This week is probably as close to a perfect training week for the last couple months as I have come. I didn’t miss any workouts and I actually ended up doing almost 13 hours of training time, an hour more than planned for the week. The extra hour wasn’t because of any extra workouts, but just from adding a few minutes to each of the planned workouts.
The week started off great with my swim. I didn’t plan this, but I ended up swimming just shy of 3,000 yards continuously and I know I could have swam for more if needed. The full Ironman is about 4,300 yards so just 1,300 further. For the entire week, I got in 3 swim workouts which is more than I have done for any given week for the last 2 months.
For my running, I have been doing a lot of experimenting and I have come to the conclusion that I can run/walk for 1 min each and still average a 13min/mile. Seeing that I currently run 12 min/mile in the heat, I am happy with the run/walk strategy and I am much less tired while running. My Ironman should be much less humid and hopefully cooler so I may be able to do a 2:1 run:walk.
For my long bike ride, I decided to try a few different things. Based on my sweat rate, I drank a bottle of Gatorade Endurance every 30 mins and took Oreo cookies and gummi worms with me. The hope was to stay hydrated to avoid cramping. Unfortunately that didn’t work and like clockwork, at around 2:30, I started to cramp.
Firstly, the amount of fluid I drank was too much. It just felt like it was sitting in my stomach. I think the most I can probably manage is going to be about 1.25-1.5 bottles every hour. The Oreo cookies weren’t bad. They were convenient and I popped one in my mouth every 5 miles. The only issue is that I need to figure out a good way to carry them., I had them in an open ziplock in my jersey pocket, but I spent a lot of time trying to fish one out each time. The gummi worms were a disaster. It was taking too long to chew and I ended up spitting out the first one I tried and I didn’t try any more after that. So for my next long ride, I’ll stick to 1.25-1.5 bottles of Gatorade Endurance per hour and one Oreo cook every 5 miles.
For my cramping, it is back to the drawing board. For my next ride, I plan to take in more salt to see if that helps.