A Week of Workouts of Epic Iron Proportions

This is the last BIG HARD workout week before Ironman.  Our coach organizes a day called Epic Saturday.  We do a long open water swim (OWS), followed by a century ride and then a 45 minute run.  In total, I will workout for 9 hours this Saturday   I think that this workout day is more about the mental part of ironman training than anything else.  Getting yourself mentally prepared to do the transitions, to focus on swimming and then move onto the bike, and then the run. At this point we have done the work, it's time to do a dress rehearsal.  It's important for me to look at this like a race, I need to bring my own race nutrition, I can't rely on stopping at a gas station if I get hungry or am sick of GUs, practicing not pushing to hard on the first loop, I think I might even run up the helix (is that taking it to far?).  This year Epic Saturday is in Madison.  We're pretty lucky because the Madison Open Water Swim race is on Saturday and we can use that for the swim portion.  In fact, the course for this weekends race is the exact same as the Ironman swim course.

As I started planning for Epic Saturday I looked at my trainingpeaks schedule (an wesite where my coach loads my workout plans for me) and I realized that this isn't just Epic Saturday, it's Epic WEEK!  Every workout it really long.

Monday started out with a planned 2.4 mile OWS.  Since I've done a TON of OWS this season and a cut is just healing up I did my swimming in the pool and just went to Smelts practice (my Masters swim team).  I haven't been to a Monday night in forever because it is usually a rest day and the Monday night coach is notoriously hard and well planned out to kick you A$# into shape.  I figured it would be a good time to go so I did.  In hindsight I think I regret not just doing a 4000 in the pool by myself.  The workout is below:

Warm up: (1000 total)
400 swim
200 pull
200 IM
200 kick

Set 1: (600 total)
3 X:
4 X 50s: easy, medium, fast, easy
set 1: Free on the 100
set 2: Kick on the 1:05
Set 3: Free on the :55

Set 2: (1000 total)

Pulling: (allowing 1:05 per 50)
50, 100, 150, 200, 150, 100, 50
200 Free (medium)

Set 3: (I completed 1350 total)
20 minute continuous clock swim

Set 4: (300 total)
6 X 50's, IM order w/ no free

200 cool down


In total I did a 4450.  I was spent after this.  It was a hard workout.  One thing I am proud of.  My average, per 100 time for my 20 minute continuous swim was 1:27.  Why is this a big deal you might be asking.  It's a big deal because I was swimming at Ironman pace.  Ironman pace is supposed to be your swim test time + 20 seconds.  My last swim test time (done in May) was a 1:18/per 100.  So theoretically I should have been around a 1:38.  I was a whole 11 seconds faster than this.  The other thing that's cool is that my first swim test per 100 time was a 1:28.  That test was done in March, 2010 while I was training for my first Ironman.  When I did that I almost threw up and my arms were ready to fall off.  Now, a whole 17 months later, I'm able to hold that pace for a 20 minute swim.  To me, that's flippin AWESOME.  I think a lot of that gain is from just from simply swimming continuously.  I didn't stop swimming in the off season.  I also think that swimming with a masters team has helped make my workouts more intense.

ok, back to the topic of this blog: Epic WEEK!!!

Last night I had a 2:30 bike/run workout with the team.  It was good to see everyone. It was also good to hear that i'm not the only one who's had some training "funk" days where they just wanted it to be over. In fact i'm pretty sure I herad some profanity when Liz (coach) yelled at us to get our running shoes on because we had to go for a 25 minute run.  The words weren't directed at our coach, more at the fact that we're all just tired.  I have said this many times before in this blog.  A lot of this training is about getting our bodies to perform even when we are physically and mentally exhausted.  We always run after we ride.  Every long workout has either a hard workout the day before or one the day after.  We have been teaching our bodies how to use fuel (food and sports drink) in the most effective way possible so we can keep ourselves moving forward.  I haven't ran on fresh legs in months. Why, because there is nothing 'fresh' about doing a marathon after already having swam 2.4 miles and biked 112.

Which brings me to Day 3 of Epic week:  A long run.  Today I woke up at 5:30 and got a 1:45 run in.  At lunch time I will run another hour which will conclude my long run for the week.  I have broken up the last two long runs and I think I like it.  It's still really hard.  It's hard to keep yourself focused during the day to make yourself go back to the gym and finish the run.  Running 1:45 is still a nice long run.  I got in 19.8 miles.  It was really slow.  It was just hard though.  I was pacing 10 minute miles and then I would walk for 30 seconds after every mile to imitate walking through an aid station.  I hate practicing as if I'm walking through aid stations but I think it's important to teach yourself how to do it.  One might say: how hard can it be?  Realistically though, it takes discipline to ONLY let yourself walk for 30 seconds.  If you don't practice it, you won't know how fast 30 seconds goes by and next think you know you look down and 2 minutes has gone by and you are still sitting at the aid station.  So yeh, I do it.  It means I get less miles in on my long runs (Coach is adamant about NOT going over a certain amount of time on these runs due to the impact it has on your immune system)

Day 4 of Epic will be a rest day:  WOHOOOOO

Day 5 is a 1:30 bike ride,

Day 6 is Epic Saturday (2.4 mile OWS, 100 mile ride and 4.5 mile run)

Day 7: 50 minute run.

This is one of those training weeks where you can't think about it and you just have to do it.  In fact I asked my friend Cindy how her epic week was going and she said this exactly "I have to just keep doing everything without thinking about it and at the time that I have it scheduled without skipping or substituting anything because if I don't do it my whole week will literally fall apart".  I couldn't have explained epic week any better.  It's one of those workout weeks where you have to plan EVERY workout for the entire week and then just do it when you say you will and DON'T stop to think about it.  If you think, or change the plan everything else will just fall apart.

I will leave with a final quote that I saw last week on tridad's blog: