One of my athlete’s just signed up for Ironman Wisconsin. I have been working with her one-on-one for the past year or so, and I am so happy for her.

While we have a limited amount of time until race day, there are some things we can do to prepare her for completing the swim portion without missing the cutoff. FYI: an Ironman swim is 2.4 miles or 3,800 meters (3.8km).

1. Endurance Build-Up

2.4 miles or 3,800 meters is a long time to be swimming. The average age-group swimmer takes roughly eighty minutes to swim this distance without stopping. And of course you’re going to follow that with a bike ride and full marathon run. So, this means you need to build up your endurance to swim that well for that long.

Your goal should be swim 60-75 minutes a session at least three to four times per week (more if you are not a great swimmer). For my athlete, I will have her swim four to five times a week to prepare for this event. More if time permits, but I know that it isn’t ideal with what is going on in her life. This idea of “more” applies to everyone. If you want to get better swimming, then you need to swim more, swim often, and build your endurance up.

2. Technique and Strength Training

Since we have limited time, fitness is going to be hard to build this quickly, so the big focus will be on strength training and technique. When I mention strength training, I mean working on the stabilizer muscles as well as your upper back. There are plenty of articles on Breaking Muscle that talk about specific exercises for these areas. I will let you determine which is the most appropriate among them, but they all do the same thing – build your muscular endurance.

When we look toward technique, the necessary changes are going to be individual. Just because something works for one person does not mean it will work for you. Everyone is different, which is why working with a coach is the best approach.

But since working with a coach isn’t always possible, the first thing for the average person to focus on is hand entry. Hand entry should be pretty close to the water with a slightly bent wrist that should lead right into what we call early vertical forearm. The idea is to get your forearm as vertical (basically perpendicular to the water line) as quickly as possible. This creates a huge amount of force production to help you move quickly and efficiently through the water.

From there you can work on your hand or arm recovery, but because so much drag is taking place in front of your head, hand entry is the best place to start.

3. Rhythm and Relaxation

The final two pieces of advice I give my athletes is to find a rhythm and relax. These things are linked to both cadence and breathing in a way that can make or break your swimming.

You need to find a rhythm in regards to your cadence in the water, as well as the breathing pattern you select. Different people find different patterns work best. If you find one that works for you, then that is the one you need to stick with. If you change up your rhythm, your body will not like you and you will lose control of your breathing. This will cause you to get into a deficit of breathing (trying to both expel and intake oxygen at the same time).

Getting into a rhythm will also help you relax in the water. Relaxation is key and is related to your cadence in the water. If you feel relaxed with a certain cadence, but it might feel like you look terrible, you need to stop that thinking. If you feel relaxed, then you will look relaxed, and you can stop thinking about what is going on around you. Being relaxed allows you to focus on your race and sets you up for success throughout the day. Just like being relaxed on the bike and on the run.

4. Pre-Race Swimming

I am going to suggest to my client that she plan out the pre-race week in advance. You need to get yourself in the mindset that you will do great in the swim. Being able to swim the actual course the day or two days before the event will also do wonders for you.

The week of Ironman should be shorter repeats of 100-200 yards or meters with about two minutes rest between. You only need to do around 2,000-2,500 distance-wise the week of your Ironman. But in the weeks prior, I would keep the distance up above 3,000.

And that’s it!

Well, that is easier said then done, but hard work and dedication is not something to take lightly. To do well at the longer distance races, you need to train and take care of yourself. I wish you the best and good luck at your Ironman race!

Are you signed up for an Ironman? Which one and when? Post to the comments below.

Click Here to Try Our Free Swimming Workouts

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post 4 Pro Tips for Ironman Swimming Success appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Athlete Journal Entry 37: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Four weeks to go!

After such a long journey to get to this point I’ve realized one really big thing: guys who do this ultra endurance thing for a job must be made of some pretty robust stuff. Over the last twelve months I’ve been hit by a car, torn my calves six times, and suffered from Achilles tendon issues in both legs. Hardly a week has gone past when I haven’t been hurt and forced to train through it. Because I’ve had no real endurance base to work from, instead of being able to rest and recover properly I’ve had to keep working away as much as possible to build as much slow twitch power as I can.

As the weeks wind down I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as training goes. I’ve done my longest run now. It seems pretty silly to me but all I’ve got left are a few two hours runs and those don’t even make me suffer night terrors like they used. Two hour run? Yeah, I do that before breakfast on Saturday while you’re all in bed. See how ridiculous that is?

My longest ride is this weekend. I rode five and half hours last weekend. While not my longest day in the saddle (as that was during last year’s 1000km charity ride) it was still a pretty long day. At about the three-hour mark I was suffering a bit and pulled into a kiosk to buy a Snickers and a can of Coke. You can poke fun at my nutrition plan all you want but I will tell you now that the result from all that sugar, caffeine, and fat was like strapping on a jet pack.

The ride wasn’t without problems, though. I was pretty tired from two and a half hours of running plus a small 2km swim the day before and just couldn’t get my act together and get out the door. It’s not like I let my training partner down as I do these rides alone, but it meant that I left home at 8am. With such a long ride planned it meant I was out in the Australian sun in the middle of the day. By the time I got home I even was a bit sun burnt (I can’t remember the last time that happened because I’m safely tanned now). As I sat on the bed after my little run off the bike I thought to myself what a hard ride it had been.

