Ironteam,

 

Congratulations to the Vineman peeps for your efforts last weekend, let’s see some race day reports folks! And you LOU folks, awesome last week of training everyone. High pressure has settled in and it’s going to be cooking hot for the remainder of the week. Take precautions to be sure the workouts you line up are done early in the morning to avoid the heat of the day if you can. Monday is an off day, but it’s also a spare the air day so air quality could be an issue if you bump your rest day for any reason and try to get a workout in tomorrow. As always, remember to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate….

 

Sunday was a hot one up at the Yorty Creek swim beach where a group of Ironteamers showed what it means to “Ironman Up” and came out to swim in the pleasant waters of Lake Sonoma then headed down to Cloverdale for a challenging  13 miles of rollers in heat that reached 98 degrees by the end of the day. Way to dig deep and put this training day in its place.

 

Now comes the most beautiful word in training, Taper! Yes folks, we will slowly be dialing it back to get your body primed for race day. You will possibly feel a bit of pent up energy that would normally be blown off with a long run of hard 4000 yard swim set. Please only do what is on the schedule in the next few weeks. Doing more now will NOT improve your performance on race day, it will in fact prove detrimental to your day.

 

Spend that extra time you are not training to  begin organizing  your equipment for race day and plan a few final items for purchase at one of the team send-off meetings hosted by Sports Basement this week. If you plan to get a final tune up on your bike, get it into the shop EARLY THIS WEEK. You need time to ride it a little before you drop it off at Tri Bike Transport on the 20th (that’s only 10 days away folks) In the height of summer many bike shops take up to a week to get to your bike. Put this on your to-do list if you were planning on it. Also, if you are running on shoes with 500 miles on them, the next three weeks are a great time to break in a new pair. Just be sure they are the same model as you have been training on, it’s too late in the season to go trying a new shoe.

 

Finally, if you plan to get any tissue work or massage done, the next week is a very good time to schedule that. It will give you time to recover physically from the toxin release caused by such modalities and you will feel better than if you get the deep massage in the week leading up to the race. A light sports massage 5-7 days before race day is also fine, but be sure the therapist knows you want a light massage, not deep tissue work that close to race day.

 

In today’s message:

 

1) Control what you can - Mind games before race day

2) This week’s Schedule

3) Vineman Folks - When to start back up with your workouts

 

 

1) Control what you can - Mind games before race day

 

Several messages have come out recently about heavy rains in the Louisville area that caused some flooding and a change to the cut-off policy at the event. Unless you have some divine power you have been hiding, there’s a common thread about these things. All of them are completely out of your control. You control your preparation for the event, your mental state of mind, your equipment upkeep and your nutrition plan. Focus on those items and let the one’s you can’t control simply happen for you. Spending even a small amount of energy on those things you have no control over is counterproductive. Let it go.

 

2) This week’s Schedule (10 hours)

 

Monday - OFF

 

Tuesday - SWIM - Refer to the attached taper swim schedule.

 

Wednesday - RUN & STRETCH

 

                                RUN - 60′ @ lvl 5 maintenance run.

 

                STRETCH. Pick 4 from the list below. Floor work using flexibility stretches (Yoga).

·         Pigeon Pose - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVlX5HNKamw

·         Hip openers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rost91LKcQ

·         Lower back - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giWLeXbBBtY&feature=fvw

·         Hamstrings (Downward Dog) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbJaj0Aqw5k&feature=channel

·         Reclining twist - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Ief_QdEao&feature=channel

·         Neck release - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mbdyf_H7KI&feature=channel

·         Soft twist - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5bJolhNkUU&feature=channel

 

Thursday-  (BRICK) BIKE & RUN + STRETCH

 

                                BIKE - TR2 (Pedaling drills) or relatively flat outdoor ride for drill work (do not unclip from your pedals for 1 leg drills if riding outside)

 

                                RUN - 20′ immediately following the bike

 

                                STRETCH - See Wednesday’s selections. Pick other exercises you did not do on Wednesday.

 

Friday - SWIM - Refer to the attached swim taper schedule for your workouts

 

Saturday - BIKE - 45 Miles on the road (Rolling terrain)

 

Sunday - RUN - CAPTAIN’S WORKOUT (Locations TBD - Look for captain emails this week)

 

                                10 Miles @ lvl 5

 

3) Vineman Folks - When to start back up with your workouts

 

A few people have expressed an interest in getting out and working out now that Vineman is in the bag. Please understand that this is normal for your mind to want to “get back in the game” however your body is not nearly as eager to agree with your brain and is still actively repairing the damage done to it on race day. Take at least one more week off from ANY HARD exercise. Gentle Yoga, Mat Pilates or an easy spin class at the gym is fine, but resist the temptation to go out for a bike ride any longer than one hour right now. You tore micro-fibers in your muscles and just about everyone digested some muscle tissue in the process of your day last weekend, be kind to that body that performed above and beyond the call of duty last week by giving it some time to rebuild. Ironman is not like any other endurance event you may have done in the past where within a week you were running 8 miles and biking 40-60 miles. Have a relaxing week. Go out with all those friends that you missed seeing when you dropped off the face of the Earth last November. Catch up on all the movies you never saw because you were either training or sleeping, or eating! Fell what is it like to not have a sore bum after a weekend of training. Soak up the sunshine and bask in the glory, you have earned it. Next week we will have some general guidelines to follow for getting back to the active lifestyle we hope is your new status quo, but for now, take it easy!

 

We hope to see everyone this week at the send-off meetings. These have a ton of great information that will help you in your final preparations for IM.

 

Cheers,

 

Nancy, Doug & Dave

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 6:37 pm and is filed under 2009 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.