Tri club collectively designed training plans for the 2010 season this evening. While mine has generally been designed, it is not complete. I have a good idea regarding foci for the different seasons and for periodization through until the end of April I’m sticking with the triathlon club’s regime. This is completely a matter of convenience, as it allows me to push it when my friends are pushing it and take it easy when they’re taking it easy. I also don’t have to pretend to coach one kind of workout while I do a different one myself, which is just a silly idea. In any case, as I have moved into my first base weeks of the year and am slowly working on continuing to develop the training plan to beat all others. Being that season of the year, the whole world seems to be discussing this stuff, lots of it is crap. It’s hard to sift the free insight from the for-sale products, but I did run across a good suggestion from Joe Friel. It follows.

Stolen Sourced from Joe Friel’s website:

Success in sport is just like success in any other aspect of your life. One of the requirements is careful planning. Deciding where you want to go in the future begins with knowing where you have been in the past. Recognizing trends and evaluating what you’ve been doing are both important steps on the path to racing better next year. This process can be accomplished in several ways. Talking with your coach or a trusted training partner is probably the best way. But lacking such people in your sporting life you can still accomplish the same end by answering some key questions. Here are some I often use. Your answers can lead in many different directions. Ultimately, the reason for such an exercise is to give you more focus when it comes to training and racing. It may even help you to decide why it is you devote so much of your life to training.

Here are five questions to answer at the end of your race season and before starting to prepare for the coming season:

1. What was the high point of your season? Why does this stand out for you? Was it what you thought it would be at the start of the season?

Quite clearly the highseason of the season was the month of June. While it culminated with me winning the Chinook Half triathlon near the end fo the month I trained excellently in the previous weeks and felt like I was very successful at many workouts. I was swimming faster than I thought I was able to be swimming at many workouts. My run pace was quick, despite not having a huge run volume in the previous couple months, and I was logging very impressive bike rides without getting as fatigued as I possibly should have been. I was racing well at the Tuesday night mountain bike races (threshold efforts), won a time-trial and managed a solid 200kms on my bike towing a trailer into a headwind at the end of a solid 4 day training block. I entered what I thought was a test-taper, but tapered well, hitting workout intensity accurately and cutting weight. On race morning I felt like I had eliminated fatigue but hadn’t recouped freshness, indicating I hadn’t over rested. I spent time during race week getting mentally prepared for race day and I then nailed the race, overcame the race day obstacles of a killer headwind, cramps and hot temperatures on the run. Ultimately I surpassed expectations and put together a race to be proud of.

This period of my season was supposed to be my buildup towards race fitness. I hoped to peak at the end of July, having added cycling prowess first and running speed second during the period of coming to maximal fitness for Calgary 70.3. It doesn’t surprise me at all that I was fast on the bike at this point in the season because I had hoped to be reaching my cycling peak earlier in the year but in retrospect I was impressed at how fast I was able to run at Chinook Half. At the time I thought I was primed to be adding some serious run speed to my fitness portfolio in the next six weeks and hoped to cut my half marathon time by ~8 minutes for the next race.

2. What was your greatest disappointment? Why did this happen? Is there anything you could have done to have avoided it?

The disappointing aspect of the season was my inability to get any faster at running during the month of July. I felt like I had designed a program for myself that was aimed at working on my limiters. I completed exactly the workouts I wanted to complete for three consecutive weeks of my run program. In retrospect I had misidentified what was holding me back from running faster. I was convinced that it was durability in my muscles that I needed to improve after suffering cramps at Chinook Half. I felt like what I needed to run fast was the ability to run tough. Knowing that my goal of running ~1:32 for the half marathon at the end of the 70.3 did not actually amount to running fast I was certain that I would be alright without doing much fast running. The issue was that running 1:32 although not fast, was faster than I had run a standalone half-marathon (Maybe I could have, maybe I couldn’t have, I hadn’t tried). In retrospect I was focusing on extending my ability to run longer along my current speed potential curve than I was at improving my speed potential curve.

