An Easy Week

Writing last week’s post helped make up my mind about my summer plans. I’ve done some training when I had time, so I went on three easy runs on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. After each of them, I realized how relaxing and refreshing a nice run is .. after a run you almost always feel better than before!

Trying to get things lined up for next year. I’ve got a phone call set up with Mitch Gold from CounterpartCoaching. I hope he’ll be able to help me with my plans for next year.

Mitch has just secured a Hawaii slot in the recent Ironman in Cour d’Arlene. He said it was a tough race and he didn’t look too happy:

I’ll continue with easy training next week; lots of work to do, so not too much time. I’m looking forward to next weekend, we’ll drive up to Denmark to visit my parents who are on holiday in a rented summer house. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get in a nice run on the beach. If the weather is nice, I’ll shoot some pictures.

Another week after that, I’ll do a local, very small swim and run. Guess I’ll have to do some swimming before that …

Planning for the summer

Currently, things feel a little bit weird.

My big a-race is over (Rennsteig), my “fun event” is also done and dusted (Vättern). There is nothing else on my schedule for the summer (other than vacation in August). Always a bit dangerous!

There’s a couple of little frustrating things. My ergomo seems to be broken again. Quite some money spent on it (at least I got four years of use from it), and I’ve gotten quite used to the data. Then I want to line up some coaching support for next year, and that takes longer than I was hoping for. Plus my wife and I are trying to loose some weight (“point-counting” with a weight watchers type of program), and that takes some energy as well.

So last week, I haven’t been doing much training. One thing was that I had a lot to do at work. On my usual “20% Friday” there were meetings to attend, so I was doing a lot of little things over the weekend that I usually manage to get out of the way on Friday. I still had enough time to meet with friends, to do stuff with my wife, but I just couldn’t relax. I really have to make a decision about what to do during the next few weeks – do I put another race on my schedule or do I “take the time off”?

Any possible races I was thinking about don’t look too good. A nice local race was already full, so I planned a long weekend with my wife instead. Then there is the Hamburg Triathlon at the end of July, but that’s already full. I might be able to get a spot on eBay, but right now I can’t be bothered.

For now, I feel more like taking the time off. It’s a bit weird to think about a break at this time of the year, but I think that I’ll better focus on work and personal stuff for the next weeks. Then I have a month off (vacation with my wife!), then it’s slowly getting ready for next year. I’ll probably do another IM next year, so I want to be fresh for all the training that needs to be done. And I’ve already done a lot this year!

So I guess it’s okay to take things a little easy. Any thoughts on your side? Let me know in the comments what you think. Thanks.

RaceReport Vättern

I had done the Vättern-Rundan, a 300k bike “tour” in Sweden, twice before. It is a very large event with about 18.000 participants. Any decent Swede has to complete this race (and a few other events like the famous skiing event Vasa loppet) at least once in his or her lifetime. So you see a lot of people that do not use a race bike but rather a “regular” touring bike, even some mountain bikes. All of this is to say that the focus of this event is on “completion”. Times are taken, but more of a way to make sure that people complete the race and are not left on the course rather than a results list with a specific ranking. This leads to a quite relaxed atmosphere – almost everyone takes their time at the well stocked aid stations to eat and drink.

The way they start this race is quite unique. The first group starts at Friday night 8pm, and then every two minutes another group of 60 people or so is sent on its way. The last group leaves at 6am Saturday morning. The finish line is open until midnight Saturday night. This leaves almost everyone a long time to finish the race.

Before the race

This year, there was a group of six people from my local club going to the race. We left early Friday morning for the 8 hour trip to Motala, Sweden where the race starts and ends. We were going through some pretty bad weather with lots of rain and wind, but when we got to the Vättern lake, it had at least stopped raining.

For those that do the race for the first time, the first time you see the lake the size of what you are about to do hits you. You arrive in Jonköping at the southern tip of the lake and you can see a bit of the eastern and western “coast”, but definitely not the northern end. Then you drive another hour (in the car, mostly on the freeway) to get to Motala .. and you still haven’t reached the northern tip! And you know that the next day there is a bit of work in front of you!

Once we got to Motala, we took our space on one of the campsites that are set up for the event. Basically, every little area of lawn is taken over by campers, with official sites at least getting a couple of porta-pottis. The area we had was nice and not very crowded, it looked like some people decided not to do the race because of the “nice” weather.

We collected our “Nummerlappar” (race numbers), prepared our bikes and had our dinner (pasta cooked on camping cookers).

The we managed to catch two to three hours of sleep before having to get up again.

Getting up, going to the toilet, having a cup of coffee, a little bit to eat .. not much time to do the things in order to get ready to start. It got a bit hectic, but we managed to get down to the start area just in time before our 1.58 start. It wasn’t raining, but all of had put on all clothes we had, including long finger gloves and booties.

The first 100k: Getting wet, cold and miserable

The first hour in the dark is always fascinating. Red lights in front of you as far as you can see, and the same thing in the back with white lights. It was cold, but quite bearable with all the clothes. When we hit the first aid station, it was slowly getting less dark, but no sun you could discern.

