IronMan Preparation

Let me first start this little blurb with what I want out of the exercise of sharing a few electrons all over the interwebs:

1) express myself
2) stimulate some deeper thinking about IM preparation

This is a long one, so buckle up...

FWIW, I had a couple goals for my IM experience last year:

1) explore the limits of my own capacity to "suffer" during the last half of the marathon
2) learn from the whole deal

Anyway, drafting off my last blog entry, if I were to ask myself the question "what would you do differently about your IM preparation if you had to do it again"? How would I answer that?

I read somewhere that people like short bulleted lists - cuz that makes it easier to remember things and all. Well, here's a bulleted list that summarizes how I would answer that question above:

* shorten the "fill the right" preparation period -> probably down to 8 wks or so from 14

* shorter runs with higher frequency -> maybe 3 one-hour runs rather than one long run and a couple thirty minute jobbers

I don’t really know if the way I went about things is typical or not. If I had to guess, I'd say it's not super typical... And, I reckon it's more towards the "new school" approach side of things than it is towards the "old school" approach of IM preparation. i.e -> I spent maybe 10 hours a week training for this - and incorporated some goin' hard/intensity during that time.

But that is neither here nor there...

From a more global perspective, I'd characterize my prep as two to three years of "raising the left" by doing 20 MP and above focused efforts followed by about 14 weeks of "filling the right".

Huh?

Yeah, that's a long way of saying that I spent a lot of time goin' hard, and a little bit of time making sure I figured out how to meet the KJ demands of the effort. In the end, as noted above, the KJ demand/burn rate adaption deal took way less time than I planned for to meet/figure out.

Flexibility

My initial plan was very detailed. I wrote it all out and made a sweet, neat looking excel calendar - y'know, it probably looked like one of those canned training plans an interwebs coach might dole out...

Workouts were planned for the final 14 wks leading up to the event...but yeah, that plan didn't work out - If I stop and really consider the kind of person I am - I reckon I'm not really a big "plan" guy... There's just too many distracting details and whatnot. The way the whole "plan" thing that I put together actually worked out is a pretty interesting look into some of my internal workings. I mean, there is a definite part of me that wants to be able to control thangs and then just execute when necessary. There's another, probably overriding, part of me that is completely comfortable goin' with the flow, and taking things day by day.

When it came to the IM preparation, in the end, it was a global plan that was put into place with a lot of day-to-day flexibility. I never trained "fatigued" - if it felt like I needed an extra day of rest...well, then, I took it. That carries over into my general bike racing training as well - if I'm tired, I rest. Ride Hard. Rest Hard. That's my deal.

I had a pretty simple set of goals on a weekly basis -> one long run, one long bike, swim technique development, and one day of "raising the left" via a "classic vo2" bike ride.

That was it. Pretty simple.

Here's how things kinda went on a weekly basis, with a couple deviations when necessary:

Mon: complete rest

Tue: AM swim for 45 minutes doing drills. Noon hour vo2 bike workout 60 minutes

Wed: run 30-45 minutes

Thurs: swim for 45 minutes doing drills

Friday: complete rest

Sat: "fill the right" bike ride (3200kj in as little time as necessary -> about four hours) followed up by a 30 minute "run". This bike ride was pressure on the pedals, drillin' it for the duration. Hardest workout of the week by far!

Sun: EZ bike ride with no real KJ goals for 1:45; followed by a long run that progressed to 14 miles or around 2 hours

I had estimated that the IM bike ride would take me ~3200KJ to complete, so I targetted that KJ level in my "long" Saturday rides. Though, I frickin' drilled it to burn that 3200KJ in my training. Interesting to note that it only took me about 3-4 rides to go from doing 1600 KJ rides at a nearly maximal pace to routinely hitting 3200KJ at a nearly maximal pace - these rides topped out at around 4 hours or so. Here's an example of one of those 3200KJ rides that were the cornerstone of my bike ridin':



About 5 weeks out I tried my hand at going "long" as some folks like to say:

October 11

During this effort, I'd get up and swim for an hour continuosly, go home and eat a bit...then ride at what I figured would be my IM bike watt pace for 100 miles, followed up with an hour run.