And then realized I would still need to run a marathon at that point.

At least it made me laugh and not cry. Last week was the first week I haven’t absolutely crapped my pants at the thought of what Ironman has in store for me. Like my swim last week – I elected to go swim 4km in the ocean. They’d been reporting on the radio that Melbourne is seeing record numbers of sharks in the bay that the city is on. So I went for a swim. Like I always tell people, “Mate, it’s Australia. If you’re in the water there are sharks. You might not be able to see them but they can see you”. The water was calm and it was a beautiful day, unlike the last time I swam in the ocean. That time I got out feeling seasick and as if I’d been hit by a bat the whole time. This was just like swimming in a busy pool in terms of the little waves that would sometimes wash over me.

Somehow my Achilles have started to come good too. Whether that’s because my body is getting more used to the volume or a slight change in training I don’t know. I’ve noticed that after a treadmill run I do midweek they’re much better. Maybe the treadmill is somehow “softer” but I can run-pain free on a treadmill. In fact, after my second run on Saturday, a fast 40-minute effort I actually came away with sore calves for the first time in a long time, but my Achilles felt normal.

But the change may also be from the excellent treatment I got from long time masseur Anne Davies at Olympic Park in Melbourne. She asked if I’d be alright with her doing some dry needling on my lower legs. I told her that she could cut the head off a chicken and dance naked under a full moon if she thought it’d help and I’d be alright with it. Good needling doesn’t hurt at all. I was a bit worried when she said she was going to stick them directly into the sheath of my inflamed tendons but that was all good too. Running the next day was substantially less painful than usual.

So maybe my body will come good just at the right time. I’ve regained some of my confidence in my open water swimming, seem to be handling big rides well, my running is improving every week, and my body seems to be finally healing. I’ll be honest and say that I am happy that the event is soon. Training isn’t really fun at the moment. It’s hard, draining work that leaves me useless and exhausted every day. As a sign of how bad it’s getting, I normally write this over the weekend so I can at least have it to the editor when she starts Monday morning, but it’s now 9pm Monday night my time. The reason I’m late getting my homework into teacher? I just forgot because I’m so damn tired.

But next week we start the taper. Soon my body should flood with energy and strength I’ve felt sliding away over the last few weeks. Four weeks to go.

Swim volume for the week: 13,800m

Bike: 240km

Run: 45km

The post Athlete Journal: Andrew Read, Entry 37 -The Light at the End of the Tunnel appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Journal Entry 29 – When It Snows, Turn Around

This week marks the end of a long spell without a day off from work – seven weeks. In that time, I’ve run three Primal Move certifications (one at home, one interstate, and a third in Korea), taught at a charity fundraiser, run an RKC. Frankly, I’m exhausted!

Since the last journal two weeks ago there have been some interesting developments. I actually write these journals on a Friday in Australia so you can read them on a Monday on a U.S.-based site. That means I usually make a few assumptions about what is going to happen over the weekend. The previous weekend was scheduled to be a little bit of hill climbing. The weather was forecast to be fine and the day should have been uneventful. The emphasis here is on “should have been.”

I was already a bit gun shy about the bike, having been displaced from mine by an elderly lady only a week prior, and this mountain had nearly done me in before. Lake Mountain isn’t a hard climb. In fact, of the mountains near me it is by far the easiest. Only the first few kilometers are difficult. The previous time I had attempted it, after only riding for about three weeks prior, I was forced to stop three times in the first section because I was worried about my heart popping out of my chest it was beating so hard. My only real memories of that day are of my poor girlfriend trying to get me to continue, only to be met by me yelling at her. On the fourth stop, I told her I was done and to continue without me. Realizing that I was beyond persuasion, she turned and kept going. Eventually, after the fear of a heart attack had abated, the new pain of self-loathing rose within me. So I wobbled off up the hill in pursuit of her. Luckily it flattened out a bit to a measly five percent gradient and the rest of the ride was actually fairly easy.

But it had taken its toll. Close to home in the car I cramped so badly I could no longer drive and had to get out to stretch my legs. When we got home I promptly fell asleep for a couple of hours, totally spent.This time I felt confident knowing I’ve put a lot of miles into my legs and that I’ve ridden much bigger and harder climbs. At the bottom of the climb, remembering how drenched in sweat I had been last time I opted to leave most of my warm weather gear behind. It may have been only 15 degrees Celsius (about 59 degrees Fahrenheit), but this was Australia in November – surely it couldn’t be too much colder even at the top, right?

We crushed the first section of the climb – even managing to speak during the “hard bit” that forced me to rest four times only a year ago. About halfway up it started to rain. That wasn’t pleasant but we were still in the trees and it wasn’t so bad. The effort of climbing kept me nice and warm and on we slogged.

And then it got interesting.

As we came out of the trees a few miles from the top it started to hail. That was definitely unpleasant. I’d taken my sunglasses off as they tend to fog up climbing because you’re simply not going fast enough to get airflow over them. So our conversation became something like, “Wow, now it’s hailing – ow, ow, ow.” Neither of us even mentioned turning around.

And then it got downright stupid.