Soon after that, it started to rain. Soon after that it started to pour down. Soon after that my clothes were soaked, my feet were wet and I started to get cold. The rain continued and I was getting colder and colder. By the time we got to the second aid station, I had tried to warm up on the uphills by going a bit harder – but I still started shaking.

On the downhill after the aid station, I was shaking really hard. The rain continued and the uphills were not long enough to add some warmth. By the time we hit the first long stop in Jonköping, I was seriously in doubt how long I could continue in this fashion.

The second 100k: Feeling better

Luckily, eating some mashed potatoes and sausages helped a bit. Then I got the real “life saver”: Volker (who was part of our group) had an extra, extra large rain jacket that he could lend to me. It was like a sail, but at least I wasn’t getting any more wet and the wind wasn’t going directly through my clothes any more. Also, there was a long uphill and I started to feel a bit better.

By aid station #4 (~135k) all doubts of finishing had disappeared and I was back to okay. Too bad that my Ergomo had enough of the rain and started to misbehave - a few k’s later IT froze completely. (Luckily, after drying the unit when I got home, everything is working again). This way, I don’t have reliable power and speed data after 100k. Until then, I was going at an average speed of 29k/h, and I estimate that I didn’t get much slower after that.

The next aid station in Hjo was another long break with a meal (lasagna, salad, milk etc.).

By now the rain had stopped completely and even though we still had some grey clouds, for the rest of the course the streets even dried up. After the big meal (went for an extra portion of lasagna!) I started to get really tired. Another “life saver”: Coming towards aid station #6 I stopped at a gas station and bought a Coke. After that, I was okay for the rest of the race.

The last 100k: Making it

Not much happened for the last 100k. At this point in the “long races”, if you’re not in big trouble and/or trying to go as fast as possible, everything is just one long drag. You try to play some games to entertain yourself (how much longer to the next aid station, to the finish etc.) and I stopped quite often to pee. I also tried to shoot a couple of pictures in mid-race.

I took another nice long break at the last aid station, hammered a bit until I reached one of the other guys (who had not stopped) and pretty leisurely went with Enno to the finish line.

All six of us had finished the race, and we pretty much got to the finish line within a few minutes. Those that were a bit stronger than others took some extra time at the aid stations, so we all went through the course more or less together. Nobody was totally shelled or out of it, so we walked a bit to get some food – of course the sun had come out by now.

All in all, a very nice weekend.

QuickNews: Vättern

Made it safely back home after the trip to Sweden.

The trip was really nice and I enjoyed the three days of it. All six of us completed Vätternrundan without too many problems. It was raining quite hard for the first few hours and I was quite miserable and cold. Luckily, the shaking stopped once one of my friends gave me an extra jacket he was carrying with him. After that, I didn’t have any problems.

We all took the ride really relaxed, stopped at every aid station and ate and drank a lot. All in all, it took us 15 hours to complete the 300k ride, but at least four hours of it was spent in the aid stations. May ergomo took some water and stopped working after 160k (with some strange behavior until then), so I can only guess my average – probably between 28.5 and 29 km/h.

More details and pictures in the next days.

Improving your bike LT by 5% in 2 weeks

As probably my last session before Vättern, I did anothor bike LT test as per Coggan:

• Warm up with 3* 1 Minute high cadence
• 5 Min “As Hard as you can” – I have a nice long uphill for that, then recover a bit by going easy
• LT Test is 20 Min “Best effort” (mostly flat, with some short “power uphills”)

Your LT wattage is the Average Watts – 5% (because LT is usually measured/defined as “as hard as you can go for an hour”).

After recovering from Rennsteig, I did my first LT test on May 23rd:

• 255 Average Power (257 Normalized Power, so I was quite even in my effort)
• HR average at 148 beats
• covered 12km with an average speed of 36 km/h

Yesterday (June 8th), I did another one:

• 269 AP (273NP)
• 142 HR (HR probably a bit depressed after a long ride the day before)
• 12,83km, average of 38,5 km/h (mostly a factor of the wind blowing in the proper direction)

Summing up, I improved my LT from 242w to 255w – an improvement of over 5% in just two weeks.

Here’s the training I did in those two weeks:

• 2 longer rides (125k and 88k)
• 3 medium long rides at ~2 hours
• 5 recovery rides (“spin” for an hour)
• 2 interval sessions (with 4-5 minutes of intensity)

Basically, I rode a lot (at least for my standard) and also added some intensity. I also made sure that on my longer rides I tried to ride to a “steady” pace (instead of my usual “just ride” pace"). This seemed to do the trick for me.

But still, even with “smart” training 5% improvement is a lot and probably not repeatable (even within a longer block of say 4-8 weeks). I guess most of the improvement is due to the fact that I was starting quite low (having almost only been running this year), and the numbers are still a bit lower than what I was seeing last year (LT at 260w – but still quite close!). It seems to show that a lot of the “base endurance” can be transferred over from running to cycling, and that a relatively small amount of riding (total bike volume this year is at 830km) allows me to get to a decent level.