Quick note -A speed potential curve is the curve you get if you try predict other distance race performances from a single distance race performance (or a couple performances) and plot them on a graph: Depending on your method you’ll likely get a curve – try it. If your curve is a straight line it means your prediction method is bogus, it should curve. If your body listened to what you drew on paper, the best strategy would be to get awful fast at 400 yard sprints you’ll be able to draw a better curve, and you’d in theory be a great marathoner. That theory would be a bad theory. In general though, your ability to run fast at 5kms should translate to run fast at 21.1 kms with the caveat that you run with sufficient weekly volume. Extending the longest distance you can run on your speed potential curve requires doing tougher long runs and long volume. Shifting your speed potential curve towards faster running requires doing those shorter and faster runs. A balanced approach to training sees you do some of each, but at any one point in time it may be most appropriate to focus on one or the other.

Whether or not I could have improved my run speed during July with a different run training focus might not be the only question. I spent July rather tired in comparison to May and June, I felt on occasion that I was trying to stick it out until August and then I’d get a break. That feeling I don’t believe was a symptom of my choice of training focus, it was more likely a symptom of where I was in my season as a whole. I think it’s pretty clear looking back that I had come to a rather sharp peak in my season at this point in time. Cutting weight going into Chinook half was a dumb idea, it likely extended my recovery from the race as well as made July tougher on me than it should have. I was trying to do some of my hardest training when I was already in my best shape. This is something Chris McCormack has talked about on and off, but I haven’t actually read much on the topic from people in exercise physiology. Not because I haven’t tried. I imagine these sorts of things would be terribly difficult to study, there are a million variables and unfortunately (for the researchers) one of the largest is probably motivation. Chris McCormack is also a big guy and his comments went like this, paraphrased of course because I have no idea where to begin looking for a direct quote: I often came into Roth [Late Aug] very light, and then tried to do my kona training while in excellent shape. That didn’t work because I had nothing left to improve as I built towards Kona. I learned that if I went into Roth feeling a bit flabby and out of shape I could still race well, maybe I’d have a hard time running sub 2:50, but it meant that when I started my Kona block I had a little bit extra to give. I’d come into Kona feeling fast and light and that’s what counts. endquote

Cutting 7 lbs during my taper into that race was also not the reason I stagnated in improvement at that point in my season. It’s quite possible that I was just extending my season for too long. Late February and early March had seen some of my biggest weeks ever in terms of dedicated training as I put together a key block of building towards the Yakima River Canyon Marathon. I had taken the shortest break possible after my marathon before getting back to training, everyone’s talk of how much time it takes to recover from a marathon had seemed like a challenge to me: how fast can I recover and get back to putting in big weeks? What that meant was, that I had tied the early season run focus directly into my summer triathlon focus. Taking minimal break probably made me run faster at my mid-season race but cost me the ability to keep building fitness into my end of season race.

3. Looking back, do you think you trained as wisely and as hard as you could have trained?

Without re-hashing the wise-ness of all my decisions relating to my disappointment in ability to continue running improvement through July I’ll comment on training “Hard” through the different months. I felt like I trained extremely hard during March. I was putting together a tough run program while at the same time coaching a tough bike program which I participated in with the triathlon club. March’s goal was to build muscular endurance on the bike and it meant for some hard sessions, combined with running longer than I had ever run before and with more volume than I had ever run before this made for a tough month. My swim frequency suffered as a result. March needed to be a hard month, and thus it was, I wouldn’t say it was too hard though. April was a fun month, I was reaping the benefits of a tough March (fitness wise) and was hitting key workouts hard and reveling the ability to finally get outside in good weather. At the time I didn’t feel like I was close to any limits of my ability to train but I was probably training too hard, not taking as long a break after the marathon as I maybe should have makes this month count as a net “too hard“. I backed off a bit in May from the aggressiveness of training in April knowing that I didn’t need to get too fast too soon. This probably saved me totally crashing in July, probably perfect execution this month. June I hit hard, no questions asked and July I probably tried too hard again! During July especially I was accumulating too much fatigue during the week for me to recover during easy sessions. I was replacing days completely off with easy swims or easy bike rides when I probably should have taken complete rests. Then I raced Calgary 70.3 and the triathlon season came to a close, of the 5 previous months I had netted too hard twice but never too easy, is there any secret I didn’t feel like I could perform my best?

Early August was a complete break and that was great, I didn’t want to train and I hardly did for two weeks. I then followed that up with a super challenging bike trip at the end of the month (Too hard – but that was exactly the idea) and tried to ease into Cyclocross season. I was successful at easing into Cyclocross season as I improved significantly through the course of the season fitness-wise, not just skill wise. It probably took a while for me to reap the benefits of that big bike trip but once I did my TT strength was definitely there. It took until the Blow Street Cross race before I put together my best race of the ‘cross season. Had I not gone down with piggy-flu I might have peaked for provincials, who knows. I’m confident I structured the intensity of training properly following my break in August.

