Ironman Mark

Here’s a comparison between my training for Ironman Lanzarote in 2009 and 2011.  Remember I felt great for 2009.  And the opposite for 2011.  2009 I trained well.  2011 I lost motivation and worked some long hours at work.

The numbers are for the six months before the race:

Swimming

2009 swim: 226k (average 3.1k)
2011 swim:  124k (average 2.5k)

So I swam 82% more in 2009

Interestingly, in 2009 I did 59:37 in the race but 57:30 in 2011.  Was I really quicker in 2011?  No, I think it was because the tide was out!  I was 7th percentile in 2009 and 10th percentile in 2011.  But overall that’s not a huge difference for nearly twice the amount of swimming.

Is there a message here that I don’t need to swim as much?  Or does all that swimming help my bike?

Biking

2009: 152 hours
2011: 123 hours

So I rode 24% more in 2009.

Number of rides over 3 hours:
2009: 18
2011: 8

And that includes the race!

In the actual race:
2009: 6:30
2011: 6:48

Run

2009: 84:04
2011: 74:51

That’s 12% more in 2009.

Eddington numbers

Swim (based on 100m = 1)
2009: 32
2011: 27

Bike (based on minutes)
2009: 55
2011: 60

Run (based on minutes)
2009: 45
2011:  44

So the Eddington number for the bike has given a perverse result.  2011′s 60 sounds much better than 2009′s 55.  But if you look at the total time for the longest 26 rides, it is:

2009: 94:40 (average 3:38)
2011: 69:37 (average 2:40)

A very big difference.

I went to the pool today to see how quick I could swim.  Now bear in mind that I was thinking more along how slow, not fast, and it doesn’t sound so good.  But I thought I’d knock out a 3.8k (or perhaps 5k if I was going well) and see how much form I have lost  Also bear in mind that I have probably swam three or four times since March and these were easy swims to relax my legs after some runs or, in the last week, to have a go at some technique.  I am definitely not in fish territory.

I stopped at 1,000m.  I could feel myself slowing down a lot and so I stopped after 1k.  So much for 3.8k.  After that, I did an all-out 25m, 50m and 100m.  All with my swimsense watch that automatically starts and stops itself when I do.  This is a relatively new toy and is likely to be less accurate over shorter distances than longer distances.  I then went looking for the spreadsheet with my all-time bests.  And I need to remember that I don’t test myself over short distances and so it probably does not catch me at my best:

25m: Now 17.1s – all-time best 1s quicker

50m: Now 37.9s – all-time best 2s quicker

100m: Now 1:27 – all-time best 10s quicker (oh dear)

The 1,000m took me 18:38.  This was not all out, in fact it was quite an easy pace.  But that is 2 mins 5 second slower than my all-time best.  The worse thing though is that I slowed pretty much equally over the whole of the 1,000m.  My last 200m was 19 seconds slower than my first.  And when you bear in mind that my 1,000m best was part of a 4,200m effort I did, well it just shows how much more work I have to do.

The drop off between the 200m’s was: 9s, 2s, 5s, 1s.  For me, that is the scariest bit.  I remember doing 6x 600m and each of the times coming in within a few seconds of each other.  Those were the days…

Still, it does show that there is plenty of room for improvement.

After a good 20k swim, the next week I did 13k – pool closed one day because of chlorine issues.  This week only 6.9k.  Again, the pool was closed on one day because of a shortage of chlorine.  Also, had a few early meetings at work which didn’t help getting to the pool.

My times are going down though.  The plan has been to use paddles and pull buoys to do lots of 100m’s.  The rest intervals for the session is a planned 10 seconds but sometimes it is a bit longer as I need to tie in with other people in the pool.

My average times have got quicker over the three weeks, but why?

