The will to win must equal the desire to prepare.
Behind every big accomplishment lies sound time management. This weekend marks 5 weeks until Santa Rosa IM and I am in the thick of my high volume training. I am spending up to 20hrs a week training in all three sports. That time does not including the amount of prep that goes into each workout (nailing the nutrition and gear prep, properly recovering and stretch/rolling, etc.). When you add in a full-time job, there is not much time left during a typical day to pursue other avenues of growth.
That is where sound time management and the ability to multi-task comes into play. Growth comes in different types and flavors for different people. I particularly enjoy learning about science/engineering topics that I didn’t get exposed to much during my 10 year “career” as Aerospace engineering student at University. When I spend time on the bike trainer at home, I will often watch different lecture series through the MIT OpenCourseWare and Kahn Academy channels on YouTube. The former is a bit more advanced, but the latter is certainly a great place to start/refresh certain topics. Thus far, having spent more than 80 hours on the trainer, I have made it through nearly a semester’s worth of Quantum Physics and have just started my journey into Orbital Mechanics.
Another area that I thoroughly enjoy learning about is foreign languages. When I am out on the road biking or running solo, ill work through two different foreign language audio programs for both Spanish and Russian. Alternating every day, this helps fight the tendency for these programs so get old quickly. I would still prefer a classroom setting to learn foreign languages, but these audio programs build up a sound foundation for the languages. I also listen to them when in the car commuting. When I’m swimming, well, I just stare at the pool bottom. I also tend to visualize and mentally plan upcoming events, whether it is work or training related. I often construct most of my weeks training schedule and how to execute it in my head during my early week swims.
Below are my training numbers since I started training in October. About 82% of those 260 hours of training to date are done on the bike, and thus there are ample opportunities to engage in some additional education.
Last weekend marked my first century bike ride (100miles) as I pedaled 110miles from my home in Torrance to the Malibu Rocks and back followed immediately by a strong 6 mile run at 7:30/mile pace. I had a great group of more experienced triathletes to lean on and I learned a lot, including how to avoid saddle sores in the future! Should have watched Triathlon Taren’s best bum care special beforehand (I swear its PG-13). That particular issue kept me out of the saddle for about 5 days this week. Having taken proper care of it, it healed quickly and managed roughly 155 miles on the bike over the span of Saturday/Sunday.
Training numbers for this week are above. I have made the switch from doing strength training in the weight room to using that time to work on improving my flexibility and range of motion to further injury prevention. With the shear volume I am putting in the recovery after a weight room session was just not quick enough, and I am happy with how my I built up my body to withstand the training stress by incorporating the weight training for so long. Now that I am at a happy place in terms of strength and muscle mass, no more weights until after the IM!
This weekend also marked another century ride as I did a 4-part brick workout session throughout the day on Saturday, riding 30miles followed by 3 mile run right off the bike, for a total of 120miles biking and 12 miles running. In my opinion, as a relatively new triathlete, the most important part of an IronMan prep is to listen to your body and not over train. Even though I was scheduled for a 2.5hr run on Sunday, after Saturday’s monster set I tuned it back to just over 1.5hrs and 10 miles.
Im doing quiet a bit of travelling for work over the next two weeks, so expect the next entry to deal with improvising the high volume training routine while on the road! Until then, train hard and train smart.