Running block, if only I could run...

I'm still waiting for my foot to feel better. I'm getting anxious to start running. I'm starting to get irritable. Here is my running block plan to date. It will likely change but this is it as of now. It's mostly adapted from Daniel's Running Formula, a book I highly recommend. Enjoy!

Adam "http://www.amazon.com/Daniels-Running-Formula-2nd-Edition/dp/0736054928" Fortais

Post-race bike block

After a fairly dismal, but adequate race at Muskoka, I targeted my bike as the weakest link. Unfortunate since I thought I was a fab biker... but more-so because it's ~50% of the race. Something needs to be done.

First thing was first. Could I find any free speed anywhere? I checked my position... this dude's got the flattest back in the West. I thought about what I did with my head... I keep it low and out of the way. I don't have an aero helmet... but are those really that important? Seriously. I don't know. I recently purchased a wheel cover. I can't afford new wheels. I've moved my bottle between my arms on my bars and got rid of superfluous bottle cages. I've made a tiny flat-pack, wrapped it up ultra-small and zip-tied it under my saddle. Super out-of-the-way. I think I've optimized that side of things...

But still! I'm somewhere under 160lbs, have a nice, well-fit TT bike... and yet, even 290W doesn't get me going 40km/hr. I don't know what to do. Maybe I am "cursed" with a wide body. Maybe my practically concave-chest acts as a sail. I don't know. All I can think to do is train harder.

With that in mind, cue bike "crash" block. Probably not the greatest name considering the sport... Never the less, I went for a very easy ride the Monday after the race and started from there. I road every day for 11 days (if one includes race-day as part of this week (who wouldn't)). I reduced my swimming and running during this phase, but did not eliminate them. Here is the breakdown:

Monday: 1 hour bike, easy

Tuesday: 10min @ 250W, 5min @ 300W, 10min @ 250W, 5min @ 300W -- 7:30 rest -- 20min @ 280W INTO 10 min moderate tempo run

Wednesday: 45min easy ride
                    9x200m swimming, various pull/paddles/swim, 1500m TT pace

Thursday: INDOOR - 15min @ 280W -- rest -- 3x2:30 >320W w/2:30 rest
(Deceptively hard. Holding 280W for 15min did not feel particularly easy as it probably should have been.)

Friday: 40min @ 280W -- 3-4 min rest -- 2:30 > 320W INTO 5km up-tempo run (17:46)
           Later that night, 30 minutes easy running to shake the legs out a bit

Saturday: various HARD hill repeats. Anaerobic stuff for sure. 4x 3ish minute intervals. Finish it off with a little bit of threshold time.

Sunday: 40 minutes of moderate-hard fartlek running. Mostly moderate to be honest.
             70 minutes easy riding

Monday: 20min @ 285W -- 10min rest -- 15min @ 285W -- 7:30min rest -- 10min @ 285W -- 5min rest -- 5min @ 285W
               Later, 20min tempo run, 5ish mins rest, 1km fast

Tuesday: 50 min easy ride
               10x200m swim intervals at around 1500m TT pace, 15 seconds rest between

Wednesday: 20km TT, all out. Power plumeted in the second half of the trial, only could average about 270-ish Watts and 31:30. Very tired, legs destroyed.
                    2x1000m swimming, long, slow, fairly easy stuff, broken up a bit into various strokes

This lead me into my "peaking" phase. I'm prepping for the Toronto Triathlon Festival, which I have learned is AG Nationals this year. Better get it right this time. More on peaking later. After the race. As a bit of a teaser... I'm feeling like I'm recovering... nervous I'm detraining... and not really feeling like I'm getting fast yet. Perhaps this crash week was a little too much and I just need some time... Come Monday I go into "race week" meaning dedicated recovery, so maybe I'm right where I need to be. We shall see...