A bit further up, the hail turned quite wet and I thought it was back to rain. But I looked to the side of the road and there was all this white stuff there. Snow! It’s not like I haven’t seen it before, but seeing snow in Australia in November is like hen’s teeth. And yet again, nether of us even thought about turning around.

The top of this climb is deceptive. From the finish of the tree line to the summit is maybe another twenty minutes of climbing. So there we were riding in wet clothes in the snow, getting colder by the minute. When we finally got to the top there was bad news – the café at the top was closed and the place was deserted. We wouldn’t even be able to go inside, dry off, and wait out the snow. Realizing we were caught up there and getting colder by the second we turned around and started back down. I’m not going to lie – what followed was one of the most miserable experiences of my life.

Neither of us could ride in a straight line we were shivering so much and my hands had completely lost feeling before we even got to the top. To use my brakes I physically had to look at the handlebars and make sure my hands were doing what I was asking them to do. To make it just that little bit worse we were into the wind on the way down.

By the time we got back to the relative sanctuary of the trees we were both shivering uncontrollably and it took a good few minutes of standing there in the “warm” rain to get some feeling back into the hands. We continued down slowly because of the wet roads and the fact that neither of us could feel our hands, which made controlling our bikes difficult. On this next section I ended up quite a bit in front of my girlfriend and eventually stopped with about 6km to go as I was worried.

Good thing I stopped. It took her about five minutes to catch up and it was clear that she was in a bad way. My girlfriend is easily the toughest person I know. There is not one ounce of quit in her, but today she was nearly in tears and I knew I had to leave her if we were going to finish safely today. We cuddled to get her a bit warmer and I gave her all the clothing I could spare – my little wind proof vest to add a layer to her vest and I took off as fast as I could to get to the car and get her warming up fast. The trip down was no problem but arriving at the car was an issue – I could barely operate the keys, the door, get my shoes off or even open the door my hands were so numb.

It must have been somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes from the time I left her to arriving back. In her delirious state she told me she thought I’d be gone for about five minutes and I must have ridden really fast. I already had the seat warmers going in the car, the heater on and we got her in some warm clothes immediately. Adding in some hot food and a hot chocolate it still took over an hour for her to stop shivering. Two weeks later, both of us are missing some feeling in our fingers from the cold. Lesson learned – when it snows, turn around.

In other news I am still waiting for my fast bike to be paid for by the insurance company AAMI. Despite taking responsibility for the claim, the driver being ticketed by police, and undergoing a license review there seems to be a hold up with them. From lying about when they’ve sent off the quote for verification, to not even have the decency to call back customers, to not even following their own policies regarding handling claims, they’ve really screwed the pooch on this one. I’ve had to resort to using social media to even get a response from them and while at least the giant has stirred that has so far not gotten a result either. So a word of warning – if you’re a cyclist and get hit by an AAMI insured driver, be prepared for more bad service and poor communication than you’d think was humanly possible.

Two weeks until my first triathlon – Canberra Half Ironman December 16!

The post Athlete Journal: Andrew Read, Entry 29 – When It Snows, Turn Around appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Journal Entry 25 – Be Prepared

When life bumps you off the wagon most people’s reaction is to just sit and wait for a little while instead of scrambling to get back on the wagon as fast as possible.

You see this all the time with diet – one bad meal becomes a day of poor eating which rapidly becomes blowing off the whole week. This is reconciled at the time with, “I’ll get back into it next week.” Next thing you know you’ve gained 5kg and haven’t eaten healthy in a month.

The same thing happens with training too. Work piles up, there are family commitments or illness. It’s easy to blow off training for a number of reasons and miss a session, but the key to progress is consistency.

This current two-week block I’m in the middle of is a great example. Right now I’m making sure that I’ve got my bag packed to head interstate tonight to run a series of workshops over the weekend. The following week I’m doing the same thing but this time in Korea. While some sessions, like running, can be done anywhere getting access to a pool or finding three or four hours to spend on a bike are just impossible. So what do you?

When I started my final plan for the Ironman I knew there would be three weekends in that time where I would not be able to train properly so the first thing I did was I added three weeks to my original twenty week plan to make it twenty-three. So lesson one is make sure to correctly count out how many weeks away from your event you are and adjust accordingly for known time off.

My plan for the extra weeks is simple: I do as much as I can before I need to leave and then repeat the week in the following week.

The second part to this is that I make sure to hit the key sessions for the week no matter what. The most important sessions of the week are the long ride/ run brick workout and the long run. My normal week looks like this:

• Monday – Strength plus anaerobic swim intervals.
• Tuesday – Bike anaerobic intervals.
• Wednesday – Strength, long swim, escalating run.
• Thursday – Longer bike intervals.
• Friday – Strength, hard swim, easy run.
• Saturday – Long run, easy swim.
• Sunday – Long ride with run off bike.

But with travel plans limiting my training time on the weekend this is what I’m doing for the next two weeks:

• Monday – As above.
• Tuesday – As above.
• Wednesday – As above.
• Thursday – Long ride with run off the bike.
• Friday – Long run, easy swim.

While I’m missing some of the sessions, I’m still sure to get both a mix of the shorter harder sessions I need to build pace and efficiency as well as the long sessions that are the real meat of the Ironman plan.

