pace for a minute

The 3rd segment was my favorite, thru the town of Cave Creek. Nice, FAST descents. I was at an overall avg for the ride of 16mph for 90mins so I knew I need to pick up the pace to hit my goal of 18.2avg....

I decided to see what I could do in the second half so I decided to push thru the pain and really pedal (geared out most of the way) on the descends & flats. I did it - over the next 90mins I avg'd 20.6mph, 145hr, 1000ft ascend & 2000ft descend....

The unfortunate part of the ride is I think I hit EVERY single light - so a LOT of stop and go..... my garmin graph looks a mess with all the up down up down.. All in all it was a good day. On completely trashed legs I was able to hold an 18.3avg on my own. I had some rough patches, but overall I'm happy with the results:

60.1miles, 18.3avg, 3:17mins - HR avg 142, max 168, ~3300ft ascend and descend. I think the low HR was due to all the stopping and going, and the rough start....
Transition run 2.6miles, 9:24pace (I actually ran with ice down my top - it was 95degs out by the time I was running.....)
But my big question - how does all that translate into race day?
**Update - as requested, the graph. You can see all the drastic ups and downs are the damn lights!!!

Comments

:) said…
That's a good training day, but we want to see the pretty graphs! :)
momo said…
so since i'm so sucky at racing, i'm not sure i'm the best to be giving you advice, but i'd say you ABSOLUTELY have the ability and the mental focus to meet your goals. i think the garmins take into account the slowing to a stop light - etc, and so it seems perfectly reasonable to me that you can do 20.5+ easy peasy. just go out there and do you thing, k, you'll rock it. don't do a momo and over analyze. STOP RIGHT NOW. :-)
Erin said…
Wow. what a training day! Very pretty graph...and Momo is right. Race times are always faster for a number of reasons. You'll rock SOMA for sure!
Supalinds said…
I know you can do it!!! Believe you me. I upped my training average by 2 mph at IM - it is so doable.

Great training, btw. I wish I lived closer to you!

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