2021 IRONMAN CHATTANOOGA TRAINING
WEEK 14 – June 6, 2021
Most of my subject matter for these weekly write-ups comes from the long Saturday bike ride. That’s when I do most of my thinking, as I sit on a bike and sweat through 3.5 hours of riding. But when I sit down on Sunday to wrap up the week, I sometimes can’t recall anything about what I was thinking about on the previous days’ ride.
There were a couple of notable things about this week. I added an 8.5 mile run on my off-day Monday because I was traveling last Sunday and decided to push it to Monday, so Week 13 is short one run, and Week 14 added an extra one. Not a big deal, but that meant I would be doing back-to-back run days.
On Thursday, I raced a 5K, which beat me up a little. And also lead to moving a planned ride to Friday, which would precede the long ride on Saturday. So basically, I was messing with the structure of the plan and screwing up built-in recovery between bike and run efforts. On Saturday, I could feel some fatigue in my thighs when I started.
I made a couple of tactical mistakes on Saturday. The ride was to be 3.5 hours long, so I needed to ride out for an hour and 45-minutes, but thankfully the wind was in my face heading out, so I figured I’d add an extra 5-minutes into the wind to compensate for the easier and faster return trip. That was a pretty good estimation, but as I kept hitting 20mph riding back home I thought I would need to add a little more extra time to the return trip. As I got closer to home I could tell that I should have skipped the extra couple of miles. I finished the ride in 3:37 instead of 3:30. Again, not a big deal, but I realized that if I ever need to add on to make time, it’s better to do it nearer to home instead of out in the middle of the ride.
The second mistake was not drinking enough to replace what I was sweating out. It was a hot day, and although I thought I was drinking enough, I really wasn’t. I have to learn this lesson over and over every time I train for an Ironman. When I finished the 61-mile ride, I was suffering and was contemplating skipping the 30-minute run that I was supposed to do. Somehow I found the strength to get it done. Afterward, I wondered and marveled at how I was able to handle the heat at the 2019 Ironman Chattanooga, which was a much longer day in much tougher heat. I guess that is what training, building, and acclimating are for. Live and learn, and drink more!!!
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I have to brag on my son Ben for a minute. He came down for a visit on Friday and mentioned that he thought about running the 5K that I had run but instead, he opted to run a 3K (I know, weird distance) in Rockford because there was a $300 prize for the winner like he was sure that he could win. He won and later said it was an easy win. 5:08 min/mile pace is what he averaged. I wish I had some of that speed! Well done, son!
Swims: 2 – 3000 yards
Bikes: 3 – 92 miles
Runs: 6 – 33 miles
an amazing run 