Four Weeks To Go!

It's now the third week of July, which means that IMMT is actually less than four weeks away. Since I raced Patriot, I feel my training has gone quite well. The time spent on Nantucket with my family was great, and I really kicked off the IM training while we were there. The last few weeks of training have been pretty tough, and having a 3 1/2 month old baby certainly doesn't allow for endless hours of training time. He is super cute, though!!



My last three weeks of training have looked like this, with training time ranging from 17.5-21.5 hrs:

Swim: 16,300                   Swim: 16,100                  Swim: 13,400
Bike: 242                          Bike: 281                        Bike: 211
Run: 30                             Run: 36                           Run: 41

I've got two more weeks of some high volume, then it's time for taper, baby! This week I have two 5-hr rides, which should be around 110-112 miles a piece. This coming Sunday is another 18-19 mile run, the majority of which will be done at my target pace of 7:30. That pace seems pretty easy to hold on a long run, but I know it will be a whole different matter after a nice little 112 mile bike ride.

I think my swim endurance has improved over the course of the season. It's definitely my weakest area, but I think that I should be able to swim a 1:05-1:06. I've been hitting my faster 100's in the low 1:20's, and did a 40x100 yd workout recently where I was right around 1:27 on a 1:40 sendoff for the first 30 and 1:35 on the last 10.

My long rides have been going pretty well. So far, I've done three 100+ rides, and two that were around 95. I will probably end up with six rides of over 100 miles, which should set me up pretty well for a strong bike time at IMMT. I'm targeting around 245 watts on the bike, which I hope will put me pretty close to a 5:00 bike split. I went 2:23 in the half on 275 watts, so I feel that a time around 5:00 is reasonable.

I'm just hoping that the temperature at IMMT is relatively cool. The average high temps there in August are in the mid 70's, which would be great. After having a week of temps in the 90's here in the Boston area that would seem quite nice! However, the heat's also been a good test to do some long training in to see what my body can handle. My 110 mile ride this past Saturday was done with a heat index of around 100, and I felt pretty good.

Running has been a bit more brutal in the heat. I think it takes me a bit longer to run in heat and humidity. After all of my recent runs it's looked like I just wore my running gear into the shower.

I've also been watching some of the Tour de France, and some of the 'fans' really crack me up, none more than this guy carrying what looks like a stuffed boar with one leg that fell off. The best part is that the guy is carrying the broken leg! Simply awesome!!!!!!