4. What is the one thing you most need to work on for next season in order to perform better?

The race by which 2010 will be measured is Ironman Canada. That’s a fact that I can’t avoid, so while I’d like to take a good run at a few road races, maybe upgrade to Cat3, hammer hard at two half ironman races I have planned, set some PRs at the spring cross country race series and an early season half marathon, stick with the racing-pack at the Tuesday night social mountain bike races, and maybe place top 50 at the national TT championship, it is necessary to make the metrics for 2010 performance relate to Ironman Canada.

Of secondary importance on that day, I need to do quite a bit of work swimming to make that swim reasonably comfortable. To me, that requires technique improvement and swimming endurance. That is only going to be solved by bumping up my swim volume and continuing to accept feedback in the pool. This is currently why my shoulders ache from swimgame, it’s going to be a comfy 2.4 miles on race morning.

Primary importance on race day however, is my ability to run home with a good marathon. It needs to improve significantly from where I’m at right now. Based on my experience this summer I felt that once I was into the triathlon season my speed was capped. I could bump up endurance and my ability to run off the bike, and even my ability to run hills under control improved this summer, but my speed did not. I need to bring myself to a new level of running speed during the off season so that once the triathlon season gets going in full force next spring (when weekends start to be taken up by long bike rides and weekly volume gets stupid large) I don’t find myself trapped at running one pace and stagnate through the season. I need to have the capacity (base fitness, coordination, power, efficiency, pacing skills) for a far faster marathon than I have at the moment if I have hopes of running ~7:3X miles along Skaha. That will come with doing threshold run work in the off season allowing me to build into longer endurance runs when it counts next summer. For those 15-20 milers to wind up being fast, I need to start out with faster short runs in the early season.

5. What would you most like to accomplish next season? Is it a good stretch and yet within your reach if you do things right?

I will run the entire marathon at Ironman Canada August 29, 2010.

You can’t spell bicycle without also spelling ‘bile’

Nationals was a hurting situation, my result was +2 laps, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it to the finish but did kind of expect that I’d last until my penultimate lap before being passed by the race leader… and then a while later by the rest of the eventual podium. I entered the race not anticipating that I’d do well, but didn’t really realize that pretty much no-one else had similar plans. Plenty of the guys who race (and race well) in the Elite field in the Alberta Cup series were well off the back of the race.

Bile… well I was/am sick which in retrospect I’m only kind-of surprised by after a chilly and wet last weekend, a wet and cold ‘cross race on Tuesday night and a very cold ‘cross lesson on Wednesday night. Pre-riding the course on Friday night was evidently the last nail in the coffin and by midnight I was sick. Race-morning I managed down some dry toast and went back to bed instead of going out to the race site to watch Lesley win Hardcore/Triathlon Club what I believe is their first ever national championship (mega-congratulations!). I did eat a proper lunch before heading out to the race site and did a lousy warm-up. I didn’t have a trainer and riding around in the minus 5 degree weather to get the legs warm resulted in wind-chill to get the chin and toes really cold. Oh well, after running what I felt like was a respectable warm-up lap I staged for the start along with 38 others. Not willing to throw elbows and shoulders in the sprint down the start I took the first corner in last place… not to be relinquished. Not to be totally ridiculous I stayed on the pace for 3/4 of a lap at which point my HR was already 185 bpm and I needed to let it go. I didn’t actually puke (this time) but was starting to debate where I should hurl for maximum crowd-appeal, so maybe it’s a good thing they pulled me off the course.

All in all I’ll probably chalk it up as a good learning experience if it turns out that I didn’t get a whole lot more sick by doing so, the jury’s still out on that one. After two laps I had a rather jarring crash and was already well off the back of the pace. I had a legitimate reason to quit, besides crashing and being covered in snow and aching on my right hand side my brake hoods were way out of square and I had to bash them back into line to release the brakes. Quitting can’t be an option I had to tell myself as I hopped aboard and mentally ran through a list of body parts checking that they all still worked. If quitting is allowed to be an option things can turn south quickly, on August 29 there will inevitably be a reason to quit. The list of reasons to back off the pace is guaranteed to be long, not accepting the offer to quit is the name of the game.

