Training Diaries: Chattanooga 70.3 V.10
All right folks! By the time I have this posted I'll be four days out from Chattanooga. Four days! To say that this build up has flown by would be an understatement. And reflecting back on everywhere I've been and what I've done in that timeframe, it seems crazy.
According to Training Peaks, I entered my Peak Phase last week. So in this post I'm going to share with you what my training has looked like the last week and a half. Peak Phase of training follows the Build Phases and is sometimes referred to as the taper period or taper phase. Volume decreases while intensity remains relatively high as the body is sharpened/fine tuned for race day. The key during this phase is to allow the body to rest and recover, but not too much! It's a fine line to assure the body is ready to go on race morning.
Peak Phase: Weekly Volume
During week one, I did not really decrease my weekly volume, although the way it was spread out was significantly different. During a typical week, I have a good bit of intensity spread throughout the week. However, during this week, I had only two sessions that held higher intensity, and fairly light volume sessions the rest of the week. The weekend for me was big. I had a long ride on Saturday with race pace efforts, and then a long brick session on Sunday, complete with a fifteen mile run off. Here's how week one of Peak training looked:
Monday: Swim (3,000 yards)
Tuesday: ZRL Race (intensity) + extra aerobic miles
Wednesday: Swim (3,000 yards) + super short aerobic ride
Thursday: Run (mile efforts + tempo -> intensity session)
Friday: Strength
Saturday: Long Ride (3:30 with intensity)
Sunday: Brick (1:30 bike with intensity + 15 mile run off with RP miles)
By the end of the week, my fatigue had gone down and my form (TSB) had gone up significantly. I tend to recover fairly quickly so it was important to get some bigger TSS days in my week, even this close to the race. The long and tough sessions over the weekend brought me back down to where I needed to be one week out from race day.
Race week has started out with the traditional lower volume and shorter bits of intensity. Monday was a recovery swim after two hard weekend days. Tuesday was aerobic with some very short race pace efforts to keep some intensity in there without overdoing it. Even now, my form is trending up and each day will be an adjustment to my schedule to make sure I am balancing rest and enough work to get me to the ideal spot come Sunday.
Race Weekend
We'll drive to Chattanooga on Friday, go through the check in process and then have a fun dinner with a few of my athletes. Saturday will be filled with the normal pre-race events like final short workouts, racking the TT bike, checking (and triple checking) all the gear, stressing out about something, and then having an early dinner and bedtime!
I'll fill you all in post-race about how everything went down. Fingers crossed it's a good recap!
Happy Training!