Base 3 was re-designed (or rather shifted) by essentially 2 weeks as per the last post. When you're sick, you gotta do what you gotta do. The hour structure was maintained at 10-12-14-Restandtest, but the focus shifted a little bit. I caught myself doing more very focused race-pace stuff, ie medium-length intervals very near my predicted racing wattage and speed, so I decided to change it up a bit for this last "training to train" period. I moved more above race pace intervals and below race pace intervals into the schedule and plan on training very specifically in the coming build blocks.
More specifically, my quality workouts looked like this (excluding swims, because I don't really know what I'm doing in the pool)
Week 1:
Bike
3x10min at ftp (1 hour TT pace, 280W) w/ 5 min rest
-To get used to intervals in that range again, not too stressfull
3x(5min top-gear low cadence, stand at 2 and 4min, 2 min rest, 2min standing, 1min rest), 2:30 high cadence -Functional strength training, a perceived limiter for my tiny runners legs
30min tempo (210-250W), 10min w/ single legging, 25min tempo+5min Sub-threshold (210-250, ~270W) -I have to be ready to ride hard for ~ 1 hour, rather than 30 minutes this year
Run
6x 200m hill repeats, 1:40 rest
-Gotta be strong
30 min tempo @ 3:40/km
-Right about threshold
Long run
Week 2:
Bike (first week outside)
2x10min ftp (5min rest), 20min ftp, 2x1min HARD efforts
-Building on last week
6x ~1min hills, about 400W
-Pumpin'!
Run
5x(2min I - 1min E - 1min I - 30sec E - 30sec I - 30sec E), I = <3:20 km="" p="">-Worth noting, I did this workout faster and with more reps than I did about 1 month out of my 10k PB last season. Training the high end speed.
Long run
-20km
CN Tower race
-Race report to come. 144 flights of stairs, ~1750 stairs. You can imagine what system I was training here.
Week 3:
Bike
20min @ 280W (100% ftp) - 10min rest, 15min @ 285W (102% ftp) - 7min rest, 10min @ 290W (105% ftp) - 5 min rest
-Keep on building. The goal is to build my tolerance to the longer intervals. I'm used to 10 minute sufferfests, but I need to make 20 minute efforts my bread and butter.
90 minutes of searching and destroying various hills around London. 6 big efforts from 1:30-4:00 climbing.
-Lots of recovery means high watts!
Run
5x400m including 200m of hill, 78 seconds w/ 400m jog recovery
-Speed and strength
4x200m w/ 200m recovery (32sec), 3x1km, 2min rest (3:14), 2x400m w/ 400m recovery (68sec)
-More VO2Max training with some very fast running for economy. Again, running better than last year
Long run
-Nearly 20km
Week 1 and 2 had the workouts spaced to get good solid quality out of every interval session. Things went very well and I was feeling a bit of fatigue creeping up near the end of week 2. The CN tower race demanded that I front-load week 2, and the race itself hurt quite a lot, so some easy sessions followed.
Week 3 has been amazing - I've been quite tired through most of the sessions, but I've still been hitting all my numbers, or exceeding them. The beginning of the week saw well-spaced quality sessions, but I've been exceeding the speeds I was expecting at this point of the season, so I've been doubling up some workouts in the latter half of the week to try and get a bigger endurance stimulus out of the training. What I mean is I'm sacrificing some potentially raw speed and freshness - "workout PBs" for a bigger endurance load. Specifically, I doubled up running and bike quality sessions on Thursday (VO2Max running work in the morning, hill work on the bike in the evening). This was followed today by 90 minutes in the pool doing some above race pace work, and some technique and strength work... into my long run... leaving me "trashed".
Here is the reason I'm doing this. I believe my Base 3 period is meant to be more about training your body to be able to take on the race-specific, high intensity loads you will be giving it during the Build periods to come. Also, you want to be maxing out your pure endurance at this point, so you can put nearly all your effort into race specific work. With that in mind, I noticed I've been hitting my swim, bike and run workouts faster than I ever have, even with all this fatigue building up. However, I am also moving up in race distance this year which plays a huge role in my training plan. Therefore the decision process was that
1) "The hey is in the barn" as far as short speed work is concerned since I've already seemed to have exceeded my speed from last year in every sport
2) I have 2 entire blocks to come that will be concerned with raising my race specific speed even more
3) My biggest limiter is volume and endurance based - I've never raced longer than 1 hour and I believe I have more to gain at this point by addressing these issues.
I don't even see this as a gamble - I hit the times and watts I was hoping to ahead of schedule, so I re-arranged the work I was going to do anyway in such a way to tax my recovery and endurance systems more. That being said... I can't wait for this recovery week! Only 2 more workouts to go... A short swim involving 25m all-out sprints and pushups (a workout that I will drop upon reaching the build phases), and a long slow endurance bike ride. No problem!
In the near future, be prepared for a much shorter review of Base 2 training (a lot less interesting), another race recap, and my thoughts on my swim season.
Adam "lol, the hey is in the barn" Fortais
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