In the last three weeks or so, These style of days were mental slogs, but they did give me some confidence and allowed me to figure out how to fuel things.

November 1 was my second "long" day.

And this effort really drilled into me what things might feel like if it was a stinkin' hot/windy day, and I forced too much of my chosen fuel down during the bike ride. That was a really good learning day for me. I spent that hour run after the ride feelin' bloated and pretty crappy - too much crap sloshin' around in the ol' belly...lesson learned - if it's stinkin' hot, pull back on the reigns a bit and relax...

Another of the deviations from the general week schedule outlined above include my issues with the running aspect. I'm not a runner - never really ran long distances at any point in my endurance sport career - though, I'm pretty sure I ruined my knees while playing lots of youth basketball (I can remember being a "gym rat" during the fall/winter time playing pick-up games all day long for the better part of my youth)...and those basketball knees have always been my limiter when running "longer" distances, it seems.

I really did try and plan for this...I actually started preparing for the run sometime in July or thereabouts... I progressed over a three-four week period starting at around a 30 minute EZ jog for my long run of the week and building it up 10 minutes a week. Well, like an idiot, I felt really good on one of those days and figured I'd see how fast I could run that last 15 minutes of a 45 minute run. I went pretty fast for me - laying down a sub 6 minute mile for the last little bit...I kinda felt a bit of a twinge in my knees when I was doing it, and sure enough, the next time I tried to run, I couldn't make it more than 5 minutes before the pain in my knees was too intense to continue.

Well, yeah, that was a pretty stupid thing to do in hindsight...and, as it turned out, I could not run for a couple weeks...and then I followed that up with walking 2-3 times a week for 20 minutes at a time for a few weeks... that put me into late august or so before I was able to "run" again without pain. I worked back into things and was able to string together five days of 30-45 minute runs with family up in p-town - which was a great way to kick the last 14-ish weeks of preparation off!

My long run progressed well up until the end of september, where I completed a long run of around 13.5 miles... but, I could feel my knees barkin' the last 20 minutes of that sucker, and it pretty much freaked me out...so I went with the flow, and tweaked things a bit.

How'd I tweak things? Well, I cut back my long run to 1:30, and then in late October, early November, I started doing multiple one-hour runs during the week -> i.e, I upped my frequency in order to make up/compensate for my fear of not getting in a longer run.

So, yeah, if I were to do it again, I'd forego the long run for quite awhile, and do more frequent shorter runs of 1-1.5 hours. That might have saved my knees for race day...then again, maybe not!

Taper?

I'm not a real big believer in this kind of deal when it comes to long duration events such as an IM. A two week long "taper" - where one actually tapers off their KJ expenditure might be good for shedding some prolonged, avoidable, unecessary fatigue though...but, since how I approached things never really left me carrying loads of physical fatigue, well, there's no real point in doing a long confusing tapering off of KJ's. I just made sure my legs felt good on the big day!

This approach, and respecting how my body was reacting to things, is why I kept the KJ train rolling all the way up to the long day I laid down 8 days out from IMAZ:



Y'know, honestly, I wonder how fast all those guys who carry six weeks+ of serious, significant, fatigue and then taper off their KJ's in the two weeks prior to their IM effort might go if they tried a different approach? Maybe one day, we'll find out, eh?

Lightin' it up

Here's what I did four days out from the effort (after fully recovering from the 8 day out big KJ day):



Yeah, I lit it up pretty good in the week preceding IMAZ. Above shows multiple efforts at 2+ times what I was going to target for an IM power target - sometimes, crazy physiological/hormonal things can happen when you lay into a series of crazy high intensity efforts on the bike just before a big event. I recovered from this sucker really quickly, FWIW. Did it help? Well, maybe, but it sure didn’t seem to hurt things.

There are some other nuggets I haven't mentioned above, that you might be interested in reading about...

