IRONMAN LOUISVILLE 2017 TRAINING
WEEK 21 – August 7 > August 13
I have trained for three Ironman races and I get to the point somewhere around Week 20 or so when I declare myself ready. All it took for me to understand that I wasn’t was the Saturday long ride and run workout.
It started out okay, and it was a beautiful day – low 70’s, mostly sunny, light breeze if any. My only option for doing a long ride and not want to murder people on the bike trail is to head south from where I live to the more rural farmland of the far south Chicago suburbs. I live right on the cuff of urban and rural living. Harlem Avenue near where I live is a six lane motorway. South of Monee, it is two lanes with barely any shoulder or traffic. So I headed south with a plan to turn around at 2 hours and head back to complete the scheduled 4 hour ride.
I have a terrible sense of wind direction when I ride for some reason, but I was keeping an eye on the corn and plants and they weren’t moving at all. So I felt strong and kept pushing. I had built up an average pace of 18.6 mph before I turned around. Then I felt the wind. It was from the north, and I knew I was in trouble because 90% of the ride back would be back into the wind. So I ended up battling my way back home, watching my average ride pace slowly tick back down to a more realistic level for me. I pushed pretty hard, but it still took me an additional 11 minutes on the return trip. I ended with an average of 17.9 mph. Not only was I now super tired from the effort back, but I also had dropped below 18 mph average.
I ended the ride with a 5 mile run at a pretty good pace. But I could tell that I was spent. I showered up and went to Panera for some soup. Between the Southwest Chicken Tortilla Soup bowl (super salty and full of chicken/protein), and about a half dozen refills of sugary Lipton Brisk Raspberry Tea, I was able to turn myself around and feel good again. But after that 5 hour, 80 mile training day, I knew that I surely do need these remaining few weeks of training to be ready.
On Sunday, I ran the scheduled 1 hour 45 minute run not knowing what to expect. Turned out I felt pretty good. Ended the run covering 12 total miles. Maybe I am ready!
TOTALS:
2 Swims – 5600 yards this week / 70050 yards total
3 Bikes – 131 miles this week / 9598 miles total
7 Runs – 41 miles this week / 646 miles total
an amazing run 