The two part lesson here is that the plan still works as long as you have prepared for these challenges early enough and you make sure to hit the key sessions for the week. With this plan taking place over the Christmas and New Year’s period people from the Northern Hemisphere could be mistaken for thinking I’d need to take time off then. But with our gym shutting for two weeks at that time and it being the middle of summer those two weeks will represent a fantastic training opportunity as well as an opportunity to get in much needed naps during the day between sessions. (Napping is quite possibly the most performance enhancing “trick” you can add into your training day).

If you miss a session, and there’s no way to recover it, just get straight back to the plan at the next session. Don’t try to make it up. It’s gone. Just go right back to where you should be and minimize the damage. If you’re really smart you’ll prepare and plan accordingly before starting your journey and actually be able to enjoy these little built-in breaks that life forces on you.

The post Athlete Journal: Andrew Read, Entry 25 – Be Prepared appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Journal Entry 22 – Good News All Around

Reading back through my Ironman journals so far you’d be forgiven for thinking that I am bipolar. Each week is a bigger roller coaster ride than seems possible – from the highs of a single good run and the possibilities it brings with it, to the lows of sitting waiting for an MRI to check out what I’ve done to myself this time.

This week marks week one of twenty-three of my actual Ironman specific training. I know it seems odd but because I had zero running base to begin with, and looking at how many issues I’ve had, I’m glad I started early. My actual plan was originally twenty weeks, but I have a few weeks where I am unavailable for portions due to running courses both in Australia and overseas so I added three weeks to make up for that lost time.

This week has two big things:

The calf. I am so sick of my stupid calf. While it’s been pain-free, it has this odd habit of tightening up at the exact same point on every run. Without joking even a little bit, I have the exact same feeling in it at a point on my run loop that is within 20m each time.

Because I am so worried about it being torn again, I always stop and walk the small distance home. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was impossible that a muscle would tear so punctually each time I was out running. Luckily I ran into the doctor who treated it while waiting to get massaged today and he told me that it was normal that it would feel tight and lumpy. While I appreciated the advice, I wish he’d told me when he originally treated it, as I’ve spent the least two weeks mortified that I’d done it all over again.

The second thing for the week is that my new bike is here. I have to give a big thank you to Leon at pro-Motion Cycles in Ormond for helping me out. The Giant Trinity he has organised for me is as rare as hen’s teeth at the moment. This bike is literally the last of its kind in Australia that hadn’t been sold.

As much as getting his hands on the bike was a miraculous feat, he needs even more thanking for the set up. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden 180km before but if your seat isn’t the right height, your cleats in the right position, the cranks the right length, the handlebars positioned just so, you’re going to be in a world of hurt. It’s one thing if you ride the 180km then get off and have an ice bath, but if you plan to run a marathon afterward then it becomes even more important.

Tiny little things make big differences when magnified over the length of the time you spend on the bike. I remember adding a 5mm spacer for my handlebars prior to the 1000km ride I did for the Jodi Lee Foundation at the start of the year. That 5mm difference saw my neck go from painful and tight to pain-free overnight. This week we made a tiny change to the position of the cleat on my right shoe and the outside of that calf is less stiff than it has been for weeks. The adjustment was so small, if I showed you a before and after you wouldn’t even notice it.

And this is why having someone experienced like Leon in your corner helps so much. Bike fit is as much science and biomechanics as it is part voodoo magic. While there is a general guide as to what you’re looking for, the really experienced guys can see subtle changes in the way a rider looks and how smoothly they pedal.

We spent around two hours getting things just about right in shop, even going so far as to use some custom-made brackets that are proving an underground success amongst ultra endurance racers in Melbourne. I say “about right” because there will always be little things to change on a new bike. As I get used to the new riding position, we will need to tweak little things here and there so that I am as comfortable as possible while being as fast as possible. From the outside looking in, I think Ironman is about being as relaxed as possible to conserve as much energy as possible. Having the right position on the bike, where I’m going to spend the majority of the day, is therefore vital.

It’s been a great week – positive news about my calf and the new bike getting here. I’ve really felt like I’ve trained well this week too.

Totals for the week –

Swim: 9000m (4.5 hours)

Run: 18km (2 hours)

Ride: ~180km (6 hours).

The post Athlete Journal: Andrew Read, Entry 22 – Good News All Around appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Journal Entry 21 – A New Bike and A Lot of Back Bends

I can remember a day not too long ago when I thought that a big training week was five or so sessions totalling about seven and a half hours of training. For strength training that is a lot for me. But these days that isn’t even two days of training and the “real” training for Ironman begins next week (actually the day you read this I will be on my second day of “real” training).

Over the last week I’ve been deliberately taking it kind of easy to have a rest before next week starts. The Ironman training plan begins with less volume but far more “hard” in each session than what I have been doing. I have deliberately stayed away from too much intensity while riding and running to build as much base as possible before I begin.

Swimming has been a little different, as I don’t believe there’s any great value in swimming ‘easy’ other than for recovery. Because you don’t weight bear and use smaller muscle groups swimming than you do riding or running the heart rates and effort don’t really match up. You can swim yourself to a near death experience but if you took that same amount of work and used it for running you’d find that it ended up being an easy session.

There’s also a lot to be said for learning to suffer and the extra economy you seem to gain from going faster in training versus a more moderate race pace for an event like an Ironman (where a fast swim will still take an hour). One of my goals for this week was to get my wetsuit back on after not having swum in it for a few years and see how fast I was, as the suit adds buoyancy and speed. While I’m never going to challenge real swimmers I swam fifteen-minute kilometres in the pool in my wetsuit this week and was amazed at how easy it all felt.