So I think I’ll be okay for Vättern, but that there is still a big unknown .. 300k is a bit different than my longest ride this year of 125k.

But once again, I’m confident and looking forward to it! That’s a good sign and all can ask for this close after Rennsteig. Hopefully the weather will be dry – weather report looks a bit shaky.

Looking back on Rennsteig

My big A-race for this season is now three weeks in the past. Time to look back and reflect a bit on the race. What I liked, what went well and areas I need to improve for next year …

First off – so I don’t forgot it – I really enjoyed the training and the race. I was training at record levels for the run (and Zeroes both for the swim and the bike). My season starts in October, and until End of May I had run 1842km, my previous “best” was 1472km. Even so I had enough time for work and home stuff. This was a nice change from the Ironman training with all the swims (always +1h for getting to and from the pool and the “little things”) and long bikes (long session = at least 4 hours).

The race organization was great as well. Race package pickup, dropping off the finish-bags, starting area (with lots of porta-potties) – was well done. The aid stations were placed at decent intervals and extremely well stocked and organized – not too many races I have seen that spotted menus at the aid stations and really large signs pointing you to the right tables. You could also tell that most volunteers have done this a couple of times in the past, in fact you could tell that it was a kind of tradition for them and they were really proud of what they were doing (and rightly so!). The finish-area was big enough to handle all the people (during the day there must have been between 15.000 and 20.000 finishers with all the races they were offering), but still small enough so you don’t have to do much scurrying around to get all your stuff. I can’t think of one thing that they could improve.

I’m happy with my race performance, too. Even though I was an hour slower than I had planned, most of this was due to the hills that were much steeper than I had anticipated. They were taking a lot longer than I had thought. Even will all that, I didn’t run into any major problems during the race, and I even had that almost magical 45 minutes or so towards the end when I was almost “flying”. I’m sure I could have run a bit faster (and I may try to at a later time), but as this was my first try at an Ultra marathon, I didn’t want to run for time. I’m not sure how much faster I could have run this year (15 minutes? 30 minutes?), but certainly not close to the 8 hours I had planned.

So – while my endurance was good – I’m still thinking about “how to get faster” in the future. I don’t have any immediate, specific goals, but at some time in my life I’d like to run a Boston qualifier time or get close to run a marathon in 3 hours. For that, I think there are a few changes I have to make in my training. This year my focus was on going the duration and in order to do so I was working with an upper HR bound (~130 beats). With that, I think I was going a bit “easy” at times (HR around 110, with averages typically under 120). So what I would like to establish for next year is a lower bound as well – I’m thinking of 115. I’ve been trying that in the last few weeks and it already feels a lot “faster”. I’m experimenting with a similar concept for cycling as well, but here I’m shooting for a steady wattage of around 150 watts even on my long rides.

This year I added a faster run into my program (the 8*4 iPod interval session described in an earlier post) and that worked well. I’ll continue that but will also add some other session like that.

One big issue that I’ve been working on for years is my weight. For the last two years I have not been paying much attention or energy on losing weight. So, at 87kg, I was again a bit overweight for my race. I’m not sure what impact that had, but I feel that if I want to get significantly faster than I am right now, I will have to loose some weight. For next year’s race I’m shooting for a much lower weight than I had this year – 84kg or under. Somehow, this has been “on the list”, but I just didn’t manage much on this front. I know it’s holding me back, but for now I just didn’t have the energy. Hopefully, next year I’ll be better. Hmmm ….

All the race prep leading up to the race has been fine. I think over the the years I have built a taper, pre-race meals etc. that is just working fine. Even the big morning meal has not been causing any problems for me. During the race, I have found that I don’t need much food. With the stuff offered at the aid stations, I didn’t need many bars, gels etc. I was nibbling a bit on a Clif bar, but didn’t even finish a whole one. Carrying the Camelbak didn’t cause any problems, and it was nice to always be able to sip some water and to have some storage space for clothes. But in a different race, that will be “too much”, a FuelBelt should be enough.

This leaves me with some ides for races in 2010. After a break this year, I would like to do another Ironman. A friend of mine will probably do her first IM, and it would be nice to go through this experience with her. In my past Ironmen, I have yet manage to put a solid run together. This will be a goal for next year, and I hope that all this year’s running will be beneficial to an Ironman run next year. But I will have to go back to “Ironman mode” again .. lots of swimming and cycling in addition to running. I’m still thinking of how to set up my season plan .. but I have a while to go.

For the rest of this season, I’m not sure what else I will do (and I will not do too much planning and play it by feel). Next week, I’ll be in Sweden for Vaetternrundan, and maybe I’ll do the Hamburg triathlon at the end of July. In August, my wife and I will go on vacation, and I guess after that I will start to prep for the 2010 season. I’m looking for someone to help me with the planning and fine tuning for the Ironman, and I hope to line up some support soon. I’ll keep you posted …