Did you know that I rode my TT bike less than 6 times during the 14 weeks I was focusing on IMAZ? Yeah, I did the bulk of my riding on my road bike... the three long days described above were on the TT bike, and a couple more rides in the last week (including the shakedown spin up the beeline hwy on the day prior to IMAZ) were on the TT bike. That's it.

I targetted 170W for my IM bike power and rode to an official 5:16:xx split including 3 honey-bucket stops. This watt level was roughly 55% of my 20MP at the time. Here were my SRM time and watt splits for each of the three laps of the bike course:

Lap 1: 1:42:33 @ 170W
Lap 2: 1:43:19 @ 172W
Lap 3: 1:43:35 @ 168W

I was well within myself, there, eh? ;-)

I took down about 1100 calories +/- during the bike ride -> which was about 200 calories per hour.

I swam a 1:24:xx - which was way faster than I had done for the full distance 10 days out while swimming in a pool without a wetsuit.

I "ran" the first half of the marathon at just over a 9 minute/mile pace - which was my targetted run pace.

I walked 8 miles of the marathon, cuz my body broke... :-(

I waddled across the line in 11 hours and 35 minutes.

I didn't bonk.

I didn't "suffer" like I wanted to "suffer", and thus, felt like I "failed" to achieve one of my IM experience goals.

I don't know if I'll do that whole deal again! :-o

Hey, I don't think there's any rocket science here in my approach, or any approach that you'll read about out there. I raised the left for a really long time (2-3 years), then astoundingly quickly filled the right. Then, on race day I "run what I brung" so to speak. Though, as I mentioned in that neat bulleted list up above, I think I would tweak a few things if had to do it over again:

* shorten the "fill the right" preparation period -> probably down to 6-8 wks or so from 14 wks

* shorter runs with higher frequency -> maybe 3 one-hour runs per week rather than one long run and a couple thirty minute jobbers.

Eager to hear how you prepared for your IM,

-k

Speed for Sale

Well, it's been almost a year since I updated the home page of BTR with anything "new".

I re-did the whole site about this time last year in anticipation of some free publicity surrounding an article I wrote at the request of Jay Prasuhn over at triathlete magazine. Well, that article in the magazine didn't quite turn out like I expected, so now that some time has passed, I'm hosting it on the main site.

It's pretty basic for all the experts out there, but you'll have to consider who the original audience was.

The article is titled "Speed for Sale" and you can get to it pretty easily from the main site:

Speed for Sale

Position Evolution Update

I resurrected my simple TurboCad program this past weekend, and went crazy trying to compare the positions I used in 2004 and 2008.




My personal observations regarding these two positions are that the one on the right was way more comfortable. I'd probably attribute this to a couple of things:

1) actually sitting on the saddle with my sit bones
2) not having to support my body weight with my arms

#2 above is also probably what allows me to relax and narrow up my shoulders via narrower elbow pads, and also maintain a better head position without neck pain - I can ride in the position on the right for 112 miles - not sure about the one on the left, though.

It seems as if when I am actually sitting on the saddle as the old-skool europeans imagined, things are more balanced, relaxed, comfortable, and in my case, much faster.

Just something to consider when you are paying for a bike fit, or setting yourself up on the bike for this years goal events.

Fast TT/Tri Geometry Part Two

Last time, I pretty much just documented what was available out there on the internets with respect to how different manufacturers make and sell bikes.

If the goal is to somehow take a stab at saying which manufacturer has "faster" geometry than another, well, one could simply take a look at the demand side of things. What's the demand side?

From a simplified perspective, the demand side on a flat TT course or triathlon venue pretty much boils down to total package aerodynamics (there are other variables such as weight, crr, mass, drivetrain losses, dark matter...). Now, I'm not able to say definitively one way or another how the frames themselves will behave in a wind tunnel, but this blogseries isn't about the frames...it's about the geometry they employ and the resulting way it forces folks to sit on bikes that is being evaluated.

The first way I chose to look at this whole deal was to simply say that I, as a rider, have a saddle height that I need to hit and a single stem that I'm going to put on all the frames out there. So I asked the dataset the question: "How would the resulting CxA I would have whilst sitting on these bikes, as measured in the tunnel turn out on average?"

