The end of the Volume, bring on the Taper!!

Sitting down tonight writing this while watching the Ironman Lake Placid finishers stream across the line. A weird feeling, the next full Ironman race is Mont Tremblant, feeling a little bit nervous now, but also inspired by all the awesome triathletes crossing the line in Lake Placid tonight!

My heavy volume training is over now, the lighter volume with more focus on speed starts tomorrow morning. Basically fine tuning the huge volume base that has been laid down over the past several months.

Looking back on my training now, I have been doing at least 140 miles per week for the past 7 weeks. Thats an ironman a week. At first I found that volume tough and very tiring but now as I end the volume period I find I am able to handle it without the feelings of muscle ache and physical exhaustion that I felt at the start, all a good sign I think!

July looked like this, with the last week of July being my biggest of all (in terms of time and distance):

2 great training events this past weekend. Yesterday I did the NYC Marathon Long Training Run in Central Park and this morning did my longest swim - 2.3m miles off West Neck Beach.

The NYC run was great, 2 loops of Central Park, nice and hilly, held a great steady pace and even heart rate throughout and very happy to finish 13.3 miles in 2 hours even.

The swim off West Neck beach this morning was great, started off with the pod, all the fast swimmers in the water today so I trailed for the first loop. strong outgoing tide this morning so heading south was a tough haul through but then nice and speedy heading north. After 1.2 miles and 1 loop the pod went back in to the beach but I stayed out and headed for a 2nd loop solo. Happy to see my pace held for the loop and I got the 2.3 miles done in the goal time I was looking for.

Ironman Training Goals:

So how am I doing on my goals for Ironman training? I set these when I entered the race one year ago, scary....

Cycling goal is ok, I am happy that I have been able to stay strong on the bike in the last 2 months, really catching up significantly in volume.

Running goal is great, blown away my target of doing 1,000 miles in preparation.

Swimming goal, well I think I was obviously way too optimistic about the volume that could be put in. That said the swim is definitely the area I can do better in, so for the future I will see about trying to get to 100 miles in 12 months....

So now its time to start getting all the gear ready for action! started today with retiring my current running shoes, 550 miles done this year and a nice ripped open hole on the left shoe, time for the new A5's to take over. Laces transferred and they are ready to be broken in starting Tuesday.