You have to feel the consequences of you mistakes in order to prevent them when it counts.
This pretty much sums up last week and the final week of my training. Now it's all about slightly lowering the volume each week in order to give the body a chance to regain strength and perform as good as it can on race day.
But first things, first. I wanted to add a slight change to my training by include one more run training this week which was a pure interval training. I usually run two to three times a week (twice of the bike and one long on the weekend). Last week it was supposed to be 1 single shorter run, 1 run of the bike and 1 long run.
The single run went pretty smooth. I ran easy for the first 10 minutes and then alternated between 10-20 second sprints and 30 second moderate runs which is a nice change of pace since your heart rate is all over the place and after 10 or so minutes you already feel that this is going to be a hard training.
The second run was a moderate run of the bike which was a little tricky since I felt some knee pain for the first 2 kilometers but then it went away and I could finish training as planed.
I also focused more on speed/sprint workouts on the swim parts so my overall distance looks a little shorter then usual but I can promise you that it was far from easy :)
When the weekend knocked on my window it was time to start my last 160+ kilometer ride before the Ironman race in Nice. I climbed the Medvednica hill from the south side with no problems in 36 minutes. I am looking forward to see what my time will be when I only focus on the climb (you have to save energy for the second ascend almost 100 kilometers later :) ).
Once I left Medvednica behind me for the first time I started to feel a little strange but didn't put too much thought into it. I started drinking a little more but as the time went by I felt more and more tired. Climbing the mountain once more (almost 900 meters of ascend again) felt super hard but since I had to meet up with some friends at the top I couldn't allow myself being slow and arrive late.
In the end it turns out that my problem was just that I lost to much electrolytes which caused my body do underperform. I drank around 3 liters of water but ended up losing almost 3 kilos compared to my weight before I took of that morning.
Lesson learned!!!
This poor nutrition carried over to the next day when instead of a 30 kilometer run I ended up doing only 8.
Sometimes you need in kick in the ass to get moving into the right direction.
All in all I am pleased with my performance but I know that it can and WILL get better in the coming weeks and I am super confident that I'll give my best performance on race day the 28th of June.
Let's have a look at the (still OK) numbers and call it a day.
| Distance | Time | Pace | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swim | 4.6 km | 2:00:00 | 2:36 min / 100 m |
| Bike | 213.50 km | 8:52:43 h | 2:29 min / km |
| Run | 27.75 km | 2:25:42 h | 4:58 min / km |
I was aiming for something like 15 hours but almost 13:20 isn't bad also :)
| Distance | Time | |
|---|---|---|
| Swim | 145.90 km | 56:42:00 h |
| Bike | 3188.01 km | 136:43:37 h |
| Run | 652.78 km | 56:56:57 h |
A little short of 4000 kilometers in total but this will change soon.
Until then, don't forget to be awesome :)