With a few things going on in the evenings this week and Week 12 Monday off, I pushed a few workouts to Monday. So my mileage wasn’t quite as high as it should have been. Even though I had 3.5 miles of swimming, almost 100 on the bike, and 14 running in January!!
Workouts went well once again this week. So instead of the daily run down, let’s lay out some goals.
I started training with one primary goal: complete an Ironman in 12:09:34 or better (yes, Coop’s best time is 12:09:35). Let’s just call it 12:00 even. I’m familiar with the Boulder course, I train at altitude, have hometown crowd support (THANK YOU!!), and travel costs are negligible. So that’s the race. Formal goal: sub-12 hours at Ironman Boulder (almost two and a half hours faster than when I did the same race in 2015!!)
What about the intermediate goals? Well, I just signed up for Texas 70.3 on April 8th. That’s 9 weeks before IMBoulder. A general guideline is that your 140.6 time will be about double your 70.3 time plus an hour. That would mean I’d need to complete Texas in about five and a half hours. Since I’ll have another two months of training before IMBoulder, the official goal is 5:40.
How do these translate into more specific intermediate and process goals? I generally do pretty well (relatively) running in triathlons (I’m like a really slow Mirinda Carfrae). I passed 500 people in 26 miles during the run at IMBoulder 2015. Of course that means they were all ahead of me after the bike, but let’s not talk about that right now. So I really think I can run a near-4-hour marathon. For swimming, 2:00/100yd translates into about 1:25 for 2.4 miles. 1:45/100yd is about a 1:15 Ironman swim. I think I have a chance at that, but let’s say 1:20 is more realistic. Add 15 minutes for transitions (I really hope to be faster than that), and I’ve got 6:25 for the bike. I should be able to hit 6 hours with some work, giving me 25 minutes for all of those things that go wrong on race day. It’s not a matter of IF, but WHEN things will go wrong.
So how am I going to get there? First, lose weight. It’s no secret that it takes effort to push around extra weight for 12ish hours. When I rowed in college I was in the low 150s. That was about the best shape I’ve been in during my life. I’m probably even training more now than I did then. My goal for this season is to hit the start line at IMBoulder at 156 pounds. I started my training at about 186, so that’s just under a pound a week. I’ve dropped a pound a week so far, so I just need to keep that pace. Any more than that and I’ll be missing the nutrition I need to recover and make strength gains, so I don’t want to lose too much too fast.
Second, get way faster on the bike. This is why I started with TrainerRoad. They promise to make people faster on the bike, and it looked like a system I could get into. Plus they had full Ironman training plans. That’s what I’ve been following. I’ve written about their system a bit before, but I definitely have seen results and recommend them. So TrainerRoad (plus my hard work!) will make me faster and increase my power, but how much sustainable power will I need?
I found a calculator online (https://www.alancouzens.com/blog/Power.html) that estimates the sustained power necessary for a given Ironman course. It’s the internet, so grain of salt and all, but he’s coached a couple dozen people to Kona and he’s got plenty of other credentials and info that seems well thought out, so we’ll go with it for now. Based on the calculator, I’ll need to sustain 167 Watts for a six-hour time. I want to keep my effort to about 70% of my FTP, so I’ll need to get my FTP up to 240 Watts. Well, I started at 189W and I was at 223W a few weeks ago. I think 240W is quite achievable. What about a stretch goal? 200W sustained will get me to 5:30, which requires an FTP of about 285 Watts. That’s almost exactly 4 Watts per kilogram (at my goal weight). That seems ambitious, but I’m going for it!
The third goal is to get a bit faster on the run. Back in the day, I ran at an 8-minute per mile pace, no matter the distance. To hit a 4-hour marathon, I need to run a 9:09 mile pace. I’ve already run 7 miles at that pace outside this winter, so I feel like this is very achievable. No specific process goals here; just keep following my training plan and getting a bit faster.
The fourth goal is to get faster in the water. This is fourth because the swim is just relatively short in an Ironman. I’ve been increasing my volume in the pool and getting faster as a result. I’m an adult onset swimmer, so my goal here is not too ambitious. My two Ironman swims have been 2:13/100yd and 2:05/100yd. I did 2:04/100yd in Boulder 70.3 this past summer. Based on what I’ve been doing in the pool and how it’s felt, 1:50/100yd is my goal.
So those goals would put me at 1:18 swim, 6:00 bike, 4:00 run, plus ~12 minutes for transitions. 11:30 should be achievable. Add 30 minutes for unforeseen issues and I can still hit 12:00.
But what might be possible? A stretch goal? 1:13 for the swim is about the edge of possible. Maybe I can get transitions down to 8 minutes. The bike in Boulder is a little long, so 5:30 is pushing the limit of possible. 3:45 marathon is again the outer limit of possible. If all goes well and there are no unforeseen issues, that makes 10:36 the absolute best case scenario. That would have put me in the top 10 in my age group last year.
Well now that those are written out, it’s time to go get it. I don’t think I’m genetically incapable of reaching any of these goals, it’s just a matter of a lot of hard work!
Stay tuned. If IMBoulder goes well (sub-11:15 or so), there will be another Ironman in my future this fall. If anybody is looking for a tropical vacation right before Thanksgiving, pencil in a trip to Cozumel…
Week 11: 6200yd/1h58m swimming; 98.5mi/6h15m cycling; 14.1mi/2h18m running; 6700 calories
Cumulative: 41,850yd/19h02m swimming; 796.6mi/52h59m cycling; 127.1mi/20h45m running; 51,400 calories
One last goal: More hot tub time!
