I’ve cut the volume of my biking and running to freshen up the leg muscles, but I’ve amped up the swimming in their place – so far logging 9400 yards for the last 3 days. Monday, I put in 1000 yd at 1:25/100 pace as part of the main set and found that I was consistently ahead of that pace. (As I mentioned in an earlier post, a 1:25/100 yd pace is my goal for the 1.2 mile swim Saturday.)
Yesterday, I did my usual weekly fitness gauge swim of 200’s on 3:00 and 100’s on 1:30. I was elated to nail them consistently at a new best pace of 2:37 to 2:39 for the 200’s and 1:14 to 1:16 for the 100’s.
I feel good in the water – smooth and relaxed. If I can find some good feet to swim behind and assuming my open water tracking isn’t horrible, this is going to be a good swim for the Richter kid come race day!
We’ll have to see if the high cycling mileage from Ironman training is enough to offset the benefit of the shorter, high intensity training days that I’ve unfortunately missed from the Thursday Night World Championships rides so far this year (for various reasons). But I feel pretty strong on the bike, and I’m hoping this spring’s training sets me up to be stronger in the latter part of the bike leg.
Last night I did a last minute equipment shake down on the bike, as I’ll be using some new stuff. First, I’m not sure that I’ve bought into this contraption yet, but I’ve set my forward hydration up to be an Xlab Torpedo mount with a standard water bottle mounted horizontally. It’s argued that this is more aerodynamic than the more common Profile Design aero bottle I was using. I plan to jettison the bottle – which will be filled with a mixture of Powerbar Perform electrolyte drink mix and CarboPro – when empty and replace it with whatever’s at the course feed station. Let’s hope the feed stations are set up by the time I get there unlike several years ago when they weren’t ready and I ended up having to do the whole ride with the liquids I had on board to begin with!
I hope this darn thing saves some precious watts because it's a bit harder to drink out of!
Also, instead of a standard bottle in my downtube mounted Zipp cage I’ll be using an Xlab aero bottle. I wondered if it would be awkward to handle but it seemed to be just fine, so I’ll go ahead and roll with it and see if its skinniness can’t save me a few precious watts out there!
This thing looks kinda cool anyway!
And I’ve spoken enough about my running form as of late but I really like my high mileage Ironman running plan that I improvised from the Hanson Brothers and I feel like I could PR any running distance event right now if I tried. I’m really excited to get out there on the run course and see how this plays out.
As for strategy, I have mile 1, 6, 7, and 13 as my target surge miles. Mile 1 because the adrenaline will be there from being fresh on the course, seeing my sweet wife cheering me on, and it could be a chance to assess relative strength from any competitors around me. Mile 6 because I’ll be nearing the turnaround and will get my first look at any competitors ahead of me. I’ll be looking for any wounded prey and will want to set myself up for a chance to stalk any that are hurting worse than me. Mile 7 because that situation will be reversed! I will want to look strong for any runners coming up behind me so as not to appear as wounded prey myself! If I can keep up the surge from this point on that will be outstanding, but I need to prepare to suffer for the run back to the finish. Hopefully, I can at least surge from mile 12 just from catching the scent of the finish line.
Weather, for once, looks great for race day. Forecast is 76 degree high and 50% humidity. That’s the best you can hope for at this race, so I’ll take it.
At any rate, everything is stacking up for this to be a new personal best!
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