Big Day Training

I know I  had intended to get this post up quickly after my big weekend.  And I sort of did.  My usual mechanism for getting a post up is to send my blog an email with the draft.  This is largely because I can do this anywhere and there is not a lot of overhead.  I wrote the draft and emailed it last Wednesday.  SInce then every time I have tried to get to blogger to tidy it up and insert a map or two, I have had technical gripes.  Anyway here it is....

As I mentioned last post the Saturday previous was my first run through of what is called the "Big Day Training".  This sort of training is designed to prepare you for the sensation of performing when you are already pretty fatigued.  The day has two rests between sessions to allow for refuelling and a slight recovery.  The point of the day is not to destroy you, that is what the race is for. :)

I had a rough plan laid out along the lines of:

Swim at Valley Pool 6:30 AM to 7:20 AM 

Breakfast & Recover 7:20 AM to 9:00 AM 

Long Ride 9:00 AM to 1:30 PM 

Lunch & Recover 1:30 PM to  3:00 PM 

Run 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

As always these things don't go 100% to plan but the effort was still there.  I started the swim just on 15 minutes late and managed to clock 2.8k in just a fraction over 51 minutes.  The Valley pool in Brisbane was just great at that time of the day:

I then drove home for breakfast and coffee before setting off on the bike at 9:15, still only 15 minutes off schedule.  I had set a course on my Garmin to follow for a bit of variety but I made some errors in the way I created it and this quickly became a real pain in the butt.  In the end I was out riding for about 4:35 but only moving for 4:10 and 108k.  Some of that dead time was spent at traffic lights etc but also a chunk was spent on the side of the road trying to figure where to go next,  lesson learnt on that one.  The ride effort was pretty ordinary but the time on the bike was there and that was the main objective.

Back from the ride and straight into some lunch, coffee, liquids, protein shakes.  Basically anything I found in the house.

The final leg, the run, kicked off just before 3:45pm.  So this last recovery ran a little over schedule, maybe 20 minutes or so.  The total run time was 1:56 with 20k covered.  I followed a course I have run a few times into Brisbane city with a waterfront loop based around the Kurilpa & Story bridges.

 One advantage of this route is that there is a very good drinking fountain population scattered along the way.  I had expected the run to be really painful but in reality it was not too bad.  It was certainly easier to get through than the Taupo Half IM race.  It was a slow run but it was a very warm and humid  day in Brisbane and my fluid intake was a lot higher than it would need to be in Taupo.

The end result for the day was 7 hours of training, which is about 90 minutes longer than the race time for the half IM.  I have another one of these scheduled in a few weeks where the time will push out to about 8:30 so another 90 minutes added on.