Too Fast

Something a bit different for a weekday session today. A ride/run session. Sessions like that are usually the domain of the weekend, but in the lead up to an Ironman, changes occur.

The session went well enough. It was thumpingly windy, which was a pain, but surprisingly the ride was good anyway. I had a couple of intervals to do which went smoothly and overall the ride was quite enjoyable.

Once out on the run though, I really struggled, but not in the way you might think. Usually when I head into a training run off the bike I work pretty hard. However, the point today was to really focus on holding Ironman pace, rather than running as fast as I could. For me Ironman pace, particularly when you aren't running very far, is actually pretty slow. I really struggled to slow down enough. Nice problem to have I hear you say, but in reality it was a bit annoying. Everyone knows the old saying, 'never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear'. Hmmmm that doesn't sound right...

I think the saying I was after is 'you race how you train'. I really really don't want to get off the bike at Busselton and run at a good pace for 10km, suffer for 20km and then walk for 10km. I know that I tend to go a bit to hard off the bike. I got it under control pretty quickly at Mandurah and had a good run, I didn't get it under control at Cairns and it bit me pretty hard. In a full Ironman I think the consequences are an order of magnitude higher again. If the run goes badly, it goes badly for a long time. So for me getting that pacing right off the bike, settling quickly and getting into a rhythm are pretty important. I did that okay on the run today, but probably not well enough. I really struggled to fight down that urge that is saying to me, 'go harder!!!'. I have another shot at it on Saturday and settling quickly will be my focus.

The ride last night went okay as well. In yesterday's post I was pondering how to do my intervals, given that it was pretty windy. The conundrum is that with a big wind, you are stuck with the problem of having to do some intervals into that wind. Sometimes I am able to work around it, but not last night. In the end I sucked it up and just did a few intervals into the wind. With intervals like that I just ignore the speedo and focus on effort instead since there is no way I can hold my target speed into the head wind. The trick is not beating myself up about it, the effort is still hard after all. I suspect that situations like that are where a power meter would come in handy. Other than the headwind intervals though, the ride went well. Good speed, felt nice etc.

Afternoon off now, so I might get on with that.