The big reason for the bike trip was to make my way out to Penticton to sign up for Ironman for 2010. That is now done and on August 29, 2010 I’ll embark on what I can almost guarantee will be the most challenging day of swimming, biking and running I’ve ever done. I’m really looking forward to it. This blog entry is mostly notes for myself for next year, not terribly stimulating reading, so if you read it and get to the end thinking ‘what a waste of my time’, then don’t complain because you’ve been warned.

I was stationed in OK falls for the 2009 edition of Ironman Canada to be the support crew for two friends who would be racing on Sunday morning. They had a lot of tasks to do associated with race preparation and when they weren’t busy it was important that I didn’t try to distract them too much from their most important task in the days prior to the race: relaxing and letting all the fatigue drain out of their muscles. Despite having ridden almost continuously during my waking hours for the past 7 days I still opted to get out and make the most of the excellent riding terrain by doing another ride. I really wanted to ride the IMC course while there so that I could mentally log it in my head in advance of actually heading out on the course. I found that it is a huge advantage to actually ride courses prior to racing on them. I didn’t used to think this was terribly important but this spring when I started to do more mountain biking I realized the importance. Knowing what is coming up and having done the corners before makes it so much easier to ride with confidence. That makes a huge difference in actual speed when the course is technical and the experience lets you ride faster… on a triathlon course it’s probably not going to make a huge time difference but the confidence that it adds is significant in my opinion. I have an excellent mental image of the ride and know where I’ll likely feel strong and where I’ll likely need to focus hard to ride efficiently. If you ask me it’s completely reasonable to suggest that pre-riding the course this year made me 5 minutes faster on it next year. If I could train there on all my training rides I think I’d gain another couple minutes just by getting so familiar with the pacing demands of this course, irrespective of fitness. At an Olympic or sprint distance race the difference is likely only a matter of a few seconds, because there is only one pace – HARD… but for IM I think this is likely a significant advantage because the pace is never hard.

I had it in my head that I should leave the hotel in OK falls at around 8:30 pm so I’d be on the middle section of the course at the same time of day as I would be for race day. But being lazy in the morning was more important and so I took my sweet time to get out there, meaning I’d ride a bit more in the heat of the afternoon instead. I rode from the Penticton Beach down along Shaha and then up the short climb over McClean Creek and the fast curvy descent into OK Falls the previous afternoon. The start is just fine, quick and fast, the first climb is short enough that even though I probably won’t ride it in as controlled a manner as I probably should it’s not going to take a big toll on myself. The road is winding and the surface is less than ideal so it’s likely that the traffic on the course will cause some trouble here. I figure that if I can swim 70 minutes I’ll have had a good go of it, that would put 800 people ahead of me. Add only a couple minutes to that and I’ll have a thousand people ahead of me. It’s clear that I’m planning on hopping out of the water when the pack of triathletes will be at it’s thickest. The point all that is: by the time I’m at McClean Creek Road people will be settled in on their bikes and riding predictably and I’ll likely be ready to make some serious passes, maybe a hundred on this climb alone. I have reason to believe that I’ll be riding at a steady+ pace or high zone three here, getting through some of this crowd is going to probably help calm me down, it’s early in the course, not a long hill, and adrenaline is guaranteed to be high.

The roll south from OK Falls to Osoyoos was not dead flat like everyone describes. There were plenty of short rises along the way, I felt like they make this section of the course quite dangerous, not because they put you in any danger, but they offer a relentless barrage of opportunities to go hard for 30 seconds. If the mentality through this section is not well controlled it is completely possible that I get caught up with the huge number of cyclists who I’ll be tearing down the road with and just muscle my way up all those little hills. Deadpan flat would be fast and in one way would be dangerous because I’d feel like I had a significant advantage to push a big gear and use my momentum to my advantage, but this terrain is likely worse because each potential effort is effort is less than a minute, and each can be justified alone, but added together they present an opportunity to shatter your ability to run that afternoon. The key for this section is patience, probably the most here out of the entire course.

