June Update and Final Month countdown

The countdown to Lake Placid has started with the final four weeks of training. One more really hard training week and then I taper for the last three weeks leading up to the Lake Placid Ironman.

June was another productive month for me, although I encountered a minor setback as I injured my Achilles tendon on a WPR run in Mt. Moriah cemetery. I'm not exactly sure how it happened but all of a sudden I got very gimpy and simply couldn't continue running and could barely walk. I don't think it was an over-use injury, just kind of a freakish event. That's why I don't do trail running. The worst part was that it happened the day before I went to Lake Placid for my Ironman training camp. The beauty of triathlon training is when you can't do one activity, you can focus harder on the other two until you recover. I was able to have my largest training volume months in biking and swimming and was able to squeeze in 100 miles of running despite taking a week off to rest the injury and starting back slowly to avoid re-injuring it. I like that my training volume has been steadily increasing each month with swimming and biking and I've already biked and swam more in six months this year than I did last year.

Here are my training volume numbers since the beginning of the year and compared to last year:
 

	January	February	March	April	May	June
Running (Miles)
2013	115.25	103.89	100.01	99.41	89.81	112.71
2014	112.52	117.22	138.07	102.58	135.44	100.88
Biking (Miles)
2013	201.40	190.26	104.19	217.89	216.29	298.91
2014	309.80	281.37	355.29	410.49	524.37	601.93
Swimming (Km)
2013	13.20	14.20	10.00	14.90	16.10	15.50
2014	22.20	19.70	25.30	27.00	30.40	34.40

I did two races in June, the Black Bear Half Iron Distance (which I posted about last month), the ODDyssey half marathon and also went to a training camp in Lake Placid.  Here is a summary of those events.

ODDyssey Half Marathon (June 8)
This was the third straight year that I have ran the ODDyssey half marathon. The race is held late May/early June where the weather is hard to predict. The last two years the race had very hot and  humid conditions. Luckily this year, we had a very sunny day, but with low humidity and the temperature was favorable this time. The course has a lot of shade which also helps keep the sun off. I started out pretty fast this year (as usual) and was averaging sub-7 minute miles for the first four miles, mostly because the first part of the course is downhill. As I started up the ramp to the Strawberry Mansion bridge and the hill after crossing the bridge, my pace definitely slowed up but was still pretty solid on the uphills (7:28). After coming back down to Kelly Drive and over the Falls Bridge to West River Drive, which were fairly level, I maintained a pace of 7:12 from miles 8 - 12. The last mile of the course features the trek back up the Lansdowne hill to the Finish line. I have definitely struggled on this hill in the past and was trying to save something for it. I was able to keep a good pace up the hill, although it was my slowest paced mile of the race (7:42), which was expected. I finished the half-marathon in my second fastest half-marathon time at 1:34:30 (7:10 pace). A solid finish to the great Spring race season and a nice medal that can be mounted to my wall as a bottle opener.

Lake Placid Training Camp (June 19-22) 
The Lake Placid training camp was run by ETA Coach, Jason Kilderry and something that I signed up for when the registration first opened up. There were 18 people that attended the camp and we stayed in two houses right near one another. The camp and training are so great that you don't even have to be participating in the Ironman Lake Placid to go. Lake Placid is a great location and provides a good challenge to train regardless of whatever triathlon you are planning to do. We had some athletes that were training for Half-Ironmans and some that were doing full Ironmans in other locations. We were definitely treated extremely well at the camp as the houses were well stocked with food and beverages and if something was missing, all you had to do was tell someone and they would go get it for you. There were two bike mechanics on hand that tuned up everyone's bikes, a massage therapist that gave everyone a 10-15 minute massages, and a physical therapist that helped me with my Achilles injury. The staff provided SAG support while we were on the bike course and carried water and Gatorade during the other workouts. There were also clinics about bike maintenance, open water swimming tips, and nutrition strategies during the Ironman.

As I mentioned, I got to Lake Placid with an injured Achilles tendon which put me on the sidelines for all running activities during the camp. I did get 3 swims in Mirror Lake and I rode the full Ironman bike course (2 loops) and got another loop in on Sunday morning while the other athletes were out on their long run. I'm excited for the swim portion of the Ironman as the lake was very clear and features an underwater tow rope for the buoys. I don't think that I will use the underwater tow line to guide me during the swim as I've heard it gets pretty crowded near the rope since it eliminates the need to site the buoys. The water temperature was in the high 60's while we were there and it felt great in a wetsuit. The bike course preview was one of my main goals for the camp to get a feel on the elevation changes, especially the Keane descent and the climbs from Jay back to Lake Placid. My first time on the course, I was able to complete 109 miles in 6:20 in some windy conditions. I noted my 100 mile time which was 5:45 which was the fastest time that I've ever done a century ride. I left the training camp feeling a lot more confident about a good biking time in the Ironman now that I have ridden the course a couple of times.