The only problems were that I had to reduce my kick because the legs of my wetsuit are so buoyant that my feet actually come out of the water if I kick much. Also, when I turn to my right to breathe my neck gets irritated by a seam or something on the inside of the suit. That will be easily fixed with some lube next time I swim in it (common practice in endurance sports is to grease up parts of your body that are prone to chafing – Vaseline may be the secret of champions). But to easily handle intervals that equate to a roughly hour swim left me feeling pretty happy.

And there’s more good news for the week. Firstly, my bike showed up. It’s not all put together yet and I haven’t even sat on it and got it all sorted for riding, but it’s almost there. I’m hoping by the next column it’ll be ready and I can share some pictures with you, as well as detail the fitting process that is so crucial to long, fast riding. Secondly, I may have actually found the underlying reason for all the calf troubles I’ve had.

In my last journal everything was going well. I’d had no issues for a week or so and it appeared that I was on the road to running without issue again. I saw my therapist on the Wednesday during the week and joked that it had been about two weeks since I’d done any damage so it must be about time. Sure enough, the next morning it happened again. Me and my big mouth.

Out of frustration I called an old friend, an absolute genius when it comes to the human body, and he agreed to quickly take a look at me. After literally about two minutes he’d found the culprit – all my time spent riding had locked up my SI joint and I had nearly no movement at all there. The solution was to do some back bends going into extension from standing. One of the FMS yardsticks for movement is a toe touch, and my toe touch went from about four inches from the floor (normal for me because of my hamstring issues) to on the floor without having done any hamstring stretching at all. And the pain I had felt in my calf was instantly reduced. The body really is an amazing and complicated machine.

The end result is that I have been doing fifty back bends daily as well as spending some extra time on bridging so that I have both a passive and static extension exercise in my routine. The weirdest part is my calf tear has disappeared in two days – this morning it was 100% pain free even for single leg hopping. I’ve been cleared to run/ walk again next week and I’ll get back into it. I’ll adhere to the rest of the program one hundred percent – which means I’ll be doing some very intense sessions on the bike – but overall it will actually be a slightly easier week than what I have become used to.

This week is a big week – the start of proper Ironman build up, my new bike will be sorted, and I’m hopeful we’ve finally put this calf thing to rest once and for all.

The post Athlete Journal: Andrew Read, Entry 21 – A New Bike and A Lot of Back Bends appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Journal Entry 20 – The Sun Is Coming Out

I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it. She’s cute, dark, and she’ll do anything you ask.

Get your mind out of the gutter you pervs. I’m talking about my new Garmin 910XT that I was given by my super awesome girlfriend for my birthday. I’m not sure she actually bought it for any reason other than for me to be told in clear and concise detail exactly how much faster than me she runs, but whatever the reason I’m in love with this doodad.

I remember when GPS devices first came out. They were like old car phones used to be – big, clunky, possessing a limited battery life, and often plagued with problems. But this new generation of devices are reasonably small. While the 910 is fairly large in comparison to my watch, it’s still smaller than some of the massive big face watches I see regularly on people every day. The good thing about having a big face is the amount of information it can display.

For the last few months I’ve been training by feel essentially. I’ve been running with nasal breathing on the assumption that this method allows me to keep my heart rate in check and work according to the 180 Rule but I had no real way of measuring to make sure that I was working within the ranges I wanted to. Until this morning that is.

With all the problems I’ve been having with my calves running at the moment feels like Russian roulette. It seems like my body can cope for a week or two at a time, then something goes wrong and next thing I know I’ve torn one of my calves again and it’s another few weeks off running.

With this latest instalment of the soap opera that is my training (the life and times of a forty year old Ironman crash test dummy) I’m now pain free and working on a very cautious walk/run program to try to once and for all beat the problems I’ve been having. The last weeks have been expensive with over a thousand dollars having been spent on MRIs, doctors appointments, and injections, but if it means my body will function correctly again then as far as I am concerned it will have been money well spent.

This morning I started off with an easy walk for a few minutes – all, of course, already planned into my 910 as part of my warm up. This turned into sections of walking and running alternately for two minutes at a time. During these efforts I could track my heart rate, pace per kilometer, countdown of how much longer for each interval, how many intervals I’d done, and also my total distance for each interval as well as the whole effort. Never has such slow running been measured so much.

The first things I noticed were enough to make me grin from ear to ear. Firstly, the pace I had been running at with nasal breathing was definitely within my 140bpm cap. However, it was actually too easy. I had been running at about 10bpm slower than I could and found that when I upped my pace to the max 140bpm that was my target for aerobic work that I was easily holding five and a half minute kilometers. This is significant because at that pace I am on track to run a sub four-hour marathon. While my Ironman day is going to be made up of many smaller goals, the first and most important goal is to finish. One of the other goals is to run a sub four-hour marathon and I now have evidence for the first time that this is possible.

The second thing I noticed is that my calf is better, or at least pain free. That’s not necessarily so meaningful as I’ve had pain free calves post treatment recently and still suffered with them, but it means that at least the money I spent on having injections and scans was well spent. The treatment has more than halved the recovery time from a projected three to four weeks to nine days. As I said before, that’s money well spent.