Once through Osoyoos, Richter Pass is exactly like everyone describes. It comes in four stages, each being about the same grade with either a downhill roll or flat stretch between them. There is tons and tons of room on the road here and taking the climb easy is no problem. Likely ride each section seated and finishing out of the saddle before trying to get aero and crank the speed back up on the flat sections interspersing the climb. Descending this pass is fantastic, it’s a straight shot down the back and 80 kph is basically guaranteed in the aero position with deep wheels. Immediately out of this descent the infamous rollers begin and they’re what makes this bike course hard. Again, the opportunity to go hard here is dangerously readily available; luckily each hill is long enough that you’re not likely to do so (hammer) accidentally. I’ll be doing the same drills all spring and summer that I did this year to improve my efficiency on the rollers. Seated climb into standing climb, get aero on the top and get up to speed, soft pedal the downhill in a big gear and recover, ride through the gears on the beginning of the ascent making sure I don’t push any of them too hard and settle in on the climb at a moderate pace. This is a tough section to ride and saying that I’m going to actually take it easy here is impossible, or I’m just lying. Taking this section actually easy means you’ll be here all day. I do need to try and take it as easy as possible though. That means I really have to work on riding rollers for the 2010 season, it needs to become a strength of mine. I am great at riding blazing fast on the flats already at 80rpm for hours at a time but I need to continue to develop my skills on the short climbs at variable cadence. I don’t need to get fast on the equivalent of the Great White North Half Ironman course, I need to get efficient on the IMC course.

After the rollers end the rest of the ride really plays to my strengths. There is a long and flat stretch all the way to Keremeos, the focus here is staying aero and likely pushing a big gear. Keeping it totally controlled I’ll be allowing myself to ride relatively fast contingent on the conditions that I am keeping up with nutrition and feeling like this is an easy effort. The out and back isn’t as flat as the first traverse of the valley but it’s generally flat. Many people get bored here according to reports. That’s not something I typically deal with while riding and if I stay focused here I can imagine that I’ll be riding my way past some more quick swimmers in this section especially if there is some wind to contend with that will make the non disciplined triathletes loose focus and perhaps get out of the aerobars.

The course leaves the valley it was in and heads up towards Yellow Lake. It’ll be dangerous to think of the climb having started as soon as the turn is made, it doesn’t. The grade isn’t flat anymore but it’s probably best to think of it as just a hillier section of the out and back until I pass the turnoff to the Green Mountain Road. At this point there is a climb on highway 3A that lasts three miles and it’s a real climb. To think of Keremeos to Yellow Lake as one long 20km ascent will absolutely shatter any positive thoughts you had going for you, the real climb is short and only 5% and I’m sure it’ll be loaded with spectators. Riding that 3 mile section at a moderate effort is A-OK but not the entire 20 km. I’ll maintain my out-and-back race plan through to the beginning of the steep section, stay focused and ride steady. Hitting the top of the short climb it’s time to load up my bottle cages with all the weight I can scavenge from the volunteers handing out gatorade and water because it’s a long fast descent. I’ll probably try to eat a pseudo-meal at this point in the ride. It’ll be sometime around noon and I have 25km or half an hour left to go on the ride. I’m thinking somewhere around 500-700 calories at this point including an entire bottle of gatorade and then follow it with just water on the run down to Penticton. It’s a stress free ride down that hill and I can give my digestive system some time to work. I’ll definitely run an 11 tooth ring here and it’s an easy cruise, low cadence, take it easy and have some fun.

What I learned about the Bike course on Saturday by riding it I feel like I learned about the run course on Sunday by watching it. That’s not to say I know everything there is to know, but I learned so much about Ironman running by watching this race that it felt like I was ready to give it a try. Looking at the faces on people leaving transition it seemed obvious who was headed out there with mostly just hope of running 26.2 miles, those who knew they were going to run 26.2 miles, and those who were already considering the possibilities of not finishing or walking a huge stretch of the run. The difference quite clearly was not who looked fresh and who looked tired, no-one looked fresh and everyone looked tired. Ironman marathon running has basically nothing to do with marathon running in my opinion. The only thing that’s the same is that you have to run for 26.2 miles. I learned basically that I am going to be starting that run feeling tired and that it wasn’t a matter of maybe getting 15 miles into the run and having to run 10 miles tired. Marathon running in my experience is all about 20 miles of warming up and taking it easy and then 10 kilometers of a real push through to the finish. I had guessed that maybe this would be the same deal except the hold-on section of the run would just be way longer. It’s not like that at all, not the first part nor the second part. Everyone was starting with the look of fatigue in their faces and no-one has the potential to jus run hard for 3+ hours. This was true for people getting off of their bikes after a 1 hour swim and 5 hour ride almost to the same extent as for people getting off their bikes after 90 minutes in the water and 7 or 8 hours on the bike, you start the marathon tired. This is a fact.