1. I have got better!  I hope so.

2. My tumble turns are more consistent.

3. I am trying harder (i.e. putting in more effort).  Perhaps.  More likely it feels easier to put the effort in.

4. I am drafting more.  Perhaps.  There were two quick-ish people in the lane today and I couldn’t help drafting a bit.

5. I have “gamed” my watch.  The software hasn’t been updated but I notice that I glide in the last little bit so as to touch with my watch hand first.

Here’s a graph of my times.  Most of the sessions are at least 3k long (one is just 900m averaging 1:44 as I wasn’t feeling well).  Even if the whole of the 11s per 100m is not all me getting quicker, I think it is still quite good in three weeks.  But I do need to start doing more on my bike…

I want to get my swimming back to where it was a few years ago.  Recently,I have been in the habit of going back to sleep when the alarm goes off and so this week I gave myself the clear purposes of doing a swim every morning.  I’d also read some blogs which helped:

- Paulo Sousa: Practice makes perfect (and a few days before, one of his tweets: “Technique goes a long way in swimming, but it’s nothing without fitness. Working on your fitness works on technique. The opposite is not true”)

- Joel Filliol’s blog: The Top 20 Rules for Faster Triathlon Swimming

Paulo’s tweet and Joel’s blog really rang a bell for me.  In particular:

- Swim more often
- Do longer main sets
- Use paddles with awareness of engaging lats (which ties in with what I was doing before my first Lanzarote Ironman)
- Do many short repetitions for stroke quality
- Repetition is your friend

So, on Sunday I did 30x100m (first 1k-ish without paddles, the rest with) with 10s rest at the end of each 100m.  I then did the same every day over the rest of the week but this time with paddles on all the time.  The number of intervals also increased on the days when I had more time.  A few times I did 150m when I should have done 100m.  A couple of times I stopped to talk to someone in the lane but in general I was very “honest” about the 10s-ish rest.  All of the sessions were recorded automatically on my watch without me pressing any buttons.  This morning I added a few more laps to get to exactly 20,000m (roughly 12.4 miles).

Average pace per 100m:

- Sunday: 1:48

- Monday: 1:48

- Tuesday: 1:43

- Wednesday: 1:44

- Thursday: 1:44

- Friday: 1:44

The aim in terms of pace was (i) to be consistent so that I would not slow down significantly at the end (ii) but at a level that meant that it was my arms that ached rather than my lungs.  I think I achieved that.

Tomorrow I will give swimming a rest but the plan for next week is similar but a bit different.  Work will stop me swimming on a couple of days and so it won’t be as frequent.  Also, I plan to include some groups of 3x in the hundreds where I will go a bit faster but have a 30s rest at the end of the third interval.

I had a go at seeing how far I could swim in 30 minutes in a pool today and managed 1,835m.  The pace was relatively even at 13:00 for the first 800m and 13:10 for the next 800m.  I think that’s pretty good.  In fact, I am quite chuffed.

I’ve never done a T30 test before so I have nothing to compare it to.  But I have looked back at my notes and can see that I did 1,600m in 26:39 – so 29 seconds quicker this time.  But that was part of a longer swim, 4.2k – so it is not possible to compare the two.   But I am still chuffed.

I did feel very strong in the first few hundred metres.  It would be great to be able to get that feeling to last longer!

Swimming has been very intermittent these last few months, or even last two years.  I’ve tried all sorts of things but very little of it has felt right.

So I tried something different over the last three sessions.  Thursday I did 5 x 400m, breathing bilaterally.  The quickest was 7:05, the rest 7:12 – 7:14.

Sunday I did 8 x400m and a 600m at the end.  The quickest was in 6:50, with other quick ones around 6:54 – 6:55 (and breathing to one side I did a 6:35).

Then today I did 10x400m, again bilateral breathing.  I drafted someone for a while and came in at 6:17. Several were in the 6:30′s – 6:40 as well.  What a difference!

One of the differences was that I didn’t try too hard.  Also, I was concentrating on “swimming thin”.  It seemed to work!