The Final Four

I've been thinking about the Spirit of Racine Triathlon, what I learned, what I could've done better, what I need to do to different in the future.

I'm starting my final four weeks of hard ironman training. After that, I taper for a few weeks and then it's race day. Here are some things I'm going to focus on or change in my training for the next month....

1. Hammer the bike. I typically race a little harder than I train, and that's worked for short events but it didn't work well at Racine. My long rides have been in my endurance power zone and I want to do more long tempo rides and work in some long tempo intervals into my 100+ mile rides. This way I can back off a bit on race day and hopefully come off the bike feeling pretty good.

2. Run more. I need to increase my weekly mileage and get in more tempo work and hills.

3. Bricks with long runs. All of my bricks so far have been long rides followed by a short run. That's good, but I need to do more with a shorter bike (40-50 miles) and a longer run. It's not that tough to run 2 or 3 miles on tired legs, but 7 or 8 miles is a different story. This will also help me figure out my nutrition. Two miles isn't enough for you to pay the price if your nutrition is off.

4. Longer mid-week runs. I've been getting in my long runs on the weekend, but now I want to increase the length of one of my midweek runs. This may be a good time to do a long brick.

5. More rest. I need to get more sleep at night and take more rest days.

6. Make the key workouts count. I've been getting stuck in that middle zone, meaning my hard workouts aren't hard enough and my easy workouts are too hard. I need to focus on my key workouts and make them really good. If other workouts suffer, it doesn't matter.

7. Improve my nutrition. I've been better the past few weeks, but now is the time to buckle down and eat well. More fruits and veggies. No more Pop Tarts.

I'm starting out with a 56 mile tempo ride tomorrow after work. My average power goal for ironman will be 190-205 watts (most likely I'll shoot for 195-200) so tomorrow I'm going to do 56 miles on the IM course and go for 220+ average watts. 230-240 would be ideal, but I'm not sure I can keep my watts that high for that long. A few rides like this and a 195 watt average should feel easy (well....easier).

Then Sunday I'm running 15 miles, starting out with a lot of hills - Midtown road.