Based on what I did at the training camp and my training plan, I think that I should finish the Lake Placid Ironman in 12 to 12:30 hours. I figure a 1:15 minute swim, 15 minutes of total transition time, and a 6:30 bike. I feel like if I have a good day my marathon time should be between 4 and 4:30 hours, hopefully closer to 4 hours if everything goes right.

I'm hoping that my next blog entry will be about how I had a great race and achieved all of my goals at the Lake Placid Ironman. Good luck with training and have a great race to everyone that is doing the Ironman Lake Placid. I hope to see the many people that I've met during this adventure and wish everyone the best race possible. It's been a great journey. 

Less than Two Months to go!

May continued to be a busy training month for me. I increased my training volume in all three sports. I was able to get five open water swims in before the Black Bear triathlon and three of them were longer than the full Ironman distance. I also did my first century ride and a few long bike-run brick workouts. Here are my monthly distance numbers for the current year compared to last year:

January February March April May Running (Miles) 2013        115.25        103.89        100.01        99.41        89.81 2014        112.52        117.22        138.07        102.58        135.44 Biking (Miles) 2013        201.40        190.26        104.19        217.89        216.29 2014        309.80        281.37        355.29        410.49        524.37 Swimming (Km) 2013          13.20          14.20          10.00          14.90          16.10 2014          22.20          19.70          25.30          27.00          30.40 Million Dollar Bike ride I signed up for the Million Dollar ride as a supported training ride and to take a different route than I have been used to riding with some elevation (3,700 ft gain). I felt they did a good job with directions marking the course and the rest stops were located at great places along the course. We had some elevation to tackle to get out of Philadelphia. The ride headed up to the Plymouth Meeting area and around Evanburg State Park in Montgomery County. I was able to complete the 76.4 mile course in 4:49:34. The ride had some great swag as I got a new bike jersey, t-shirt and the post-ride refreshments included pizza, hoagies, noodles and free Dock Street beer. I stuck with carbs since I was doing Broad Street the following morning but had a couple of beers to get me nice and sleepy for an early bed time that night.  Broad Street Run A lot of people told me that I was crazy to run Broad Street after doing the Million Dollar bike ride the day before. I tend to agree with the sentiment, but my rational was treat Broad Street as a hard training run and if I PR'ed fine, but I wasn't going to worry about it if I didn't because I was sure that I would still run a solid race. Plus it seemed to relax me more not having to worry too much about actually racing. I got up to the Start very early this year, maybe a little too early. With the crowds and everything, I felt it was better to be able to get into my corral this year than to be stuck in the track like I had been the year before. The race was cool and cloudy with a cross-wind from the west, which would have been ideal without the wind. I got off to a good start, sub 6:30 for the first two miles. I knew that if I wanted to break 70 minutes that I would need to bank as much time in the first five miles with the biggest elevation loss. Mile three I started to feel like I had ridden a 75 mile bike ride the day before and my legs were getting heavy. I worked through it and kept my form up to get a second wind about a mile later when I took my gel. That lasted until Mile 8 when I felt really rough again. The race had been going so fast for me that I knew I just had to gut it out. I was tempted a couple times to walk through the aid stations but decided against it as I found those precious seconds had always worked against me in other races. Luckily, I did skip walking because as I crossed the Finish line, I looked at my watch and it was 1:08:02 but the official time was exactly 1:08:00. My original goal was to break 70 and I thought that I might have 68 in me on a good day so it was great to set a new PR and beat my goal time. Afterwards, I met up with some of the other West Philly Runners to share stories of our Broad Street successes and the West Philly Runners Broad Street after-party was at my house.  