People who likely were going to end up walking looked in really rough shape, no surprises. The difference between people who look like they’re likely to be successful and those who are maybe going to be successful is all about efficiency and focus. Some people look to be running along in fine form but their faces just look like they’re shell shocked, they were looking scared, eyes wandering all over the place at the crowds, fiddling with their fuel belts. adjusting and re-adjusting their racing clothes. I think a lot of them have thoughts going through their heads like ‘the end of Skaha is a long ways away from here’… followed shortly by ‘oh man, that’s only halfway’. The people who looked like they were on track for success were focused and just running. Many of them had smiles on their faces and it seemed to me that their focus was down the road, not to the end of the valley, they were blocking out all of the unnecessary stimuli. When the first AG athletes started to come back into town they looked exactly the same as they did when they went out. Their motion was unbelievably efficient and their focus was identical to how they looked on the way out. These were the people who managed to hop off their bikes and do exactly the same thing for 3 and a bit hours. It wasn’t about starting out, running a ways and then pushing really hard to the finish, these guys started out and were consistent for 26.2 miles. They were successful because they didn’t have to slow down and that’s it. The guys who came back into town two or three hours after that likely weren’t lacking as good of a race plan or pacing or likely even fitness. What separated them was the fact that they did not have the durability in their legs to set out and do exactly the same thing for 3.5 hours, which was run at a reasonable, even and controlled pace. Running was hard from step one until they got to the finish chute, but the ‘hardness’ was all difficulty and never effort. Marathon running has an effort level that necessarily picks up at the end to hold that ‘best physical limitation’ pace through the finish, from my observations Ironman running has a mental effort level that necessarily picks up at the end to just keep going.

Nutrition for Ironman no longer seems terribly complicated. Nutrition for the bike in my opinion is all about keeping enough calories in my stomach that I am forcing my stomach to absorb as much fuel as it possibly can. This means eating as much as it takes to keep me on the edge of starting to get full. In my experience that’s 400-450 calories per hour, no problem. I’ll eat a bunch at the top of yellow lake and let my stomach work through that for the last half hour on the bike mostly because I know I’ll be doing more than 50 kph for much of the descent and am unlikely to eat well, I finish off without having depleted myself and not a full stomach, but likely still some food in there. Getting on the run it’s going to be so hot that I can likely drink and drink and drink. Lots of that is going to be coke and gatorade, some gels in the mix if I am also drinking water which at the moment I think is probably unlikely, I’ll just be chugging gatorade. Nutrition on the run is actually pretty simple once I realized that to be successful the goal is just to hang in there and not slow down. That formula means: do what it takes not to slow down, stay cool, drink, run, drink, run, eat if I can, drink, run, stay cool, run, run, run. I’ll easily be getting 300 calories per hour on the run just by drinking if it’s hot, there is nothing complicated here. This was a relief to observe, figuring out nutrition has been of great interest to me thus far during my triathlon involvement and it’s something I’m pretty good at. Also note that what I might think is actually really simple is not super straightforward, the point being though that fueling during Ironman is guaranteed not to be more complicated than anything I’ve done before which is what I was expecting. I thought I had a big learning curve and the answer is no. Now that I know this, I think the only thing more complicated than what I’ve already done is nutrition for RAAM. No plans are set yet!