Adam "Too late to fix anything now" Fortais

(Arguably) The hardest week

As this is essentially the final chance for a build week before I throw myself into A-race season, I'm trying to make the most of it. I abridged my recovery week from my last build period to three days, and threw myself into some hard training and a race prior to this week. Since, I've been up to:

Monday
BIKE - 100min - 2x20min ftp w/ 10 min recovery, long cool down
SWIM - 60min - 50-100-150-200-250-250-200-150-100-50 on 50sec/50 (in on 45sec/50)

The biking was miserable, I had to wear winter clothes and not to mention very tough after my 10k the day before, but I pushed through and hit my power numbers. I felt sluggish and crappy during my swim warm up, but found once I started the real workout I was hitting my paces. It was a good tough workout, but I got through it!

Tuesday
BRICK - 60min - 5km bike - 2.7km run - 5km bike - 1km run - 5km bike - 1km run, all as fast as was reasonable, practicing transitions

I saw a post on slowtwitch, someone was asking the relevance or usefulness of multiple short brick intervals. My opinion is that they are useful to some extent for fitness, but much more so for working on T2 skills. So that's what I did. I didn't look at my power on the bike, but it ended up being around 270W or so... but the runs were about 3:20/km then 3:05 and 3:05. It was pretty tough, especially on tired legs but I got some quality running in and transition practice which were the goals of the workout. I managed to treat myself to a massage afterwards!

Wednesday
SWIM - 50min - 300 tempo (in <4:30 -="" 1min="" 2x50="" 300="" 3x50="" 4x50="" 5:15="" in="" on="" p="" paddles="" pull="" tempo="">
Another swim workout I was happy with. I needed a rest from the run-bike stuff and this was good.

Thursday
BIKE - 3 hours, 10 min - Long, hard Sault Cycling Club ride

Pulls in the range of 300-400 Watts with a hill sprint half way through... then I finished out the night getting the distance up to 100km because that's a nice round number! My legs were completely toasted. I woke up in the middle of the night because my legs were so sore. I got some water and went back to sleep.

Friday
RUN - 45min - 4.5km @3:32/km - 1min rest - 2.7km @3:32/km - 30 seconds - 1km in 3:27

I was very tired today and not highly motivated... but I guess I must have been because I got out and I did it, and I did it well. Recovery tonight? The movie Identity Theft. Terrible. So bad. Possibly the worst movie ever made. I can't believe how bad.

The rest of the week? I am going to try and get into the open water. I need to try out this wetsuit! I've been hunting for good places. I'm going to do another easier ride on Sunday I think, and a bit of easier running tomorrow. I need a bit of a recovery.

Good talk.

Really though. Identity Theft is so bad it's making me feel physically ill.

Adam "Movie review blog" Fortais

Take a break. Have a coffee, Pal.

This is what I hear every day at work. I have a mighty work ethic, be it training or shovelling iron-making materials into metal bins. I can definitively say I've earned a recovery in training - I've finished out my second tough build week. 12.5 hours this week, and tied for the highest training stress in a week (against my 14 hour week). Today I'm taking the day off completely, then will slowly ease into training. I expect a pretty quick recovery, then it's back for two more weeks of work. Actually, two and a half weeks. I plan on starting some good quality this Thursday. Three days should be enough.

My Friday-Saturday-Sunday were as follows:

Friday
SWIM - 50min - 800m wu (standard 1k minus the 50's), 2x (3x100m on 2min, 2x50m on 2min from blocks, 100m kick easy, 100 swimdown)
RUN - 30min - easy, treadmill run

Saturday
BIKE - 120min - Moderate, hilly ride with a couple hill sprints and some long steady climbs

Sunday
RUN - 45min - easy 10km
SWIM - 45min - 400m warm up (IM stuff), 2x (50fists-50swim-50paddles long slow, low stroke count
50fists-50swim-50paddles hard, try to match stroke count 100 kick), 300m cd w paddles, IM stuff

My last couple days weren't all that high-impact, but I consider it steady, aerobic icing-on-the-cake and done on pretty tired legs. Today I've got that dull, aching pain in the legs. It's a good thing.

This week I'm going to keep working on the swim, but won't do a dedicated hard run until Sunday. On Sunday I will be racing a local 10k to get the second build week started. Thursday I plan on doing some quality riding with the Sault Cycling Club. Always do a bit of running off the bike. Always always always.

