Ryan Bickerstaff

I forgot how much a four hour harder bike ride could take out of me! On Sunday, the day after that ride, I managed a short swim and a run. On Monday, I did a 1500m tempo in the swim, but postponed the run and strength training because my legs were pretty shot. Despite feeling sluggish, I did go 19:14 for the 1500, splitting 9:40, 9:34, and it felt pretty relaxed just because I didn’t have the energy to go harder. On Tuesday, I normally would have biked, but the legs were still feeling the effects of the long bike ride, so I just did the run I missed on Monday. On Wednesday, I finally started to feel recovered from the bike and did an endurance swim of 5700m straight in 1:18:40, which was good since I was targeting 7:00/500m pace.

Thursday marked the start of my final race prep sequence of training before tapering for Nationals in Portland on September 20th. I had a good speed bike workout on the CompuTrainer on Thursday. On Saturday, I did some 2:00 and 4:00 repeats at 20k and 40k pace out on the roads before meeting up with a friend from school for another hour and a half of riding before heading home…a total of 52ish miles. Normally I do my key workouts on the CompuTrainer for the sake of consistency, but I got some new mini aerobars that I want to make sure I’m comfortable with out on the roads before Nationals.

All this week I’ve felt a little run down fatigue wise, but I think it is still at a healthy level. Part of it is just because I’ve been adding back more running (four 45 minute runs this week), and that takes a fair amount of additional energy. Also, I think my body can absorb about 2-3 hours of training per day - when I start to go over that on any given day, I tend to need to take it easier for a day or two at some point so that it all balances out. In any case, with only 13 days until race day, there isn’t much more hard training that my body will be able to absorb in time for the race, so if my total volume ends up being a little lower this week, it definitely won’t be a bad thing, and might even help. By Friday or Saturday of this week, I’ll definitely be cutting way back in training for the race. My swimming seems to be the best when my legs are fresh from biking and running, so by sometime around next weekend, I’ll be cutting way back in that training. I’ll just want to stay loose and do some shorter fast efforts to keep sharp, and hopefully I’ll be good to go for the race!

Filed under: Training