IM Canada: Week 11 – Chen’s version (i.e., It’s all about the Benjamins, baby… just one, though. One Benjamin.)

Posted by Chen

Well, if last week was an unintentional cutback week, this week was anything but. The last seven days included nearly 18 hours of training, including a solid tempo run, a weekday brick workout, my fastest swim yet, and my highest volume weekend yet (20 mile run and 100 mile ride).

On a related note, this week also included consumption of approximately 26,000 calories, and no, that is not an exaggeration. I’ve been tracking my intake throughout this training cycle, and I pulled that number straight from my spreadsheet. If competitive endurance eating were a sport, I might have a chance to go pro at something.

As Rachel mentioned, the week concluded with our first century ride on Sunday. Primavera is a pretty low-key event, but it’s extremely well organized (thanks, volunteers!) and well stocked with lots of supplies and delicious goodies. I was actually quite nervous going into the event given that my last long ride (85 miles) was six weeks earlier, not to mention the fact that I had just completed a 20-mile run less than 10 hours beforehand.

Aside: If you’re wondering why I made such an irrational life choice, it’s because 1) if you know me, you’ll know I’m generally pretty good at making irrational training decisions, 2) I had wanted to run 20 while I was in NC, but as you saw, the battle between myself and the triple threat of heat, humidity, and hangovers ended in defeat, and 3) it was either this weekend or next weekend, and I have plans to be reuniting with my high school friends in Nashville next weekend, where I’d prefer to be drunk and happy. So Saturday it was – these are the choices we make while IM training :-P.

Anyway, back to the ride, we kept our pace relatively conservative knowing that a nice long climb would be waiting for us between miles 85-90 (good practice for the final climb at Whistler!), and overall, I felt pretty good. Much to my surprise, the 20-miler never took much of a toll, which I credit to the 4000 calories I ate on Saturday and the additional 2300 I ate while riding. If only the water stops at Whistler included custom-made sandwiches, fresh strawberries, and ice cream bars…

Looking ahead, May will be an extremely busy month on the traveling front, which means that my usual weekly pattern of build-build-build-cutback may need to change into more of a workout-whenever-you-can-slash-whenever-you’re-not-hungover methodology. I’ve been spoiled so far and have been able to plan my life around my training, so it will certainly be interesting to see how I fit everything in!

IM Canada Week 11 Recap:

Monday: 

• PM: Trainer ride with speed intervals (20-min warm-up; 80-min of 1-min on, 1-min off, where speed intervals increased in speed over time, starting at ~15mph, ending at 19+mph): 26.2 miles 1:40:33 (15.6mph). I liked looking at my data afterwards because it looked like an oddly-shaped comb #datanerd

Tuesday: 

• PM: Bay Trail run with 2x3-mile tempo. This was by far the best run I’ve had in the last couple of months. I was afraid tri training had somehow erased any speed I’d previously had, so this run helped reassure me that I’m not yet a total turtle. 9.15 miles total (~7:33 average pace); Splits: 8:03 (warm-up), 7:32, 7:22, 7:17, 7:59 (recovery), 7:27, 7:16, 7:11, 7:54 (cool down), 7:30 (0.15, cool down)
• Immediately followed by swimming 3000 yards (swim/pull ladder, average pace of 1:52/100yd). This swim was downright COMICAL. Given my travels to London and NC last week, this was my first swim in 10 days, and it was as if I’d just undone many, many weeks of work with my time off. Everything felt ridiculously wonky, so much so that my first pull time was faster than my first swim time (context, I’m the worst puller ever, and my times rarely come close to my swim times). Luckily, this setback would be short-lived…

Wednesday: 

• PM: Swimming 3000 yards doing the same swim/pull ladder as Tuesday (average pace of 1:48/100yd). While still not back to normal, this was already a considerable improvement over the previous day’s disaster.

Thursday: 

• AM: Very easy brick trainer ride: 14 miles 1:05:30 (12.8mph – I wasn’t kidding about the “very easy” part)
• AM: Brick run including 3@GMP: 5.1 miles (~8:19 pace, GMP miles: 7:55, 7:57, 7:56)
• PM: Swimming 3000 yards doing the same swim/pull ladder (average pace of 1:47/100yd). At this point, I deemed myself recovered from the great swim drought of 2015.

Friday: 

• PM: Swimming 3000 yards, including 4x500 in 8:52, 8:43, 8:46, 8:41 and 10x100 in 1:39, 1:38, 1:38, 1:37, 1:37, 1:37, 1:37, 1:36, 1:35, 1:34 (average pace of 1:43/100yd) – fastest overall swim yet!

Saturday: 

• PM: Golden Gate Park long run: 20.2 miles (~8:33 pace)

Sunday: 

• AM/PM: Primavera Century Ride: 100.3 miles, 5500+ feet of gain, 14.8mph