My last few blogs have been quite reflective and have probably illustrated a lot more of the mental than the physical side of Ironman training. This week I’m going to discuss how fascinated I am by some of the scientific side of the sport.
First, I’ll give a quick summary of the week – far too brief to do it justice. After my biggest week of training to date, I knew this week wouldn’t be much smaller, and with 2 days of research down in Gippsland planned for Thursday and Friday, I was a little nervous about how I might cope. Pete and I did our customary “plan of the week”. On Sunday, we write out a plan of sessions, where else we need to be, where and what we will eat, etc. As we live on the other side of the city from all our training, a typical evening (eg Monday) can involve packing swim stuff, gym clothes, breakfast, clothes for uni, uni bag (including laptop), lunch and clothes for running! But as long as we are well organised, it all goes really well. And this week went brilliantly.
All the sessions just ticked by, some were absolute corkers, including my “best ever” 3 laps of The Boulevard at Kew on Wednesday morning. There was a lot of fatigue slowly building in the legs all week, which for me often means that for the same effort level, I can't hit the heart rates that I should (my legs don't let me) but as long as I allow for that, it prevents me overdoing it and allows me to still do some quality training.
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| In Gippsland |
Thursday and Friday went brilliantly. I swam at MSAC on thursday (a good race pace set) then Pete drove me down to Gippsland to do my experiment, so I didn't have to do 3 hours driving as well as train and do the experiments. We drove back on thursday, I did a massive hill run session at Kew, ate, went to bed!
Friday - swam again (very badly - lots of fatigue) Back in the car, back down to Gippsland, finished the experiment, back home, ate, went to bed, a little apprehensive about how the weekend might go, given all the running around and fatigue.
No need to worry - I won't go into all the details now, and will explain a bit more about the ride soon, but the whole weekend went brilliantly, albeit with heavy legs. 150km ride in the windiest conditions I have ever had on saturday, followed by a really solid 30km on Sunday, with 8km of hills at Kew Boulevard thrown in!
So on to the science. I have attached my garmin data from the ride on Saturday. I started the ride on pretty heavy legs, from the 2 weeks of hard training I had done. I rode to Mordialloc with the bunch, (about 35km) nice and easy. After Mordy, the first spike in the heart rate graph was me settling into a rhythm for the rest of the ride. I decided to stay around 120-125 bpm (about 75% of my bike max HR) for the first 60km, up to 130bpm for the next 60km then up to 135-140bpm (or half Ironman intensity) for the final 30km if I felt ok. As the graph shows, the second 60km doesn't really change from the latter part of the first 60km.
This was surprising, because although from 70km onwards I was riding into headwind, and tried to increase my effort level, my tired legs just wouldn't seem to respond, and try as I might, I couldn't seem to increase my heart rate. I was following my race nutrition plan. (2 x Hammer Perpetuem solids every 30 min, a gel at 15 min past each hour, and sips of energy drink (Hammer Heed) in between. My energy levels felt great throughout - spot on. But just no response from the legs.Now for the magic (scientific magic, of course!!). At 120km I took 2 caffeine tablets. This has also always been part of my race strategy - I take 2 tablets at 120km into the bike, and another 2 at the 30km mark of the run. I love reading articles about the science of nutririon and physiology in sport, and the caffeine story is particularly fascinating. Well if you look at the graph, you can really see it in action. I assure you there is no placebo effect there. I genuinely could not push, then suddenly after the caffeine it was like I had different legs under me. My heart rate came up (appropriately) and my average speed went from about 25kph from Frankston to Mordialloc, up to 27kph for the remaining 25km.
Many of the triathletes reading this may have already seen the caffeine articles, but for those who haven't and are interested, here is the link to the Australian Institute of Sport factsheet on caffeine in endurance sports.
2 caffeine tablets is 200mg of caffeine. This would be a huge amount for the non - athlete, and the potential side effects (such as increased heart rate and dehydration) could be detrimental to health. But amazingly in the kind of situation I was in, training on probable depleted glycogen stores, the effect was phenomenal. The theory that the caffeine promotes fat metabolism, sparing glycogen makes sense, but some studies also suggest that the caffeine actually enhances glycogen breakdown, as it acts synergistically with glucagon.
Regardless of the mechanism involved, the result on saturday was amazing, and meant that I finished one of my last long sessions much more confident with what I might be able to do (even in the wind!) at Hawaii. So caffeine stays in the race plan!!
Weeks to go = 5
Hours trained this week = 24.25
Swim = 13.5km
Bike = 300.1km
Run = 80.14km
August totals
Swim = 62.45km
Bike = 1153km
Run = 260.3km
