First official week of Ironman Training

Yesterday felt like Christmas morning when I found a shiny new gift sitting in my inbox waiting to be opened. Coach Charley sent me my first two weeks of training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene (CDA)


The next 8 months of my life will be dedicated to getting my body and mind ready to travel 140.6 miles all under my own power. I am excited and nervous and ready to get started.

My training will be broken into five phases to help me show up on race in top form. We are starting in the preparation phase, the preparation phase according to Charley is the first phase of training. This is a period of time from three to six weeks. It involves performing your aerobic activities at a low heart rate and it helps your body adjust to the rigors of training again. This is also the time to work on your drills for each sport. This would include many of the drills in swimming, isolated leg pedaling in cycling and/or strides in running. The workouts in the Prep Phase are usually short in duration, low in intensity, and may be frequent. The volume for this cycle is low. This period prepares you for the Base Phase.

I am guessing that our prep phase will be closer to six weeks since we wanted to start earlier than we "needed" to. Many athletes we know are starting their training for CDA in January. I wanted to start a bit earlier because I am so new to triathlon I wanted more time to work on skills before diving into high volume training.

Our training volume starts fairly low with a total of 16 hours for the fist week, and will ramp up to more than 20 hours a week. What gets me is that is only counting time moving. That does not include all the other time spent prepping, driving, packing bags, stretching or anything else that needs to happen for each of these workouts. So my goal for the first week is to nail every workout to get a feel for what 16 hours feels like and get accustomed to my new schedule.

Here is what my first week looks like:
Monday: 45 min yoga
Tuesday: am- 60 min full body strength training pm- 60 min progression run
Wednesday: am- spin class pm- pilates
Thursday: 90 min masters swim
Friday: am- 60 min fartlek run pm- full body strength training
Saturday: 3 hour bike ride
Sunday: 8 mile run, 2400 yd swim and full body strength

Totals:
Swim: 5000 yards, 3 hours
Bike: 60 miles, 4 hours
Run: 20 miles, 3.5 hours
Strength: 5.5 hours
Overall: 16 hours

As I transition into the build phase I am sure the strength hours will go down and the swim bike run will go up. My other goals for the week are to get take vitamins, get 8 hours of sleep and eat well.

what does your week look like, are you still enjoying off season?

Congrats to all who ran the NYC marathon, ironman Florida or any other race!

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad