Holy Maffetone!

If you've been following this blog for a while then you'll know all about Dr Phil Maffetone. He was cited by 6 times World Ironman Champion, Mark Allen, as someone who transformed his way of training in this article, which is well worth reading. I've been preaching to anyone who'll listen for a while now, the benefits of "maximal aerobic training" which involves doing virtually all your training at an intensity at which you derive most of your energy from (aerobic) metabolism of fats. It is very hard to accept because we all have ingrained in us the "no pain no gain" dictum. As I have said before, Dr Maffetone is a holistic practitioner, which means taking everything into account but it also often ends up meaning "all-or-nothing". I've adopted what resonates with me and taken the rest with a pinch of salt.

My version of the MAF test (Maximum Aerobic Function, nothing to do with MAFfetone) is to run for an hour (he suggests 5 miles which would be a little over half an hour) at just under my Aerobic Threshold (AT) according to the tests Jonathan did to measure my O2 / CO2 exchange. Today I ran with my compression (calves and thighs) and on a flat, circular(ish) running track with moderate gusts of wind (11kph) and a cool 17 degrees. I managed to run exactly 14km without going over my AT, that's to say at an average heart rate of 150bpm! That's definitely a record for me. I think it is a good predictor of how fast I can run anything from 10k to a Marathon and it is useful to know for the future, if I am to compare myself with how I am now. Anyway, I am well pleased with this result.

Lisbon race plan

Transition area

 The swim (1.9km)

The best of both worlds: salt water and no waves

Pacing. In my case, that's easy: I plan to swim as fast as I possibly can without sacrificing form or getting out of breath (i.e., not very fast).

What to think about. 
1. Remember to sight every so often
2. DON'T PANIC! If things get really rough, swim a few strokes of breaststroke
3. Look slightly ahead underwater and, when rolling to breathe, look at a point on the horizon
4. Lead with the elbows
5. Minimize kick but coordinate with the arm pull 

The ride (90km)

4 laps. About as flat as it gets

Pacing. Keep heart rate less than 149 beats per minute all the way, 153 tops. If I am getting splits of 1:40 per kilometer, then I am on pace for a 2h30 bike leg; if not, DON'T WORRY, I have been training for the FULL Ironman distance and I haven't done a full taper yet.

What to think about. 
1. Make sure I take all the food, water and salt that I'll need for the run
2. Keep upper body relaxed (i.e., not gripping the aero bars tightly)
3. Pedal in swift smooth circles
4. Careful not to incur drafting penalties (once you are enter a 7m x 3m box behind the rider in front, you have15 seconds to overtake and you cannot drop back). 

The run (21.1km)

4 laps. Also very flat

Pacing. Keep heart rate less than 170 beats per minute all the way; if I'm not feeling great then aim for less than 164.

What to think about.

1. Run tall, keep hips forward
2. Punch it forward
3. Keep taking gels, water and salt tablets
4. REMEMBER WHY I AM DOING THIS*

* ...because I know that I can
  ...because I want to make good my bad experience with the Boat Race, 20 years ago
  ...because I am very ANGRY to have lost my good friend Neil
  ...because I will be an Ironman (soon)

Nutrition plan for Lisbon

I'm surprised by how little information there is on what athletes actually take during an Ironman event. I suppose it is for many different reasons including: it being a competitive advantage to keep it secret; not being able to remember or simply that it varies so much from one person to another that no-one considers it useful information. Being a bit of a nerd, I made a spreadsheet some time ago to try to work out the best nutrition plan. The goal is to maximize the number of calories ingested while respecting certain limitations - namely

a) the number of carbohydrates that can be ingested per hour without causing gastrointestinal stress (estimate: 1.1g per kilo if you are a man, 1g per kilo if you are a woman).

b) the concentration of carbohydrates should be around 6-8% to be isotonic (best absorption rate). If it is more concentrated, its absorption is slowed down.

c) the amount of water and electrolytes (sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium) lost by sweating should be replaced. This depends on your sweat rate and the typical electrolyte content of your sweat (which can vary tremendously from individual to individual and even from zone to zone).

d) ideally you should consume protein in a ratio of 1g of protein for every 4g of carbohydrates.

On the run it is pretty much impossible to meet these requirements but you can at least get close. The bike is what I call "meals on wheels" and gives you a chance to recover from the swim and at least start the Marathon as close as possible to on a full tank.

Here is my plan - of course I will have to make some adaptions according to the sports drinks they give out during the race but I hope I will be able to stick to it better than last year when I just went freestyle and started binging on Coca-Cola because I was suffering so.

Amazingly (and coincidentally), the net calorie balance at the end of all the bike leg is 0 (in theory)!

On the run things like cereal bars are not easily digestible

Carboloading before the event

I base this on the guide from High5, my preferred supplier of gels.

According to High5, during the 3 days before the competition you should try to consume 10g of carbohydrates per kilo of body mass. In my case, that means 850g of carbs a day - nearly a kilo! It is actually quite a feat - this isn't just a question of having a few big bowls of spaghetti. The only way to do it is to stuff your face with sickly gels and energy drinks all day long. To give you some idea, in a typical day I may consume about 300-450g of carbs, depending on how much exercise I had done that day; and that means packing in some 15-20 gels on top a day. A little trick the High5 guys propose is to do a short 10 minute warm up half an hour after taking the first dose in the morning, and then to do a 3 minute sprint on the bike to fool the body into storing more carbs. A tip from me is not to carboload with the same flavour gels you use in competition because you will likely be sick to death of them before you even start.

On the day itself they recommend taking in 150 grammes of carbohydrates for breakfast. I'll have my normal breakfast and a gel / energy bar + energy drink. Just before the swim start, I'll take a last gel and energy drink.

I don't know whether it was due to carboloading, having a good aerobic base or simply not going off too hard, but I did not hit a wall of any kind in the Marathon I ran back in November. So I will follow the same recipe I used for the Half Ironman as a kind of dress rehearsal for the Full Ironman. I'll also take a couple of salt tablets the night before the event and one for breakfast.

Recovery after the event

I used to think that recovery was for wimps. Who cares what happens after the race? Of course, this time it really does matter because, if I get wrecked doing the Half Ironman, it will set my training back for the Full Ironman. In any case, there is nothing "cool" about having to walk down stairs backwards. Basically, it's important to take in carbs and protein (like the High5 4:1 Energy drink) as soon as you can. This means that you have to think about it before the race otherwise, by the time you get back to the hotel, it's already too late.

The grand total

All that means something like 50 gels / sports drinks, 15 salt tablets, 3 cereal bars and a banana for a Half Ironman and 65 gels / sports drinks, 30 salt tablets, 5 cereal bars and a couple of bananas for a Full!

Dress rehearsal

I put on the trusty wetsuit in the swimming pool yesterday. I was exhausted before I even got in the pool. But what a difference it makes!! I did 200m in 2:55 which, for me, is ridiculous (normally I take 3:55 and that is giving it some welly). I did get very hot very quickly, so I had to take it off to do the rest of my workout. It seems like, the worse swimmer you are technically, the more benefit you get from wearing a wetsuit. Suits me!

Today I'll go for a run in my full competition regalia. I'm starting a brand new pair of Puma Kosmos trainers which should - in theory - be exactly the same as my old pair, but better to check. I laced them with some elastic laces last night so I can be sure that they won't come undone during the race.

Week 15 / 20

Phew that was a tough week! It started off innocuously enough but culminated in a 2 and a half hour run on Thursday, followed by a 5 hour ride on Friday and a "brick" (bike-run) of 3 and a half hours on the bike - 2 and a half of which at Half Ironman intensity - and a brisk 1 hour 40 minute run... Practically a Half Ironman on my own. To make things harder, this was during my Easter "break" in Asturias so, lots of hills and everything on a heavy heavy mountain bike. It was nice to have a change of scenery and the routes I took were jaw-droppingly stunning. Thankfully, the weather forecast was totally and utterly wrong; not a single drop of rain which is really saying something in these parts. They say that you can experience the four seasons in one day in Asturias. In fact, it did rain on our house but not on us - we were elsewhere. In Madrid it rained, apparently, while in London the weather was incredible.

I had to cycle through Poo

By the way, I ended up having to do the brick run in an old (but well before sell by date) pair of Nike running shoes from back in the days when I thought cushioning was a good thing. They are fine for the bike but running in them after all this time in minimalist shoes felt like running in boots through sand. I couldn't help thinking that Bill Bowerman, the inventor of the waffer thin waffle shoe and founder of Nike, must be turning in his grave.

Running in Asturias is something else...

It's hard enough fitting the training in around family commitments but to then make the same fuss about food is just too much, especially when I've either been tired or sleeping the rest of the time. Today I fell fowl of the massive calorie deficit from more than 3000 calories burnt in training and less than half a day in which to make up for it. The dog ended up paying for it - after pulling me around all afternoon I lost my temper with it and yanked it about and called it all kinds of things that I'm sure it didn't understand. To do this Ironman lark properly you really have to be equally pedantic about what goes in (food) as what goes out (training) but, unless you actually make a living out of it, it is hard to make a case of it.