With the weather here starting to come good, my body looking like it has been healed finally, and my new toy, I can honestly say I am as excited about this event as I was when I first proposed it at the start of the year. Real training for the Ironman begins for me in a week or two. It may seem like that is a long way away from the March event but it is only twenty-three weeks. I’m giving myself an extra three weeks because I know that I have a few events within that build period where I will be distracted from training fully, so I have added the time in to make sure that all key sessions are hit.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the sun is shining and I’m going to get out the door and go for a short recovery ride before tomorrow’s four-hour festival of pain.

The post Athlete Journal: Andrew Read, Entry 20 – The Sun Is Coming Out appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Journal Entry 19 – Calling Up the Big Guns

My athletic life has turned into a soap opera. More drama than you’d think was possible occurs every week for me.

My last athlete journal was actually from two weeks ago. Sometimes it’s difficult to get them in on time due to time differences, work and what seems to be my new hobby of being injured. Being injured requires time out to get treatment and then do rehab exercises.

The last journal was about how I had a slight grade one tear of the calf. Muscle tears are ranked from one to three with one being minor and three being the worst you can do. My hamstring, for instance, was a three-plus-plus as it was torn right off the bone. So a grade one-minus, which is what my calf is, barely qualifies. And if I didn’t have a big scary marathon coming up after a 180km ride I’d just rest it for a month and gently get back to running.

But oh no, I’m not smart enough for that. After the week or two off running I started to ease back into it as per my therapist’s guidelines. That all went great and I started the next week feeling confident and eager to get some more miles in. I followed my usual pre-run ritual: TP Therapy roller on my calves, stretch the hip flexors, some bodyweight single-leg calf raises to flush the calves with blood, put on my trusty 2XU compression socks, and out the door.

And 4km later the same damn thing happened. BAM!

The problem is that thanks to all the riding and swimming I’ve done over the last year I am feeling incredibly fit. At the easy pace at which I am running I feel like I could run all day. So there I am just cruising along when all of a sudden a little knot of tightness forms in my calf. I slow down immediately but it gets worse and I realize that, once again, my run is over and my calf is torn.

To rub it in further I see all kinds of people of all shapes and sizes running near me – all clearly not suffering the same way I am. Whatever is wrong with me is clearly not something that affects everyone. I do feel bad for the young kid who I had just run past on his way to school. More for his parents than anything as he definitely learned a few new choice expressions from me. Beyond helping a young man extend his vocabulary the day couldn’t have gone any worse. And it was only 7:00am.

Normally when injured my first port of call is straight in to see Magic Matt and get him to work his magic on my injury. This time however I went full hog. After limping home I rang Melbourne’s Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre and booked an appointment to see Dr. Adam Castricum, who was the doctor for the Australian track and field team at the London Games. So he probably knows a thing or two about running injuries.

Dr. Castricum advised having a few shots of a homeopathic anti-inflammatory called Traumeel. I also ended up getting an MRI to find the exact point of the tear and what other problems there might have been. The doctor found that along with going into the tear, the Traumeel had leaked into the space between the soleus and gastrocnemius, between the fascia. Dr. Castricum then followed that up with a few rounds of anaesthetic to calm down a trigger point as well. Quite an expensive day in the end as the MRI, consult, and needles wound up costing me about nine hundred dollars.

That night I could barely walk my calf was so stiff from all the goop that had been shot into it. I went to sleep not very happy and slept poorly, still mad at the whole thing. Waking the next morning I was amazed to find it was almost one hundred percent pain free. Simply amazing. I’ve got another appointment to see Dr. Castricum Monday for a second round of exactly the same thing and then will start therapy the next day. He expects that I will be running by the end of next week, but has really drummed into my head that I need to go right back to basics and follow a walk/run plan for about six weeks. (Such as this one here). That puts my half Ironman hit out in December under pressure, as I will have only been back to straight running for a few weeks by then. I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it though.

For now – trying to stay positive is hard work. It’s funny how you react when something is taken from you. I am not a fan of running and never have been but now I am not allowed run all I can think of is running. To watch others plod along with what seems to be terrible form and not suffer in the same way twists the knife deeper. So I’ll ride double until I can run again. If my run fitness is suspect, then I will just have to make sure that my riding is so strong that my legs are fresh when I get off the bike for the run.

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Journal Entry 17 – Sleep Is Important

With last week being a recovery week I really felt great at the start of the week. That lasted until about Thursday morning. That wasn’t the plan but things have been a bit topsy-turvy in my professional world this week and coupling that with a really big training day Thursday has proven to be a bit much.

My normal week looks like this –

• Monday: Kettlebells plus swim.
• Tuesday: Run an hour, ride two.
• Wednesday: Kettlebells plus swim.
• Thursday: Run an hour, ride two.
• Friday: Kettlebells plus swim.
• Saturday: Long run, optional short ride later.
• Sunday: Long ride with short run off the bike.

This week I am fairly busy all weekend teaching training workshops so I wanted to make sure of a few things. Firstly, that I got my long ride in. That is the single longest session for the week and the one that is hardest to recover from. Secondly, that no matter what I made sure to get my long run in.

