Monday, November 2, 2009

Been awhile, sorry

Wow it's been a couple months since I have posted to my blog. Busy training I guess. This Ironman build I would mostly characterized as "weather challenged". Lot's of rain in Atlanta with lot's of flooding this Fall. I did an epic 120 mile ride / 8 mile run in what ended up turning into a record rain fall day, 10 inches. About 4 hours of that ride it was raining so hard I couldn't see the road more than 10 feet in front of me. At one point I had to carry my bike through thigh deep water as the roadway had flooded. It was crazy and I only came across 1 other biker the entire day. I was biking of the Silver Comet Trail, which is a rails to trails bike path which goes from Atlanta to Alabama and connects with another one there which goes all the way to Anniston, AL. Just to dangerous to ride on the roads with cars in these conditions. I typically see probably 500 other bikers on a Sunday ride, so yeah, I had the place to myself. A mental toughness day for certain.

The other epic workout, my longest run of this build, was a 22 mile run and yes you guessed it, it was raining. The Alpharetta Greenway (a paved running path) I typically run on was flooded so I had to run a route on the streets. It was 50 degrees and raining and to say Atlanta is hilly is an understatement. Over 1800 vertical ft of climbing for this run. The run course for Ironman Florida is pancake flat so I certainly have not been training the hills for I just don't need to. The cold, rain, and hills really stuck it to me on this run and it took a lot out of me. I had to travel that week and sitting on a plane for 5 hours to CA the next day wasn't a treat. Another mental toughness day for sure. If it rains during the race I will call upon these two day's to use as an advantage.

All told this IM build was pretty good, however the weather and shorter day's did prevent me from getting all my training in, especially on Thursday's which is a longer bike ride. As the training goes on the rides become longer, but the day's become shorter so by the middle of Oct. I was having to cut those rides more than an hour short. 4 hr rides turning into barley 3 hrs rides is not a good thing.

I think I am going to have to take some risks on the bike for this Ironman and push miles 40-90 a little harder than typical to stay in the hunt for my ticket to HI. The trick is to leave enough in your legs for the marathon you are about to start running. The problem is you don't know the answer to that question until mile 20 on the marathon. The first 20 miles leaves you thinking....did I leave enough, did I leave enough. If you didn't all kinds of hell starts to break loose and things start going wrong (cramps, stomach problems, amongst a whole host of others).

We shall see!