Now, I understand that this might not be the best way to take on this challenge, but you'll have to give it to me that it's _one way_ to git 'r dun, eh? ;-)

So, the above is what I did... Along the way, I did some fancypants math to take the publicly available stack/reach values and transform them into the variables that I measure in the tunnel (I've got probably 1200+ data points at this time) and then run them through the stepwise, multiple, linear regression model I constructed that relates those measured position variables to CxA/aerodynamic resistance.

If the manufacturer offered a seatpost with an adjustable seat tube angle, I averaged the predicted CxA values from both ends of the STA spectrum.

Anyway here's how this method wound up ranking things:




So, what's everyone else think is a better way to do this sort of evaluation of TT/Tri bike geometry.

I'm happy to give your ideas a go when I get the chance!

Next time, we'll see how the recent trends of the manufacturers may have influenced performance at the world championships in Kona.

"Fast" TT/Tri Geometry - Part One

Thanks to the guys over at Slowtwitch.com, us regular/caveman folks have access to a database of TT/Triathlon frame geometries. This is pretty cool, and I'm glad those guys have taken the effort to put this together.

It's always intriguing to me when datasets like this are published, as I think a closer look can reveal an additional layer of insight. But, I'm never really sure about this until folks other than the original publishers actually dive into the data.

It's great that these guys publish this data, don't get me wrong, but I think it stops short on the whole global "TT/Triathlon" positioning deal - I mean, a bike manufacturer has a definite "fit philosophy" when they ship a give frame geometry to the general public, don't they?

For all intents and purposes, it seems, that each bike manufacturer thinks their own "fit/geometry philosophy" is the "best" way to make their customers perform optimally (or at least I hope the mfr's are not hoping to make their customers slower!). So, which mfr is "correct"?

That's really the question I have, when it gets down to the core of the whole deal... What does the mfr frame geometry say about the mfr, and in the end, which frame geometry is faster than the rest.

As a first step in this frame geometry journey, let's just look at the raw data as provided by slowtwitch.com, but in a much more digestable, non-tabular format:



yeah, so it seems to me that there's a bit of spread with this data, eh? It's interesting to note that for a given slowtitch "reach", (which is kind of, but not completely, related to how I define "reach") or distance from bottom bracket to the top of the head tube at the centerline of the head tube longitudinally, you can see that some manufacturers have pretty diverse opinions on the whole deal of "fast geometry" from a positioning perspective. Who'd a thunk it, eh?

I mean, these days consumer products thrive on diversification, so it is to be expected that mfr's will attempt to "be different" than their competition and subsequently make claims about how their approach is superior to their competition...

But I digress.

Having had the opportunity to test lots of normal and elite folk in a wind tunnel while measuring different things about how their bikes are set up, I'm in the kind of unique position of trying to attempt to say: "these bike geometry variables will tend to improve, or hurt a rider's aerodynamic position". To put it another way, I've accumulated a lot of wind tunnel data over the years that suggests a thing or two about what is responsible for making a rider aerodynamic.

We'll get to that later, but IME, CxA(a measure of aerodynamics of a given position/geometry)from a positioning/bike geometry perspective, can be boiled down to the following variables:

saddle setback (tip of saddle relative to bottom bracket)
saddle height
reach (distance from tip of saddle to where the aero bars are grasped)
drop (top of saddle to elbow pads/elbows)
pad width

There are, of course, some other things that affect the whole deal, but they aren't really a function of a bike frame's geometry.

It seems like there might be an opportunity here, then, to attempt to draw a connection between how mfr's design and sell bikes, how consumers set-up these bikes, and how the resulting positions are measured from a CxA perspective in a wind tunnel.

In my next blog entry, I'll try to step through the logic of how I would rate mfr geomety decisions along the "fast-ness" spectrum.

Be well,

-k

4th of July or Turkey Day?

I was taking some video in my garage this morning in order to document my current TT position, and also to put together a little video tip on head positioning...