So when I say I felt good until Thursday morning that is because once I finished teaching my first class I had organized it so I had no more work for the day. By 8:00am I was on my bike riding. That ride turned into a three and a half hour ride. That’s nowhere near long enough by Ironman standards, but it’s the longest I’ve been on in a while because the weather here has been so bad it’s been difficult to get out for too long. For good measure I followed that up with an hour run later in the day. Not a bad effort for a Thursday getting four and a half hours of training in.

The problem with that is that I needed to be up later than usual fetching someone from the airport. Normally you’d try to get more rest after a big day, not less. My swim the next morning was a massive struggle and I actually pulled the pin after only 3000m – about 1km short of my usual distance.

To make sure I got my long run in I needed to be up by 5:00am on Saturday morning so I could be finished, showered, and fed by the time I needed to start work at 8:15am. Luckily I live close to work. I also added an hour run Sunday morning before work just to be sure.

The lessons from the week have been good. I found that even with tired legs I could run at my normal pace. I may feel stiff and lethargic but my pace is okay. I’m sure as I build more into Ironman preparation that I will be spending much more time with tired legs and I’m curious how that will pan out as the mileage goes up. I was most concerned about how my previously injured calf would hold up to a decent run when my legs were tired and I was one hundred percent pain free the next day. I’m hoping that is a good indicator those problems are fully behind me now. The other lesson is simple – sleep is the most important thing when training hard. Losing two hours of sleep having to go to the airport really drained me the next day in training. So make sure if you increase your training plan you increase your recovery plan too.

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Journal Entry 16 – Best Memories Come From the Hardest Things

What a difference a week makes!

If you haven’t read my last journal entry please do so now. This time last week I was in struggletown. But after a week of recovery work, roughly sixty to seventy percent of what I am used to doing, I feel great.

The keys to my recovery this week have been the reduction in volume, of course, as well as a massage to get everything loosened up again and feeling right. One of the problems, though, has been with less work being done I find myself awake later at night. Usually I’m just about out on my feet by 9:00pm but this week it has been more like 10:00pm. Despite getting an hour less sleep on average each night the reduction in volume has been a relief.

One of the mistakes people make with recovery work is that they reduce volume and intensity. That can actually lead to big drops in performance and a detuning of the body. A much better idea is to reduce one or the other. For me, I always choose to reduce volume so on my easy weeks I do faster work and much higher intensity sets than usual.

For running or riding, for instance, I may choose to do either a time trial (TT) to accurately assess my ability to hold or reach a certain pace. Even a short 3km run flat out is hard. I remember a 3km bike TT I did a few years ago that left me feeling drained for a few days after. But these short fast sessions are important to keep the fire burning hot and stop the weird stagnation and lethargy often felt when you go from a high volume of training to less. Remember – when volume goes down for recovery it’s okay to have some higher intensity work just don’t overdo it and turn your rest week into a race week.

While I’ve had a bit more spare time I was cruising the Internet looking for an ample challenge next year – something suitable for after the Ironman in March. And I think I found it.

It’s called Epic Camp. Anything called Epic Camp must be great or else it wouldn’t be called epic with a capital E, right? In a sport that is filled with hard training and OCD masochists who love to crush themselves in training, Epic Camp may well be the Holy Grail of suffering. When I got accepted into the small group of twenty sociopaths I was told of the week’s basic plan – train to near the edge daily and finish the week with a no-taper half Ironman race (1.9km swim, 90km ride, 21km run). Here’s what I was told to expect:

Day 1 = 180km, day 2 = 115km with long climb, day 3 = 160km with a lot of climbing, day 4 = easier but tack on options, day 5= 120km with lots of climbing, day 6 = options but most people will take it easier, day 7 Kona 70.3) – that’s just the biking, we swim and run every day as well.

It’s that last bit that is most telling about exactly how Epic with a capital E the whole thing will be. With bike distance over 600km for the week plus running and swims of up to 4000m on days it really is going to be a big week.

Oh, and did I mention that somehow you compete the whole camp? Every session has points attached to it and there’s a friendly competition going on between all members at all times. I’ve read stories of people on other camps walking into a gas station, buying two bottles of Gatorade and a four pack of Red Bull. They then proceeded to drink two Red Bulls and split the rest into their water bottles and keep going! I’ve used the Tucker Max Death Mix Lite before and know that while it is gross and much like pouring petrol into your veins and setting it on fire, when you’re really deep in the hurt locker it will get you home for the day. What it does to your pancreas I have no idea but I’m sure it’s not healthy.

Somehow my recovery week seems to have turned into a thirst for suicide by Epic beatdown. But something weird has happened to me since turning forty and I just want to have some fun with training and adventure. I’ve got the confidence in my fitness and strength, after nearly three decades of training history, that while I may not be the fastest I will survive anything. One of the reasons has been that I wanted to inspire my clients, and readers, to get out from the safe confines of the gym and actually play and use the fitness you’re working so hard to build. Do an adventure race, a trail run, or take on a sport. The only difference between you starting a sport or not in five years will be you have fewer fond memories.

Get out there and do something. Quit being scared of the world, or a little bit of pain. The memories I have of the hardest things I’ve ever done are my most cherished. Trust me, when your heart rate returns to normal and the muscle pain clears, you’ll thank me for suggesting you go do something dumb.

