This is what happens when you run 23 miles a few days before an Ironman race:
Nat: "i am so confused Joe. Aren't you racing this weekend? Is this what you do in the taper--a 23 mile run 5 days out? Is that what you do for an ironman? That is just cawazy!"
Danielle: "Are you trying out something and not telling us about it? A little non-taper IM??"
Kindzia: "OK, can't stand it any more. Did you really do a 23 miler 4 days before your Ironman???? Is this some new Brett Sutton torture test?"
All of which is awesome. I mean, I am the idiot who signed up for and then completely forgot about Ironman Lake Placid in 2006 (after I signed up for and skipped it in 2005 when Ava was born.) So to have friends looking out for me is great!
Valid question: why am I running long slow stuff right before the race?
When you train long slow stuff you're putting money in the bank (an analogy I got from Matt Wheeler.) Nickel here. Quarter there. Slowly, over the course of months with consistency and long, slow miles you accrue a balance of base fitness.
About five or six weeks ago I asked myself what my base account balance was. I felt that I had enough in the account to make a good run for IM Louisville, but not enough for two runs at it with IM Florida just eight weeks after Louisville.
A proper ironman build process (whatever that means) generally includes a couple strength building periods, some speedwork, a taper/peak, a race and a recovery. Each of these *takes money out* of your base balance. To build strength you have to back off of the intensity a bit or risk overtraining. To get speed you do hella hard workouts that leave you sore for a few days, again compromising your ability to do the long, slow stuff. Tapering is, well, not working out or working out at higher intensity so you're gonna lose base. Racing breaks the body down. Recovery takes time and you're not doing big workouts.
Luckily base fitness is lost fairly slowly. So you can do the proper IM build and not be completely unfit at the end of the process. Compare this to speedwork which evaporates quite quickly... in a matter of weeks. So it's very possible to have two good peaks in a season. But, at least for my physiology, there needs to be at least a small base period between.
When I looked at the eight weeks after Ironman Louisville leading into Ironman Florida I decided that I needed to have a build, rest week, build, speed, taper and race. That's very tight to fit into eight weeks and left no room for base re-building after Louisville. If I had a big enough base balance in the bank I would have gone for it. But this year I got a bit of a late start on good consistency with big workouts.
So I made the decision to train through Louisville. Which I've never really done. I've said I was training through races before but I always ended up backing off mileage and adding speed, almost subconsciously.
Luckily, I recently found myself with a good streak of Wednesday long runs and weekend long rides. I decided that they'd be the anchors of my "train through" plan. As long as I did those two workouts in the weeks leading up to the race I felt that I'd be maintaining my base for Florida and not letting Louisville take too much out of the bank.
My legs are somewhat hosed. My lungs are feeling that tired feel. I've been hitting core/abs somewhat hard (still, no six pack.) So the race this weekend is gonna be tough. In fact, this is something of a recipe for disaster. The heat seems to be picking up in the predictions. I'm not a big fan of rolling hills on the bike.
We'll see what happens. What I don't have yet is a raceday plan. But I'll try to blog out my two competing ideas before I hit the starting line. Either way, I'm guessing my batting average will move down from its current 50% to 40%.
Post-Ironman Melancholy