Last year I had a personal best 10k time of 35:28. I had paced this poorly as I got over-excited chasing some really fast guys. This Sunday I'm likely going to be in a good position to run my own race so I should be able to see another new PB. In contrast to my last 10km attempt I'm going to start conservatively, something around 3:30-3:32/km for the first 2km. If I'm coming through the first 5km in 17:30 after that, I know all I have to do is sit at that pace. Any extra speed I can find will just put me even further under that 35min mark. Last year the winning time was something like 36, so I'll hopefully have someone around to help me push the pace in the last 5km. Before then I should think about getting a racing singlet or something. I don't want to be that guy in a tri jersey again.

Anyway, I still have a nice chunk of content I'd like to write out but there has been a good amount of current stuff to write about. Maybe the next thing I'll post is something about my summer race schedule. In short, I'm racing the Muskoka 5150 and Toronto Triathlon Festival olympic distance event. These are both AG World Qualifying events.

Adam "Time to roll the legs" Fortais

Quick training update

I lost a couple pounds when I got sick a few weeks back, and I've finally put them back on. Last I checked I'm right on 72kg. In likely related news, I'm really starting to hit my stride with training. Last week took a bit of time to get moving again, but I'm hitting all my times, intensities, volumes, and coming back fresh each day. All this on top of adding 40 hours a week of labour at my new steel mill job. Some specifics...

Starting May 13:

Monday
RUN - 45min - 4x (2 on-1 off-1 on-30 off-30 on-30 off) on = 3:20/km pace, off = easy  running
SWIM - 30 minutes, rotation and catch drills, low cadence 50s (down to 14/length), 100 hard kick for fun

Tuesday
BIKE - 1 hour - steady tempo ride (~230W) and some 1-leg stuff
SWIM - 1 hour - 1km warm up (various things), 4x400m (swim-pull-pull-swim) on 6:45, 7, 7, 6:45 (swims in on 6:10)

Wednesday
BRICK - 75min - Bike (warm up, 2x Maki hill which is about 3km of steady climbing) into run (25 minute tempo at 3:38min/km pace)

Thursday
SWIM - 50min - standard 1km warm up, 3x100m on 2min, 2x50 on 2min all out from blocks, 100easy kick, 100 easy swim, 3x100m on 2 min, 2x50 on 2 min all out from blocks, 100 easy kick cd

Friday
OFF

Saturday
BIKE - 70min - TAG TT
RUN - 100min - Loooong run

Sunday
BIKE - 90min - moderate, hilly ride, unstructured

Monday
BRICK - 100min - Bike (4x6min 5-10% above ftp (300-315W), 4 min rest, 10min 300-315W), Run (30min tempo off bike (3:38min/km))

Tuesday
SWIM - 1 hour - standard 1km warm up, 3x200 on 3:10 (under 3:00), rest, 4x200 w/10 sec rest (swim-pull-swim-pull), swims under 3:00, 100m cool down

Wednesday
BIKE - 80min - 2x20min at ftp (285W), 5 min rest in between

Thursday
SWIM - 75min - 1km warm up, 5x400 with masters team (pull, kick, even 100s sprint, 6th 25 fly, hard for time), 100m cd
BRICK - 2:30 - Bike (long warm up, group ride with Sault Cycling Club, 10km uphill TT, short recovery ride), Run (5x1km between 3:13 and 3:16, 1:30 rest)

It wasn't until about Thursday that I really felt like I was coming into my own. Now, however, I may wake up tired if I had a long day before, but I feel ready by the evening to put in some more good work. I am sticking to my initial plan, but if by the end of the week (I admit, I front-loaded this week) I am still feeling great, I will add more work. Today I am scheduled to only do a swim, however I may add in an easy run or bike later tonight depending on how I feel. My legs are certainly tired from yesterday's great work, but I think I could benefit from a recovery workout.

I have a feeling this great block of training is due in part to getting back to that 72kg mark. I felt like I may have been just slightly under weight for a little while. I'm also back at home in the Sault which makes taking care of myself a little easier. That has got to help. I think the best training tip I can give someone is to let their parents take care of them. Haha...