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Journal Entry 15 – Super Compensation

Getting a result from training is all about one thing – you have to hurt your body so that it repairs and returns stronger. This is called super compensation. The short version is that during training you actually slightly harm your body, much like adding a vaccine into your system that contains the disease you are trying to prevent in order to make it resistant, and after a suitable time delay for rest and recovery you return stronger than before.

A smart training plan includes ample damage and recovery so you arrive at your event with fitness and strength improved, and feeling fresh enough to showcase it on the day. If your sport is one like swimming, where athletes do huge miles leading up to an event, with multiple daily sessions all at a reasonably high intensity level, this resting and recovering period could take weeks.

And right now, as I sit here yawning and trying to keep my eyes open long enough to get this done, I am about at my absolute peak for fatigue. I train in a two hard weeks/one easy week format and as I write this I have only one short easy ride to do this afternoon, as well as a long ride with a short run off the bike tomorrow morning, before I start my easy week.

With the last two weeks being most noticeable for my ability to return to regular running and start to slowly increase the length of each run, I’ve been really feeling the full effects of fatigue this week. After a ninety minute run this morning all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and have a nap. Instead I went to work and coached our clients through their regular Saturday sessions.

I’m not going to lie – I’ve crushed myself over the last two weeks.

The big additions have been the increased run volume and a few swim sessions that have been both longer and harder than usual. When it comes to training it’s not my first time at the dance and I can tell you now there is no deeper fatigue than that felt post hard endurance work. If you want to make it even deeper go do it in the middle of winter when it’s cold outside. The combination of trying to keep your body warm as well as keep you moving seems to sap the body of strength for hours after.

And that’s been my week – one session after the other, pounding into me, like waves crashing one after the other with no let up. But that’s ok because next week is the recovery week and like that moment of the sun bursting through the clouds after two weeks of rain I’ll start to feel good again towards the end of the week as I freshen up. All of a sudden I’ll go from barely able to keep my eyes open to feeling like I can run through a wall again.

Which is lucky because the two weeks after that will be a step up again in distance. This constant state of ebb and flow of fatigue and of needing to manage it to maximize the training effect is like a narrow ledge. Push too hard for too long and you’ll fall – likely when you’re at your absolute best. Too easy and you’ll never scale the heights of peak performance. But you have to prepared to embrace the suck, grit your teeth and just work through it as best you can. Embrace the suck during the hard weeks and make sure to schedule in a regular recovery week otherwise you won’t actually gain fitness you’ll just smash yourself some more. The recovery week is perhaps the single best kept secret of elite performance. Add it into your own training and watch your performances soar while minimizing injury.

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Journal Entry 14 – The 10 Rules of Cycling

This week a lighthearted look at some of the things I have learned since starting to train for Ironman. As someone who isn’t a member of a cycling club some of these rules I am guessing at.

1. It’s not about the bike. It’s about the legs. Bothof these guys ride fast and could beat you riding on their kid sister’s BMX with training wheels. Don’t go buy a $15,000 bike and wonder why you’re slow with your $500 legs.
2. Harden up. However far or fast you rode, some old guy who looks like Methuselah’s grandfather just did more. It doesn’t matter if it was cold, wet, or you got shot riding through a firefight. Endurance sports are for hard asses. If you’re not prepared to suffer don’t come out to meet the man with the hammer (in the words of Tour de France champion Laurent Fignon).
3. If it rains you put on a rain jacket. Riding in bad weather instantly increases street cred and makes you a bad ass. If you don’t like getting wet see Rule #2.
4. Don’t draft all day, do your turn at the front. Sitting behind another rider is much, much easier. Don’t just creep up on someone you aren’t even friends with and expect to get a free ride for an hour. Do your turn at the front. If you don’t like being out in the wind then see Rule #2. If you try this behind me you may “accidentally” be spat on or have my nose blown on you.
5. Cycling hats are acceptable if worn under your helmet while riding. If you’re not riding take it off. It doesn’t make you look “Euro” it makes you look like a forty-year-old accountant who thinks he looks Euro.
6. Team kit is for those who ride professionally. Unless you’re the sort of guy who would wear a full Yankees uniform to play catch with your son, don’t wear pro team kit for a Sunday ride with your mates. Likewise you can only wear the yellow, green, or national champions jersey if you’ve actually won that race. Have some respect.
7. If you’re a triathlete and go for a ride with cyclists, which in itself is like a gazelle going for a ride with the lions, don’t ride on your aerobars. Riding in your aerodynamic position in a group is dangerous as you can’t get to your brakes or steer quickly if there’s trouble. Don’t be surprised if you get kicked out of a group or yelled at if you do this.
8. No visors on helmets. Helmets with visors are acceptable – on mountain bikes. If you need shade see Rule #5.
9. Legs shall be shaved at all times and tan lines razor sharp. Arm warmers may be worn without leg warmers but never the other way around. Shoe covers only if it is cold or wet. If you don’t care about how you look while riding you are probably a mountain biker or happy to pee on yourself like a triathlete.
10. It never gets easier, you just go faster (Greg LeMond Tour de France champion). See Rule #2.

In the midst of figuring out the labyrinth of potential social faux pas in the cycling world this week I also swam five hours (13.5km), rode nine (roughly 450km), ran and walked four (20kms), and lifted weights three. It’s all about Rule #2.

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