Lactic-Haze

I had a very interesting ride on Sunday morning. Birthday party of a friend the night before and had one glass of red wine too many and thus was not feeling 100%. The people I was supposed to ride with was also not at the meeting spot so it was me and the iPod on the way to Llundudno. Along the way I spotted a dude riding in a IM top, and started chatting to him. He is doing his 3rd IM this year and gave me some sage advice. “Respect the distance”.. We spoke a bit more and from all accounts, my training is on the right track.

This morning I was reading up, especially on the blog of Joe Friel. All my friends with the PowerTap devices live by Joe’s advice and training, and my coach also references him once a while on my cycling training. Much to my surprise he also knows a thing or two about IronMan training. I read the following on his blog, and it really gave me hope that I might just finish IM in PE this year.

“If you’ve never run 26.2 miles before doing a marathon may help with the mental issues, especially if you just run it slow and easy. But physiologically speaking, running for a fast marathon time and running the final leg of an Ironman are otherwise not similar. Your pace in an Ironman run will be very slow by your marathon racing standards. The training to race a marathon would be greatly different also. That is not the way you train for an Ironman run. Then there are the issues of time spent training for a marathon in regards to swim and bike training time (cycling for most is really the critical sport in an Ironman), and also the time needed to recover from a marathon with an upcoming Ironman.”

What do you think is a good average run volume for someone training for a low 12hrs Ironman?

“Volume is not a critical measure of preparation for an Ironman run. More important is the duration of your longest run/walk. I’d suggest this to be 3 hours even if you believe your split will be around 4.5 hours. Two other runs during the week may be short (less than an hour) in order to build and maintain some level of running economy. So, indirectly, I’d say the answer to your question probably works out to be 4-5 hours at the peak volume of training. The single most important element of preparing for the run is to become as fit as you can on the bike. That will allow you to hold back on the ride yet still produce an acceptable time and have the legs left to go 26.2 miles.”

Wooh! Joe Friel may just have put my mind at rest regarding my IM in PE!