Going fast at Ironman actually seems simpler than going fast at a half Ironman. At the half distance the idea is to try and shave off just enough of your speed at each event from their stand-alone PB times that when you put them together you get to the finish as fast as you can. That means that you have lots and lots of things in the balance. You’re going pretty hard on the bike so you’ll get stomach aches if you try to eat too much. You can deal with cramping on the run because you really stressed your muscles on the bike to move fast. At Ironman, you swim, then you go for a slow bike ride during which you have to stay focused on the task at hand but never need to move quickly, you can eat lots of whatever you want because you’re not going too hard. Then you get off the bike, you’re tired and you have a long ways to go. What makes you fast is that you start out of the gates doing what you can do for the entire run, likely by the time you’re a few aid stations in you’ve got your pattern down and you do exactly that for the rest of the day. The concept of performing at the edge of your physical capacity does not look to be a component of Ironman success whatsoever. Ironman success is based on consistency, durability, focus, determination, self control. On race day that’s about all you need, and lots of those things don’t require training, they require learning. The one training based component, also the thing that I think has the potential to make me relatively quick is durability. I don’t have durability for Ironman running yet, I’ve got Ironman durability on the bike but no humanly possible bike ride can make up for slowing down on the Marathon and needing to walk a few miles. I also recognize that the durability that I’ve developed is not heat-proof. I need an asbestos coated durability for Penticton. So that’s all I’ve got to do in training: learn how to be a durable runner. Then do some fun stuff in training (on the bike or on bike-run bricks) that forces me to come face to face with my ability to stay focused, my determination to complete hard workouts, and self control to stay reserved in my efforts. That’s the recipe, if it bakes a good cake, then this blog post might be more interesting than I had first guessed it might be.

Friday morning I was off down the road atypically early at 7:15. A coffee stop and a pastry in Peachland charged me up to take advantage of my first tailwind of the trip and I really let it fly for the final 40 kms of my trailer-towing tour into Penticton. I found myself running a full bore 25 mph along the shore of lake Okanagan at around 10 am. What a change from the pattern of the last 6 days usually being pleased any time my speed peaked above 25 kph! I locked up the bike and trailer, explored the Ironman expo and had my body fat percentage tested at the Tanita booth. I weighed in at an entire percentage point below where I was only 7 days prior when departing Edmonton 1200 kms ago. Maybe I should write a weight loss book, cut your body fat, eat as much as you can, and ride your bike all day every day. People probably won’t go for it but it works even for the already lean!

After a meeting up with Stefan and Glenn I ditched the trailer into the trunk of the Subaru, content to have towed it to Penticton and not feeling the least bit of desire to ‘finish the ride’ so to say with the extra weight, what’s the point? With what suddenly seemed like a very springy bike I rolled out of Penticton and set off down the beginning of the IM bike course. I rode the first 25 kms of it and scoped out the entire marathon run course as well before calling it a day, dismounting the bike and sitting on my butt in OK Falls for the rest of the afternoon. Our accommodation is a stone throw from the run-turnaround and pretty good, most importantly there’s plenty of TV channels and internet access to keep the athletes entertained and off their feet. Both of them are looking like they’re ready to go on Sunday although Glenn’s road rash isn’t as healed as he’d like it to be by this point. Likely he’ll loose the scab on his arm during the swim on Sunday when it gets soaked, so hopefully it’s not too uncomfortable on the aerobar-pad. It’s not going to slow him down, just make it less pleasant.

I’m riding the Ironman course tomorrow to log a mental image of the entire bike route for a long winter of motivation. I’ll set off early on Saturday to get the ride done under similar ‘morning’ conditions to a potential race day. Hopefully it goes well… then we’ll likely try for an early night because race morning comes super early!

Today kicks off Epic-Adventure-2009 part three. [Part 1 link] [Part 2 link]. My third and (likely) final bike ride through the Rockies for 2009 is going to be the longest and potentially most exciting yet. It’s also likely to be the slowest, but that is with reason, I’m towing a trailer with camping gear. The planned route will cover more than 1100 kilometers in the span of 7 days and take me from Edmonton to Penticton. Penticton is the destination not because the beaches will be swarming with beautiful women or because the local wine is the best in the country, but because it’s the home of Ironman Canada. I have three friends racing there this year and want to go and cheer them on, but I also intend on signing up to compete in the Superbowl of Canadian Triathlon in 2010. Making the trek out to Penticton is a requisite step in preparation for that, signing up can only be done on site.

Saturday’s route takes me south out of Edmonton along familiar roads for the first 50 kilometers to Calmar. I’ll be sure to stop in at the Bakery for some walnut donuts and then I’ll continue on towards Drayton Valley before turning south on Highway 22 towards Rocky Mtn House. The ride will cover in excess of 220 kilometers and I have plans to potentially camp at Twin Lakes near Rocky Mountain House. The second half of the route includes some serious hills, nothing long but rolling terrain with a trailer can be an emotional rollercoaster in addition to the physical one. Day two will take me through the foothills and into the Rockies, I’ll hopefully update my webpage periodically this week with stories from the road. I also plan to actually take more than two photos, I’ve carried my camera many days this summer but used it on surprisingly few of them.