Winter 2012 Training Plans and Goals for 2013

With Tour de Bowness and the Kelowna Apple Triathlon behind me, my Road Racing and Triathlon seasons have come to an end. I made it through the season in relatively one piece. I had to deal with a bit of an arch injury after Fast Trax 30km, left some skin on the Crit course at TdB, and have picked up a slight cough that I haven’t been able to shake since Edmonton ITU but other than that feel pretty good right now.

With the temperature starting to drop, only Cyclocross season remains. I have really mixed feelings about CX right now. It seems like it is going to be absolute blast, but I’ve crashed fairly hard on every CX ride I’ve been on to this point, so if I can end that trend I’ll be much more thrilled about the sport. So far I have 3 races in mind, the Kettle Cross Enduro, School of Cross, and Hop N’ Hurl. I plan on really only tapering for the first race as it will be quite a long solo effort. After the last cross race of the season, and when the snow hits the ground for good, I plan on taking a hard rest week to give the body a bit of a chance to recover.

Below I’ve attempted to outline my basic goals for next year’s race season.

Running

As of the first week in September I will be back to training with the Triathlon club full time as I am required to coach Tuesday and Friday evenings and will being participating in our club’s swims on Mondays and Thursdays. One of the big goals I have for next year is to complete the Grizzly Ultra Marathon in October 2013. The race consists of  a 50km trail run with 1 691m of elevation gain(OUCH!). I’ve talked with Jack from Fast Trax, who is the head coach of a pretty hardcore Ultra running club in Edmonton, and he’s built me a modified training plan based on what his racers normally do. I made it clear that I only have time to run at maximum four times per week, and not the 7-9 that his crazy athletes do. For now he has me on a Half-Marathon speed program which I intend to begin with the first week in September. My long term goal is to be able to go sub 1:29 at Edmonton Police Half-Marathon which means being able to run below 4:13min/km for the duration of the race. After completing this race in April, I will rest up and begin increasing the duration of my base and long runs towards the longer distances I need in order to do the Grizzly.

The training plan looks something like this:

Tuesday – Base Run < 60 minutes

Wednesday – Intervals or Tempo Run

Friday – Base Run < 60 minutes

Saturday or Sunday – Long Slow Run or Intervals

Since I really neglected my run near the latter half of the summer, averaging about 12km/week, I plan on getting my distance back up to around 25km/week and then will increase the volume slowly through September and October as biking season ends and my legs are more likely to survive  the 40+km/week the plan calls for.

Triathlon

I am not completely sure what my plans are for Triathlon next year. I am considering the move to longer course racing. I think I have the ability to race a Half-Ironman in a reasonable time. I am considering racing either Calgary 70.3 or Great White North however I cannot afford to do both. I am also considering the possibility of doing the Kelowna Apple again. I have a score to settle with that race. I feel with consistent off-season swimming, biking, and the run plan I intend to do, I will be fairly strong coming in to next year.

In terms of swimming, I’d like to crack the 30 minute barrier for the 1500m open swim. My best time this year was 31:40 at Edmonton ITU without a wetsuit. This takes a combination of sighting and fitness, which I think should be well within reach next year by swimming twice a week regularly through the Winter. This also means getting my race pace under 2:00min/100m. Without consistent summer training I believe I have gotten it down to somewhere around 2:05min/100m. Blazing fast, I know.

Bike Racing

I plan on hitting bike racing hard next year starting with Velocity Stage Race, Pidgin Lake Road Race, Devon Bikefest, Banff Bikefest or Rundle Mountain Stage Race, and then finally Superweek in Calgary if I’m not frazzled from all of the other racing I’ve done to that point. Ideally I hope to upgrade into Category 4 next year. Another Fall/Winter of hard work on the spin bikes plus hitting bike season earlier should enable me to score the remaining 20 points I need to make the jump fairly early in the season.

Fall/Winter Training Schedule

Monday – Core 1 hour, Swim 1.5 hours

Tuesday – Run 1 hour, Bike 1 hour

Wednesday – Run 1 hour

Thursday – Core 1 hour, Swim 1.5 hours

Friday – Run 1 hour, Bike 1 Hour

Saturday – 2-3 hours of biking/running or Off

Sunday – 2-3 hours of biking/running

Total: 12 – 16 Hours

Or, subtracting for about 30 missed workouts due to resting, holidays, school, social life I should log somewhere between 325 – 475 hours of training during the school year. Since the beginning of April I’ve logged 185 hours not including swimming which I suspect would push the total to somewhere in the neighbourhood of 225 hours. That also includes some pretty hard race tapers, and a 2 week dead zone where I did virtually nothing in July after Edmonton ITU.

Kelowna Apple Triathlon Race Report

Well I’ve just gotten home from 11 hours of driving Kelowna to Edmonton and felt compelled to right up the last triathlon race report of the summer. Early in the race season, I decided that for this year’s destination race, I’d do the Kelowna Apple Tri. Many people that I’ve spoken with have said the race was excellent and this year was no exception. The race was well organized, started on time, was clearly marked, had tons of cheering fans, and had great post-race support in the form of food, and cold showers.

The race director’s performance was great, however mine was not so hot. I made a bunch of critical mistakes during and before the race, which cost me quite heavily in terms of performance and showed accordingly with my splits and finishing time. That being said, I definitely learned a lot from the race, and finished feeling I worked my ass off. Another note, I’ve decided that Triathlon is an absolutely brutal sport if you push yourself. I’ve now done bike and run races that were approximately equal in total time spent racing this weekend. Those races hurt, but not nearly as bad as this one or Edmonton ITU.

