The master plan

I mentioned a few posts ago that I'm a big-picture girl. I love to live in the world of master plans. So you can understand my excitement last week when I received my Ironman training plan from my coach. This plan does not yet detail what I'll be doing each minute of the day in training. At this point, I'm simply getting comfortable with aspects such as how many hours I'll be devoting to training each week, what will be the general focus for the week, and when my preparatory races will be. So, in the interest of answering "how does one train for Ironman?" I thought I'd share some of these big-picture features with you. I've also confessed that I'm a numbers gal, so consider yourself forewarned. :)

• From now until June 26th, I will put in at least 320 hours of training. Over the next 172 days, this is an average of almost two hours a day. Of course, some days will--hallelujah--be complete rest days. Other days will be spent running an hour after riding for five. The volume and intensity will vary from day to day and week to week, all designed to push me beyond what I can do now and then allow my body to recover.
• Of these 320-ish hours, about 20% will be spent in the water (pool now and lake come May); nearly half will be on the bike; almost 30% will be running; and the few remaining hours will be invested in strength training and yoga. If I count active recovery and massage in this total, I'm looking at probably 400 hours.
• There are 25 weeks until Ironman. This equates to an average of 13 hours per week spent training. Because my training plan cycles through 3-4 weeks "on" and one week of "recovery", some weeks will be light--more like 8-9 hours. Other weeks will have me training 15+ hours.
• During my most intense period, I will be training 16-18 hours per week. This will happen for eight weeks total, sprinkled throughout April, May, and June. Forgive me in advance if I seem to drop off the face of the earth during that time. :) My true "peak" will be the week of June 6th. After that week, I will begin my taper period: backing off on serious training, going into maintenance, and doing all the other kinds of prep for the race, like packing.

I have three races I'm using as preparation.

• January 30th will find me in sunny Miami for a 1/2-marathon. This race gets my running mileage up early in the season so I'm hopefully not playing catch-up too close to Ironman. The main motivation for picking this particular race, though, is to get all the ladies together for a warm-weather getaway! There will be eight of us flying in from all over the country to run the 5k or the 1/2-marathon. And I'm sure there will be some beachtime and visits to South Beach thrown in for good measure.
• On May 15th, I'll do the Santa Fe Century. This not only works well, timing-wise, for Ironman training, it's a terrific excuse to visit Santa Fe in the spring! A bunch of us are planning to do the ride together. It's a 100-mile ride, and I'm fully expecting my coach to tell me to run several miles right after.
• And on June 4th, I'm doing the Boulder Sunrise Triathlon. This is an Olympic-distance race, not quite 25% the distance of Ironman. The one bummer about doing an Ironman so "early" in the season is that there aren't many local triathlons I can use for training--it's too early in the season! The Boulder Sunrise happens to be one of them, and better yet, it's right up the road in Boulder. The Olympic distance is nice, too--it's not so long that I'll be overtrained for Ironman, and it's not a sprint distance, which is too short to even be worth the effort. The benefits of this race are that it will take me about 3 hours to complete (making it an endurance event), it's in a very competitive location, and it will be my chance to practice the logistical elements of triathlon.

What does this all mean? It means that logging hours is my main focus. I must be ready to sustain aerobic activity for a really really long time on June 26, so building endurance is the priority. Luckily for me, it also happens to be one of my favorite things to do. :) At various other times, I will also work on speed, strength, and technique. Closer to the race, my primary focus will be race-specific and I will do workouts that have me running immediately after biking as well as simulating race conditions.  

It's funny, the difference a few hours makes. On December 31st, Ironman training still seemed a year away. I woke up on January 1st and--smack--there it was staring at me in the face. So on that note, off I go to the gym!