So that's it, really. I'm into the final straight. I've done the work to get in good shape and now it's just a question of reducing the load while maintaining fitness. It's about not screwing anything up between now and the Ironman; there's not much I can do now to be any fitter or faster on the day.

The training is having an effect on my subjective load... (I renumbered the weeks again - week 15 is week 13 on the graph)

I have to decide with Jonathan whether to go all out in the Lisbon Half Ironman - perhaps risking injury or delaying recovery - or to do it at full Ironman pace. I know what the sensible thing to do is but who said that doing Ironmans was sensible?

Packing list for Half Ironman / Ironman

This is mainly for my own benefit but it could be handy for you so I decided to post it.

What to pack (apart from the usual):

Before
- supplements
- gels and bars for carboloading
- transition bag
- information about the race
- triathlon federation card
- charger for Garmin
- toilet paper

Swim
- goggles
- wetsuit
- Body Glide vaseline (to help on with the wetsuit and minimize chaffing)
- swimming cap (they are usually provided)
- sandals to walk down to the water's edge
- ankle chip holder

Bike (T1)
- race number on race belt
- bike (I once heard a case of someone who forgot this important piece of kit!)
- chain lubricant
- rubber bands to fix shoes to bike
- water bottles: 1 aero (with corresponding rubber bands), one full of gels and up to 3 filled with High5 Energy Source 4:1 that I don't mind replacing with the ones that get given out during the race
- pump (on bike)
- 2 Ironman food carriers on bike in which I store the following food and puncture stuff
- cereal bars
- High5 Energy Source 4:1 sachets
- salt tablets
- 2-3 CO2 canisters + adapters
- spare inner tube
- puncture repair kit
- tools - pedal wrench, torque wrench, multitool, cassette removal tool (if I need to take off my disc covers)
- helmet
- towel
- socks
- bike shoes
- cleat covers
- tri shorts and top (with pockets)
- sun block (stored in said pocket)
- bananas (also in pocket)
- arm compression
- thigh compression
- sunglasses
- Garmin 310XT + heart rate strap
- chamois (pronounced "shammy" in English) cream
- tape

Run (T2)
- Breathe Right
- visor
- calf compression
- running shoes with elastic laces
- Fuel Belt with gels & salt tablets

After
- dry clothes
- Compex Runner
- food
- beer

Anything missing?

Boston Marathon

It's funny how your goals change. I remember "qualifying for Boston" was one of my early goals - it entails running a Marathon in 3:15 or less. By the time I had tamed the Marathon in my head, this goal came and went without my even noticing that I had achieved it. To some extent, something similar is happening with the Ironman - although I don't want to speak too soon! That is to say, at first the challenge seems daunting, impossible even, and as you get the training under your belt, you become more confident until you are absolutely SURE that you will achieve it. The problem is, once you get to this point, it almost seems pointless the actual achieving of it. I mean, if you know you can do it, why bother? This was how I felt at the end of my disastrous first Marathon - I knew I would eventually cross the line but so what?

The 2011 Boston Marathon was at the weekend and it sounds as though it must have been incredible. No less than two (Kenyans obviously) ran the course under the World record time of 2:03:59 and Ryan Hall, the fastest American Marathon runner, registered a spectacular time of 2:04:58! Unfortunately, Boston Marathon does not qualify as a course on which World records can be broken because it is a slightly downhill, point to point course (which can benefit, as it did this year, from a tailwind). Boston Marathon is special for two reasons - firstly, it is the longest running Marathon having started in 1897, the year after the Olympic Marathon, and secondly, the strict qualifying times mean that there is a generally higher standard. It also has an unbelievable atmosphere or so they say. For many runners, qualifying for Boston Marathon is the equivalent of qualifying for Kona (the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii).

Last year the race numbers sold out in 8 hours so they are changing the registration this year. First they will open the registration to those who are more than 20 minutes faster than the qualifying time (for their age group), then to those who are ten minutes faster, to those who are 5 minutes faster and finally, to all those who have qualified. Luckily, I was over 5 minutes faster so I will be able to register just before everyone else (assuming there are still slots available!). For 2013, they will be making the qualifying times 5 minutes faster across the board (although I will be in the next age group by then, so it will be the same cutoff for me).

It looks as though I will be doing Boston and New York next year unless, of course, I get lucky and get picked out of a hat for New York this year.