How did you spend your Saturday? 112mi/6hr bike, 6mi/1hr run

Excellent bike and brick run on Saturday 🙂

Race rehearsal time, so 112 miles on the bike in 5:57:38, and then a 1 hour brick run _easy_ to get dialed into my Ironman target run pace of 10:00/mile + :30 (10:30/mile) for the first 6 miles.

The ride was as good as it gets.  As I plan to race it, the first 90 minutes of the bike at a planned 180 Watts so that I have something left for the bulk of the ride…turned out 180 Watts (186 Watts norm)…and a very relaxed 109 Heart Rate average…can’t get better than that for getting a ‘free’ 90 minutes of fresh legs…and the rest of the 4.5 hours at a planned 200 Watts…turned out 198 Watts (203 Watts norm)…it’s a beautiful thing 🙂

Since locally, it’s all hills all the time, I rode over to The Point, a local subdivision, that has a low traffic loop that’s as close to the gentle rolling of the Ironman Florida course as there is in the area…5.6 miles, 16-17 minutes…so short…but no big hills, so good for steady riding…there’s a traffic circle at 1 end, and a dead-end at the other, so a 180 turn required that cuts back a bit of the average speed.

So back and forth, for 2.5 hours in the center of the ride, with a short hydration stop in the center:

• 1:34:40, 19.9MPH, 202 Watts, 205 Watts norm, 120HR avg, 127HR max
• 1:08:23, 19.9MPH, 205 Watts, 208 Watts norm, 125HR avg, 133HR max

…nice 🙂

This confirms that 200’ish Watts, gives me 20MPH’ish with steady riding…and based on an average Heart Rate in the mid-120’s, sustainable for 112 miles…all good news.

The last 1:45:00 of the ride, I was still at only 127HR average, even though the heat and humidity was coming up…the ride ended at 79F and 78% Humidity.

…my Zone 2 Heart Rate is 124-131HR, and Power 195-210 Watts.
https://irondaughterirondad.com/pondering-my-final-bike-training-zones/

For those _really_ into the numbers:

• the 112 miles was a TSS (Training Stress Score) of 293.7…my target for this training ride, and for the Ironman ride is 300…the higher the score, the more ‘cooked’ your legs are…so 293 is great
• and IF (Intensity Factor) was 0.71…my target was 0.70, so about as perfect as it gets…this is means that I rode at 71% of my FTP (Functional Threshold Power) of 280 Watts

And then the run…that wasn’t as perfect…my legs felt surprisingly good considering the magnitude of the ride that I just did, so I ran over to the local college track to see if I could get my target first-6-miles-of-the-run 10:30/mile pace dialed in.

…I was too fast…which sounds like a good thing, but really isn’t…even with the track, and being able to check my pace at every lap, I was still 9:36 (ouch), 9:58 (ouch), and 9:55 (ouch) per mile.  That would be nice for the last 20 miles…right on target…but the first 6 mile of the marathon I _really_ need to work on containment…give up 2:30 total time in the first 6 miles to give me some hope of pace in the last 6 miles….and since it was 79F, it should have even been  slower than that…I _really_ need to work on getting a better feel for that Ironman run pace, and have the patience to execute it.

Other notes on the day:

• my throat as been a bit dry and scratchy the past few days…and was again on Saturday morning when I got up…I had largely written it off to 4 days out of 5 in the pool, with the lousy ventilation, and chlorine overload…no other symptoms…yet…so I really had 3 choices…skip the ride, shorten the ride, do the ride…obviously I did the ride 🙂
• I did the ride because I didn’t have a fever, the irritation felt isolated to my throat, no chest congestion that I could feel, and I figured that if it was going to get worse, it probably would on its own, and I’d rather have the long ride under my belt and be recovering from that, than skip it, and still be in recovery…there was a chance that the training stress of the day ‘makes’ it worse…but it’s all in the ‘who knows’ category…I’m feeling a bit congested this morning, but not horrible…no fever…throat still a bit irritated…so we’ll see how it turns out
• about an hour of the ride was in the rain…no rain checks in Ironman…I don’t mind riding in the rain…it’s more of a concern about blind drivers and streaky windshields…so when it _really_ started to pour, I pulled over under cover to check the radar on my SmartPhone…very cool app…and saw that most of the rain was to the south, so I headed north…dry for the rest of the ride, once I got out of the rain

So all in all, an excellent training day…very solid ride, great confidence builder for Ironman, and confirmed that my ‘numbers’ are right on the money…legs felt very good off the bike, with lots left after 6 miles.

…burned just over 5,000 exercise calories on the day…great dinner with friends…many Southern Ale’s and ribs…lots and lots of ribs 🙂