I wrote this in Memphis, the ride into town was the greatest tailwind, and scariest bridge crossing of my life!
What I call “tempo” is now known as the Heavy Domain.
The names have changed, the training errors remain.
Then, and now, athletes hinder their development by capping their aerobic gains.
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I’ll share the “20K Track Workout” (mentioned below) next Saturday – it’s a great set that will surface useful data for you, and your athletes.
Big Picture => my advice (then and now)… repeat the week, for a while… only then will we have the basis for a conversation.
Old school navigation – we avoided cities as much as possible
gRAAM – Trans USA Day Forty-Seven memphis, tennessee
Reviewed my track sessions I appear to be well ahead of last year. This is pretty exciting because I did ZERO track work over the winter.
Anyhow, Scott and I have another moderate session planned for next week and then we’ll do my standard (20K) “track” workout to see where I am at. That will be about a week and a half out from Triple T. Should be a good indicator for me.
Baron says that there’s no way that I am ten pounds over race weight. He thinks it’s more like six.
We said good-bye to Barry this morning. Over the next couple of days, I expect that he’ll pull his thoughts together on the experience for InsideTri.Com – should make interesting reading. We threw everything we could at him and he just kept bouncing back. Fourteen days of monster training is really the furthest that I’d recommend anyone goes so it was probably for the best that he headed back to Oregon – even if it would have been nice to have him along.
Season Pacing & Race Preparation
Some of you might be getting fired up reading about these entries. I’d urge caution on trying to mimic the training that the Baron and I are laying down. To be honest, we are a little surprised ourselves that we are surviving. Yesterday, I wrote this to one of my crew that frequently does big day training and is aiming for a late season peak.
Patience — it’s a long season so don’t extend yourself “way out” in May. Keep it rolling, keep it fun, keep it large but… keep it reasonable (for us at least).
Tempo — aerobic tempo is a waste of time for you, me and everyone. When you leave your steady zone you need a reason to be out of there. Big Gear, Strength Hills, Race, TT — probably the only reason for Tempo bike and run work. Otherwise you are having fun going fast but simply making yourself more tired — not more fit.
Weeks — No more than 12-14 “on days” without a 3-5 day recovery cycle. Even with that you should have 2-3 easy days in the on-cycle. Otherwise you won’t get the recovery that you need to bounce back from the outstanding training you are laying down.
Also yesterday, I sat down with Steve (our Little Rock host) and talked through my thoughts on the training that he needed for his first Half IM at the end of the summer. Key points that might be relevant to you:
Basic Week – build a basic week that is “doable” within your life and agreeable to your wife (husband).
Consistency – repeat the basic week for 15 weeks.
Key Workouts – plan a sane progression of volume for your key sessions.
Intensity – insert blocks of steady into your longer workouts. Learn _even_ endurance workout pacing.
Swim Goal – get comfortable with swimming 1.2 miles without using a lot of energy. What you do is far less important than simply swimming 3x per week every single week for 15 weeks.
Bike Goal – build your long ride up to six hours to train your body’s aerobic system.
Run Goal – stay healthy, run 90 minutes once a week, run off the bike for time management and consistency. Slow down and aim for a consistent period of pain-free running.
Focus – ignore all the various ideas and tips that everyone throws your way. Repeat Your Week. Repeat Your Week. Once you finish the race, you’ll have some data and will know more about whether you enjoy training and racing long.
Sammy came up with a great term that I’d like to share with you. No doubt the sports scientists will beg to differ but (deep down) I kinda get a kick out of their attempts to save the world from it’s own ignorance.
Lactate Bruising – the dead legged feeling from smacking out the intensity early in a TT, race or workout.
I’ve often noticed that any sustained periods over LT will have a big negative impact on late workout or race performance. That’s with my own training. For Racing Long, I’ve extended that observation to “take some time to give a REALISTIC assessment of your average race intensity for the whole day. Bear in mind that your medium of movement becomes less dense as your day progresses. So, you’d better have a clear reason for exceeding average race intensity, especially in the first third of your day.”
ITM Riding
Baron does a pretty good gordo-imitation. Get him to show it to you some time. He’s especially good at imitating my run form and when I’ve had a lot of coffee.
The conditions today are what Baron calls “I’m The Man” riding. We had favourable tailwinds and he was content to let me set the pace all day. So I get fired up on cola and Dr. Pepper – sit up front, ride 40-43 KM/h and go…
Hi! I’m gordo… I’m _THE MAN_… I’m going lower… I need a 58… I feel GREAT!… And on… And on…
And I laugh out loud and sing along to my MP3 player.
Baron does a good imitation of that. Makes me smile. Unless my back’s locked up – which hasn’t happened for a while.
Andy From Memphis
Andy rode out into a MONSTER headwind to meet us. He’s also set us up with his wireless network, a couple of spare beds and a sweet pad! An excellent set-up and very much appreciated by the crew.
There won’t be a State Line photo for entering Tennessee. If you’ve ever driven the I-40 bridge into town then you’ll understand our reluctance to stop…
A – You wanna stop? G – Dude, it’s hammer time – get me out of here!
Top Three scary situations for the trip.
Didn’t run
Swim was SCY and courtesy of Steve’s club (one heck of a nice guy) 200 fr, 200 alt by 50 bk/br, 200 IM, 200 easy, 50 kick/100 fr/50 kick 15×150 fr on two mins arriving on 1:55 100 easy 4×100 IM on 1:40 arriving on 1:30 5×200 on 2:50 arriving on 2:40
Ride was 250K over about 6.5 hours of ride time. Flat, hot and humid – we were grateful to have Lance ride us out of Little Rock to make sure that we got on our way.
G – Literally Just listened to your catalyst podcast – excellent!!!! Wow, truly good – thank you for putting that out there. I took 8 pages of notes and I have already read your writing for decades
Feel The Byrn 
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