Black Bear Half Ironman The triathlon gods smiled upon us as we were blessed with perfect weather for the Black Bear Half Ironman. I got up to Jim Thorpe on Friday night and we stayed in the cabins where the Philly Triathlon Club had the training weekend in April. Saturday afternoon, Chris and I went over to the Beltzville State Park to get our stuff and do some pre-race workouts. Chris did 20 minutes each of a swim, bike and run. I took advantage of having open water to practice and swam for just under an hour. The lake was very choppy from the wind and boats. Going in the one direction, it felt like an ocean swim as it was rough but going the other direction was really fast. The water temperature was absolutely perfect for open water swimming in my wetsuit and was quite refreshing. The weather held up for race day and at the Start the lake was calm, there was no noticeable wind, and it was sunny. I was put into the first of two swim waves for the half iron distance which went off after the Sprint and Olympic distances. I just wanted to have a smooth swim with no issues or cramps. I positioned myself on the far side of the buoys and in the back of the pack. That really enabled me to get up to speed quickly with little bumping and splashing. My heart raced a little at the beginning but I quickly settled down and got into a nice groove. The swim was pretty much uneventful outside of some guy drafting me and hitting my foot every 3-4 strokes. I completed the swim in 35:48 which was solid, but I thought I could have done it a little quicker based on my previous half swim when I did 37:30. Overall, the goal was to make the swim irrelevant and conserve energy for biking and running which was accomplished. I had a slow T1 which I need to work on a little bit. Granted the timing mats were pretty far apart and I basically ran through the whole bike area with my bike because our bikes were close to the swim exit. The bike course is a two-loop course with quite a few of hills, some are pretty steep. The elevation gain on the Black Bear is almost the same as the total elevation gain on the full Lake Placid course so it's a great workout for the full Ironman. I also used the bike course to work on my nutrition plan which consisted on a bologna sandwich on white bread, Gatorade and two Clif bars. I was able to take in about 250+ calories per hour and I ate every half hour on the bike course. I felt fine without being hungry or feeling bloated during the ride. I completed the bike course in 3:16:32 (17.1 mph) but again had a slow T2. The run course was more of a trail run as we ran on trails in the woods and rock filled roads in the park. It was definitely challenging to find flat spots to run on. My legs basically felt numb for the entire run but I was never in any trouble and I only walked on two of the hills and through some of the water stations. I just took it one mile at a time. The course goes through some woods and behind the Beltsville Dam into a steep decent and then an equally steep incline to get back out and it felt like we were climbing through a lava field. We got to run on top of the dam and then back through the trails to the turnaround point and Finish. This was probably the point were some clouds and a breeze would have been nice as it was getting pretty warm and when we weren't in the woods, we had the sun beating on us. The only issue that I slacked on was not taking any calories in during the run. I had two Gu's with me but just didn't feel like eating them. Luckily, I had eaten enough on the bike that I didn't bonk during the run, but I do need to be aware of this as my volume continues to increase. My final run time was 1:51:44. That was also an improvement over my previous half but I had hoped to be under 1:50.  My final time was 5:55:31 which was under my goal time of 6 hours. It was slightly slower than the previous Pocono Half-Ironman which was expected because this was a tougher course. I placed 40th overall out of 194 finishers and 7th in my Age group. I consider this race to be a good gauge of my Lake Placid Ironman training and I accomplished everything that I wanted to during this race.  June Goals The next five weeks will be the biggest volume of training for me. My goals are to continue increasing my long runs and bike rides while continue to progress with my bike-run brick workouts. I think my swimming is where it needs to be and I'm just in maintenance mode at this point. I don't want to chance cramping during a swim by trying to push my pace faster since it won't lower my time much. My training program calls for me to cycle down the strength training over the next few weeks to completely stopping all together for the final three taper weeks. All things said, I'm right where I want to be and am getting excited as my training program winds down and the actual race takes place soon.  Race schedule Phillies 5K - 3/22 Finished 24th place out of over 4,700 runners. Time 19:32, Pace 6:18 min/mile Bucks County Half-Marathon - 4/12 Finished 21st Overall, 2nd Age Group, Time: 1:36:34, Pace 7:24 The Fleche Buffoon 75 Miles Bike Ride - 4/19 Completed in 5:10:37 Million Dollar 73 Miles Bike Ride - 5/3 Finished in 4:49:34 Broad Street Run - 5/4 Finished in 1:08:00, Pace 6:47 min/mile WPR 26x1 Relay - 5/17 Black Bear Half-Ironman - 6/1 Finished 40th  Overall, 7th Age Group, Time: 5:55:31 ODDyssey Half-Marathon - 6/8 Lake Placid Training Camp - 6/19 - 6/22 Lake Placid Ironman - 7/27