I mounted up the Trek TTT on the Kreitler rollers and started pedalin'... but, I kept hearing this weird clicking noise that didn't sound familiar. I looked down at the rear wheel contact patch on the rollers, and every once in awhile, I'd see an electrical discharge (yeah, it was like a little bolt of lightning!) streaming from the aluminum roller to the aluminum brake track of my rear disc. Crazy! Here's a frame grab from the head positioning tip video I finally got done today:



With all of those sparks on my rear wheel, I didn't know if today was the fourth of july, or thanksgiving! D'oh! ;-)

awww, crud, yeah, it is november, eh?!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Ironman

Well, I don't know what to say, other than I exercised pretty much continuously for a little more than eleven and a half hours this past sunday.

It went as well as I think it could have gone - I mean I finished the thing - though, I reckon the marathon portion could have been a bit better! Weather was perfect, and the day was fast.

More details on my day later, but here's a quick photo for your consideration:



this is a comparison of the positions of the guy who posted the fastest bike split of the day, and myself. hey, do I get style points for having a sweet roadie/farmer tan!? LOL! ;-)

The guy on the left, Jordan Rapp, is a member of the BTR forum and he has a big motor, I'll say! Nice work, Jordan! I wonder how much faster he could go on the same watts if he tried something different? That would be an interesting exercise.

Another quick observation on long course triathlon from my perspective, is that I don't think power in the aero position is a limiter -> most of these guys (me included) go really easy on the bike portion, and I believe it comes down to experimenting with a couple points when working on a tri position...

1) being able to sit square on the saddle in your aerodynamic position for the duration of the effort without adverse consequences

2) satisfying #1 above, find the fastest position/setup for your targetted effort

I don't think supply side issues are a real limiter/constraint from a practical perspective.

That's just my opinion, though! :-)

What's everyone else think about how one ought to go about setting up their long-course triathlon bike?

Kona, Ironman... why not?

I knew Ironman Hawaii was happening this weekend, but honestly, I thought it was on Sunday (today)... Not that that scheduling would have affected anything I had planned for yesterday (Saturday).

Here's how my day started:



which is of the sunrise on my way to a 24-hour fitness pool, where I've been spending some early morning time over the past couple months. yeah, I swam, for a little under an hour yesterday morning. Boy, I sure am slow in the water! :)

Then, seeing as how there was still lots of time left in the day, I decided to go ride my TT bike in the crazy (for socal!) 20 mph winds yesterday for ~160k and five hours:



That ride left a little bit of a mark, but I reckoned, hey, why not go for a quick hour long run? y'know to find out how much of a mark that ride left. I managed 8:20 pace for that hour, but definitely would not have been able to run at that clip for 18+ more miles...

By the time I was home and showered, Craig Alexander was done working his way to the front of the field during the marathon, and Chrissie Wellington was still showing the world how dominant she is.

Anywat, I learned some good stuff during my own personal long day. Useful stuff too, as I come closer to toeing the line at IMAZ in November:

1) at my pace in the water (2:15 100's SCY), I've got some things to work on - primarily mental ones!
2) @69kg maybe I really only do need to take down 300-350 cal/hr (I sure hope so, cuz things aren't very happy at a rate higher than that at a variety of intensities and external temperatures!)
3) my bike position is fine for 5+ hours at the intensity I will need (2 rides on the TT bike since May)
4) 26 miles is a long way to run!

I debated with myself about writing anything about this new project I've undertaken (tackling an Ironman), but here it is. I have modest goals for this whole deal - the first of which is to toe the line uninjured. The second of which is to simply delay the true suffering on the big day for as long as possible! ;-)

Me? Do an Ironman using a stripped down approach to training?


why not? :-)

Stripped Down - Fill the Right

Well, I got a swift kick in the rear a week or so ago by a BTR/kdublog reader asking what's up with the whole stripped down series... That wasn't the first time I'd heard that! :-)

I finally got the next installment done -> Fill!

Heres the first installment in the series:

http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/stripped_down.htm

and the latest:

http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/stripped_down_3.htm

More Math Problem Thoughts.

