3 Weeks to Muskoka

Numbers mean... Nothing! 🙂

Another week behind me… Just another 3 weeks and the season will be over. But I’m excited about Muskoka, especially the bike portion!

I’ve been poking around my logs, and I compared my long bike from Saturday to the one exactly a year ago:

• Last Year x This year
• Duration: 3:49 x 3:47 hours
• Avg Cadence: 89 x 91 rpm
• Avg Heart Rate: 143 x 141 bpm
• Avg Power: 206 x 209 W
• Normalized Power: 224 x 220 W
• Avg Speed: 28.6 x 29.7 km/h

As you can see it is not too far out! The speed was lower, but I didn’t have the GPS at the time, the source was the powertap, which isn’t as precise. So it is fair to say that I’m pretty much on the same boat! Oh, and the normalized power is not considering altitude, since I didn’t have it with the powertap either.

Anyhow, I’m surprised that I’m so close to last year, specially considering I knocked down 1:27 hours from the IM France time, compared to Lake Placid. I think IM 70.3 Muskoka result will only be better if I get my strategy right. I might go for a slower bike (last year’s average was 30.1 km/h) and try to make it up on the run (last year was a walk/run 2:05 half marathon).

Just to add a couple more numbers on the table, the week before the race last year, I did a 3:14 hrs bike ride at 238W (Normalized!!!) This year I’ll taper a bit better too…

It will be interesting! 🙂

Anyhow, the net of the last week was:

Muskoka-70.3 3 weeks to go!

Muskoka 70.3 Training Started!

Last week was still not the greatest, I was sick Monday and Tuesday with a stupid cold, so I didn’t do everything I planed, but I managed to squeeze 9:54 Hrs:

First Week of Training after IMLP

I’m staring to feel better after each workout. Although I have a long way to go on the bike. I was hoping to make at least the same time as last year (30 km/h avg), but I think that will be quite hard. Last year I pulled an amazing 240W average on the bike. I can’t do that today and I’m not sure I’ll be ready to do that in 4 weeks either. Albeit I died on the run last year…

Anyhow, it will be an interesting race. I think I might even cut down on the swim for the next few weeks, but I’m not sure yet. I’m pretty happy with my swimming and I have no plans to improve it. Unlike my bike/run!

From now on, 100% back on schedule for the IM 70.3 Muskoka! I love this race!!

Back in Town

This week was a wash, I had to go on a business trip to Vancouver where I worked a lot and I also went out for a lot of beers with my colleagues/friends from there. My team is actually spread across Canada and every time one of us is in town, it involves a lot of beer! I even had a great chicken bbq’ed on charcoal bbq… a huge bbq made of porcelain, that my friend has on his balcony! The thing was so heavy you need two hands to open it! The food and wine were awesome!!!

Charcoal BBQ

I’ll tell you one thing, they are MUCH more relaxed west than we are here. Quite a different lifestyle, which I would not mind…

Anyhow, from a training perspective, I had the opportunity to do two fun workouts:
1. Seawall run: an easy one hour run (10.5 km, 140 bpm) from the hotel to the Lions bridge and back. Too bad I didn’t have much time, it would have been nice to complete the whole course. It is a very pleasant run around the bay.

Grouse Grind Steps

2. Grouse Grind: now that was interesting workout. It is about a 3 km trail with a 853m elevation gain! It start easy, but it get pretty steep quickly. As I started my Heart rate went from 70 to 170 bpm as soon as it got steep! It took me 51:55 minutes bottom to top, 80% of the time at ~170 bpm. Quite a workout. At least as soon as I got to the top and waited for my friend Kerry my HR dropped to 116. Kerry, who is more than 10 years older than me, was just 3 min behind. As you can see in the picture, air quality was pretty bad due to forest  fires north of Vancouver.

Grouse Mountain (lift back down after the Grind)

Ok, I did another not so fun workout, 1 hour stationary bike ~170w, 125 bpm.

I’m back in town now ready to go out with my wife and friends on a long ride! It will be interesting to see how my boddy has recovered after the Ironman followed by a week of quite a few drinks… 😉

And the rest is over. I’m finally starting the Half Iron program!

Life as I know it

This past week has been about rest. The only exercise I did was 40 minutes easy bike ride.

It is unbelievable how you get used to a workout routine. Most people think that us triathletes are crazy, that we spend way too much time training. How many times did I hear “What? Your workout 15 to 20 hours per week?” The thing is that when I don’t, I get bored and grumpy.

What do normal people do with 24 hours per day? That is way too much time to work and watch TV. Oh, btw, I had more beer and wine in this past week than the whole year added together. Not that I’ve drank a lot, but I barely drank anything at all because I just didn’t have the time.

Tomorrow life is back to what I know it: swim, bike and run!

Next race, Muskoka 70.3 Ironman. This was the first half-Ironman race I ever done, and boy was I nervous at the time! It is all relative… Oh well, maybe we are crazy after all! 🙂