One of Kelly’s season goals was to raise his FTP and really develop his power on the bike. After months of base building and endurance miles, it was time to ratchet up the bike focus and dive into more intense bike sessions to help him meet this goal. We began a block of high intensity bike work to boost his FTP. Since training for Ironman is still his priority, we’ve been careful in how we go about doing this.

While he works from home, Kelly still works a fairly typical 9-5 job and needs to be near his computer or phone during that timeframe. So his weekly training load is set up like most athletes, where shorter workouts happen during the week and the weekends are made for the long ride and the long run.

Kelly has been one of my athletes since late 2019. He found me through a series of email communications first with Joe Friel, who forwarded his information on to Ryan Bolton of Bolton Endurance Sports Training, which in turn forwarded him on to me as he thought the two of us would be a great fit. And I must say, we have!

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.