Dug up this post from the BTR forum the other day, when someone sent me an email about "math problems". There's a pretty vocal contingent out there that likes to think they've got it all "figured out" when it comes to riding a bike in a triathlon. In my experience, models aren't necessary in this case, and only serve to distract efforts and energy from things that truly matter when it comes to performance.

This stuff isn't rocket science.

Something to consider at least!

Here's the first two posts in a thread from one of the guys who is vocal about the efficacy of his conclusions and methodology. Note the date...

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Ashburn

Posted: 14 Sep 2005 09:14 am Post subject: Modelling violations

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I got some good feedback and suggestions from Kraig on the "windy day pacing model." Whilst the model certainly illustrates that one cannot use time-weighted average power as a constraint, the normalized power algorithm (AKA "gizmo power algorithm" - kraig) can also be shown to produce fatal mis-hits as well.

Constructing a rectangular or circular course, where there will be short-ish high-head-wind segments, results in the model asking me to ride significantly harder than possible for the segment duration. More particularly, a course that is short enough will result in those high-power segments being acceptably short. Double the size of the course, and the power prescription (as a % of the global constraint) is the same, but the segment duration is now too long -- even if we reduce the global constraint to reflect the longer overall race duration.

As with the AP-constrained model, this version also demands a constraint based on an athlete's actual power-duration curve, as derived from long, variable effort rides. I.e., a segment lasting 20 minutes cannot be constrained to the rider's max power over 20 minutes, but rather to a lower figure that reflects that this is but one segment of a longer event. What is that figure? I think only experience can decide.

All in all, it still boils down to manual tweaking.

It's an interesting exercise, but as somebody on the other thread mentioned, models have their limits.

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post #2
Ashburn
BTR - Pro


Joined: 24 Sep 2004
Posts: 544
Location: San Diego
Posted: 14 Sep 2005 09:18 am Post subject: Re: Modelling violations

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Ashburn wrote:

All in all, it still boils down to manual tweaking.



And, to close the loop on my earlier analogy to using optimizers in the investment field, Markowitz (father of optimization) once closed an essay on the use of optimizers this way:

In the end, good investment management comes down to the judgment of reasonable men.

True of many endeavors, I suspect.

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And here's another thread that talks about how I view this modeling stuff (in Feb of 2006), especially for IM or HIM efforts. IMHO, this modeling exercise, and trying to "pin a single number on the whole deal" (as Kirk likes to say!) while interesting and whatnot, doesn't really add any practical value to individuals seeking to perform as well as they can in their next event.

Note the practical recommendations I make - nothing complicated, or original, but they are what they are. It's also interesting to note another thing that I always like to keep in mind - simply the perspective that there are many paths to the same result. Another thing to consider is that the illusion of knowledge and understanding does not do a service to anyone.

Anyway, here's a couple of my favorite posts from the thread linked to above:

====================
kraig wrote:

FWIW, I don't think bike racing and triathlon racing is a math problem, and therefore, I find this math exercise to be of little practical use. It's intellectually challenging, sure, but in the end it doesn't add value. I came to this way of thinking after doing the exercise on many, many diverse courses using lots of different assumptions for constraints - in the end, the most robust approach was the simplest one (one that is KJ based - edit kraig). Furthermore, inexperienced folks would probably get the most benefit by simply adopting a constant power strategy at the appropriate average power.

What's the appropriate average power - well, that's what practice is for, right?

================

Ashburn wrote:

If it was linear, then pacing wouldn't matter.

Kraig wrote:

It's not that pacing doesn't matter - it's just that the excruciating details don't matter that much when compared to doing the basics well... e.g - doing as kirk suggests earlier - or as you have yourself suggested - don't be "stupid".

Most folks will benefit (who are doing the Oside 70.3 HIM for the first time or are relatively inexperienced with endurance athletics) the most from honestly assessing their fitness (i.e, doing only what they know they can do in training) and striving for a globally oriented constant power effort - let the super dial it up/down a bit when it thinks it needs to as terrain varies and use the PM to keep things in check from a global perspective.

On race day, I think one has to keep it simple - ya gots to run what you brung - and let the super make adjustments as needed.

That and have fun with the whole process...

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