You may notice that I'm doing a lot of "brick" workouts. I'm happy where my pure running is right now. Now is the time to make sure I can run off the bike. That's what I'm really training for, so I might as well make sure I'm great at that. I've pretty much moved all quality running to the back half of a cycling workout. In scheduling these weeks, I didn't write out any particular brick workouts. I wrote out workouts that would target the energy system I want to exercise, then arranged them... To create the brick workouts I decided what the most important pure cycling workout was and left it alone. Then I coupled bike and run workouts that would stress me in slightly different ways so I could still try and hammer both of them. I matched short, fast intervals on the bike to a tempo run, and a hilly time trial to a VO2Max interval run. In the coming weeks I will be moving even more towards very specific training. I am planning on practising my race-pace and hard, steady riding in my brick workouts and doing my over/under distance intervals in isolated sport workouts. The opposite of what I'm doing now. This transition will happen in the next week or so as one of my big important races is in about 4 weeks.

Here's a picture of me leaving the house in cycling gear to go run:

...my house has surveillance cameras.

Adam "You can never be too safe" Fortais

Base 2 review

This is some serious back-tracking but I thought I may as well document it. Base 2 was from March 4 - March 31 and consisted of mainly long, low intensity work, strength and force-training and the introduction of some longer, higher-effort intervals.

Run weeks focused on very short, hard, steep hill intervals to build up some run-specific leg muscle. The other main focus was to begin increasing the duration of my weekly long-run. This went from 50min to 60min to 75min. The Splash and Dash 1km swim - 10km run race fell on the first week... which wasn't ideal timing wise, but I made sure I didn't over do it. Week two I kept it easy with a 30 minute fartlek run, and I threw in a basic, easy 6km tempo run at 3:50/km in week three.

Bike weeks focused on bike-specific strength training in the form of big gear steady intervals. The weather was still less than great so everything was done on the trainer. A typical workout may include up to 10 minutes of gear-grinding with less than half the interval time recovering, or, getting off the bike to wall sit or squat for a minute or two. Second focus was similar to that of the run weeks, slowly introduce longer, higher effort intervals. Week one was 30 minutes at my "sweet-spot" (80-93% ftp ~ 240W). Week two was 60minute tempo interval (220W) and week three was 3x15minutes (10min tempo (220W), 5 min SS+ (260W))

Swimming was swimming. Just following the UWO tri club's workouts. Hitting about 10km/week in the form of Tues-Thurs morning, 45 minute workouts, and a 2 hour workout on Saturday.

End of month testing went well for cycling, but not so much for swimming. I chalked the poor swim test up to not fully recovering since I hit a new record during the Splash and Dash. The swim test protocol I had been using during base session was 50m invervals on 45seconds to exhaustion, holding whatever pace I want. I picked this since it doesn't take a lot of time, has some amount of specificity, but also focuses on top-end speed which is what I've been trying to increase outside of the competitive season. Last test I managed 10x50m before calling it quits. This month my 10th interval missed the pace time... but again, just like my last post about my most current running test, I did this on a Tuesday after a full training block. From now on, no testing until at least Wednesday.

As I mentioned above, cycling went well. I upgraded my all-time best power over 5 and 20 minutes WHILE ON THE TRAINER... I don't know if anyone else notices this, but hitting your watts on the trainer feels a lot harder than on the road. Physically I don't know how this could be, but it seems to be a real phenomenon. However, I still managed to up to 20 minute critical power to 294W, and my 5 minute critical power to 342W. CP5 was done on a Wednesday, and CP20 was on a Friday. It seems like Wednesday is all right for testing. With this new CP20 value, my estimated FTP (functional threshold power, or, power I can expect to hold for 1 hour) is about 280W. Not bad, not bad.

I decided not to test my running, as the results from Splash and Dash as well as my increasing long runs provided enough feedback to tell me I'm heading in the right direction.

Adam "Catching up on old news" Fortais

Base 3: (Mid-Week, Big-Week)

I'm just about finished the biggest training week of my life and thought I would quickly update with regards to that.

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