Overall : 171 /431

AG: 9/27 in M2024

Total Time: 2:41:20

T1:  121st 1:49, T2: 192st  1:35

Swim: 326th 36:33, 2:27/100m

Bike: 119th 1:11:43 33.5km/h

Run: 49:42 4:59min/km

The Swim

After dropping a significant amount of money on my Xterra wetsuit, both of the open water swims I completed this year were deemed non-wetsuit swims due to the water temperature being over 23 degrees in both races. In hindsight, I am quite glad that I was unable to wear my wetsuit at Edmonton ITU as it was a good confidence booster for this race where there was no putting my feet down if things went south in the middle of the Okanagan Lake. As another side note, it was amazing swimming in that lake with how spectacularly clear the water was. I’ve never swam in a lake before, so it was very cool to see how long the sea-weeds were and all of the fish darting in and out of them in the middle of the race.

Any ways, I seeded myself in the middle of the pack with the most direct line to the first buoy. I stuck with the pack for the first 100 metres or so and then settled into my own pace as I knew they’d shortly be long gone and I’d be dead in the water if I tried to hold their pace. The swim consisted of two 750m laps around 4 large bouys in a diamond shape. The first lap was quite easy to sight as I just looked for where the group was swimming and followed them only worrying about locating the buoys on every third or fourth sight. I completed my first lap in the usual fashion, I felt terrible for the first 200 metres, started to relax from 200-400m, and then got into a strong rhythm after that. I found a couple of people who were about my speed and completed the last leg of the first lap with them. At about that time, the super quick swimmers from F20-24 caught me so I had another group of people to sight off of. Running on the beach and then jumping back in the water is always disorienting, but I got through that a lot more gracefully then at Edmonton ITU.

It wasn’t until lap two that disaster struck. I made my way to the first buoy in good time, but with the glare of the sun, the jacked up heart rate, and lack of oxygen to the brain, totally missed sighting the farthest out 2nd buoy, and headed straight for the third. After realizing that no one was following me, I looked to my right and noticed that they were all swimming away from me. I think I was about 100m of course at this point, so by the time I turned, and got back on course I figure that mistake cost me about an extra 200m in swim time plus fatigue.  Other than feeling like a moron, I finished the swim uneventfully. I rolled into T1 and there was absolutely no one around.

Recap- I think if I wouldn’t have swam off course to a 36:33, I would have swam a time similar to that of Edmonton ITU(0:31:41.8). I could have also stayed tighter to some of the buoys, but it was difficult to see them at times staring straight into the sun in a big lake. I also should have swam a bit more regularly after ITU, as I only went to the pool about 8 times in about 6 weeks.

The Bike

The bike leg my most successful of the three events in the race, however I made two serious errors in preparation for the race. Firstly, I forgot my aero-bars in Edmonton. I think this cost me at least 1-2km/h as a result of being uncomfortable in the drops for an hour, using slightly different muscles, and by making it difficult to relieve the bloating I get from swimming at race pace. That being said I still managed to do 33.5km/h which I am okay with but not extremely happy about. I also know I would have benefited greatly from going out to more of the Tuesday night ERTC time trials. I haven’t been out to one since June, however it’s been a battle to balance work, training, sleeping, and getting adequate recovery after weekend races, which has resulted in my lack of attendance on Tuesday nights. Finally, my bike computer died as soon as I hopped onto my bike so I had no way of knowing how fast I was riding. Although it’s not the best metric of effort, it is useful to know approximately how fast you were going on previous laps to make sure that you aren’t backing off from a lack of focus.

The Run

The run was super disheartening. I suffered the same bloating as at Edmonton ITU only twice as worse. I ate less the night before, however I think the cause was a combination of swallowing air/water during the swim, and being stuck in the drops for the whole bike. My stomach expanded to the point where it hurt to run anything faster than a 5:30min/km pace and I was forced to walk a couple of times. I tried to fart/cough as much as possible, but I couldn’t relieve myself. I even ran to an outhouse and tried to remove whatever my body was willing to part with, but that didn’t really help either. Finally around 4km, a girl from UBC caught me and was running about 5:20s and not wanting to get chicked by a UBC girl, I was able to use her as a pacer. I ran with her for about 2 kilometers and slowly picked up steam as my body attempted to relieve pressure. I could hear her dying in front of me as I pushed her on and decided to drop her. With about 3k left I began to feel like I should have at the start of the run and was able to crank up the pace to near 4:10min/km and held that until the final sprint.

Take-Aways

-I need to work hard at swimming during the off-season. Getting faster and more comfortable in the water will have me gasping for air less, which will make me more relaxed during the swim, and will allow me to actually race the run leg of the race.  Not to mention, will help me shave upwards of 2-3 minutes off my race times.

-I need to attend more of the Tuesday night TT’s. I think I undervalued this workout this year, and will try to attend as much as possible next year. I think having the increased cycling base will also allow me to bounce back from weekend races quicker next year allowing my legs to be more capable of completing this demanding workout.

-I need to average more than 10 kilometres a week of running, and I need to do speed workouts. I neglected running and partially swimming this summer to ride as often as possible. There were many Wednesdays and Fridays where should have been spent with runs.

-I need to not be an idiot and forget my aero-bars in Edmonton.

-I have done some research into gas relief products and might try something like Gas-X next year. Obviously it’s a short term solution and I’ll have to test its side-effects out before I attempt to use it in a racing environment, but even if it provides partial relief, it’ll have been worth it.