Training Thoughts: Last week I had talked about resting being part of ones plans and as important as working out. Not riding and running this week, till a ride on Saturday, did get my shin feeling better. This just made one of my points from last week. That point being that you can take a few days off now and get rid of an issue or try and just cut back and run or ride through an injury and often then still need an extended rest later. In this case the rest now paid off and I will be able to get back to training.
The one thing I will need to keep an eye on is with running to make sure my shin stays healed. While I am pretty sure the shin issue was a result of my trail running incident I am not totally sure so need to just make sure the shin issue does not come back by doing too much too soon. While my previous plan of running less days but more on each day seemed to work but maybe 30 miles on a twice a week plan might be too much right now. For right now will try shorter, 4-6 miles up to 5 times a week and see how things go. This will entail riding in the AM and running in the evening so will see how this goes.
Right now I have 3 events on my schedule – Kentucky Gravel Championships, Redbud Century, Pacing at the NoBusiness 100 and the Daniel Ellis 5k – and while I know things can change at least I do have something to look and train toward. Since the KGC, Redbud and NoBusiness will work fine on my base I am going to work on a training plan to get the best 5k I can in the first part of November. I want to program my training using the Lydiard plan to peak for November 7th. Will be fun to figure out the use of riding to fit into the Lydiard Pyramid and work to get the fastest 5K I can. I would like to break 19:00 but if I can get under 19:25 I would be happy as that would be my fastest in some time.
I hope you take away from this that rest is important. Not only when training hard but also when injured. I realize if you have a race near to an injury you may want to train through it and rest after the race but for most instances it is best to get rid of an injury as soon as you can and training as you always do through them quite often just does not work. I would also add that often at times when an injury is in play having a coach can make things easier as far as what to do since a coach can often have a view of things we as athletes do not have. Still will be hard to follow through if you are like me but as I found with my shin the best thing I did was take 6 days off.
Overview of Weeks Runs and Rides:
As planned, well pretty much as planned, I took off this week till Saturday from running and riding to deal with my shin issue. The good news is that the time off from last Sunday till this Saturday mornings ride allowed my shin to heal and it felt good, even after the long ride Saturday. It for sure was difficult to not ride as my shin was feeling good Thursday and put off riding Saturday.
As far as the ride Saturday it was a nice day out with the guys. For most of the ride it was an easy pace and ended up with an average HR of 129 for the ride. That said I did push a little harder on many of the climbs just to keep a good pace and also to see how my power looked as just mounted my Stages Power Meter on Friday. Thus on the climbs which were all pretty short but often steep my HR got up to the 150’s near the top as climbs around here tend to get steep and I was avoiding small gears. Also, part of my plan was to work on my breathing since I have a mild case of exercised induced asthma, have had pretty much all my life, and the key thing for me is to control my breathing as if I let it get out of hand I start gasping and it takes much longer to get things back to normal. On all but one climb I accomplished controlling things – the one that was more difficult was one where as I came a round the bend on the climb it got much steeper and did not want to change gears and drop the chain.
Also, for this ride as we got near the end I realized that the other guys were setting up for the sprint. Truth is I was not wanting to really sprint today so from about a mile out I ramped up the speed knowing full well I was just dragging people along to sprint by at the end, but that was sort of my job when I raced. I was pretty happy as right before I got passed, about 100-200 meters before the line I had my speed up to over 36mph so was happy with that as had pulled for quite some time. When they went past I probably should have tried to go but I hesitated and it was too late – maybe next time.
As far as power I hit my max on one final stretch of a climb at 816watts for a second I guess. However, in looking at my stats I did get to 729W for 10 seconds and even got to 491 for a minute. Need to figure out my power for the last mile but as stated above I was happy with my 36.7 MPH to finish up the ride and even actually went faster than last weeks time trial on the back 4 miles of the TT course – but no real headwind this week.
All in all even with some hard efforts in large this was an easy ride and felt great. I can tell all the long rides I have been doing are making a difference. I will need to work on speed so I can sprint if I need to but that will come with work.
Saturday’s 70+ Miler
- Monday: Rest Day
- Tuesday: Rest Day
- Wednesday: Rest Day
- Thursday Rest Day
- Friday: Rest Day
- Saturday: Ride – 73.61 Miles
- Sunday: Rest Day
Weekly Totals:
- Running Miles – 0 Miles
- Running Time – 0 Hours
- Riding Miles – 73.61 Miles
- Riding Time – 4:01 Hours
- Total Miles – 73.61 Miles
- Total Time – 4:01 Hours
Diet Notes:
Saturday’s ride was a good one and without making an effort to minimize caloric and carb intake it was quite low and I felt great. All the calories on the ride were in my SFuels drinks and a very small amount from Vespa but that is it. Also, in this as can be seen above in a description of the ride I did have a number of hard sections where my heart rate did go well above my cross-over point. Figuring it was other than the last push to the end of the ride the hard sections were on short hills and thus probably the length of the efforts that allowed for a low carb intake without any adverse effects. Again, I do not go into the ride seeking to overly limit calories and carbs but work to better go by feel so as to have an intake that meets the needs of the ride. I can add to this that I knew this ride was not going to be as long as some other rides so knew needs were less. Many times my intake is not only for the present needs but also to forgo issue later in the ride.
As with all things you need to see what works for you but I can confidently say being fat adapted and having metabolic flexibility is a very useful tool to have. The flexibility means you do not need the massive intake of calories so often needed when carbs are the main source of energy but it also means you can switch back and forth to what source of energy works best for the effort at hand. Thus when going harder and with an elevated HR you can switch to carbs as a source but then go back to fats when you reduce your HR. This means you do not deplete your carb stores as you do when all you burn is carbs.
I do want to add here, and also remind you that I am an SFuels Ambassador, that after the ride I used the new SFuels Recover drink. Presently the only flavor is Chocolate and to me it has a great taste in that it is a light flavor and the last think I want is a thick chocolatey drink. Now I will say I mix mine with 24oz of water instead of the 16oz which does water it down more but even at 16oz it is a light flavor.
Saturday’s Ride Fueling
Pre-Ride Fueling:
- Coffee with Coconut Oil and Butter, Collagen, Heavy Cream, Chocolate Primal Fuel (1 Scoop) & 1 Scoop SFuels-Life
- 1 Vespa
- 1 SFuels Bar
- 1 Altred (Beetroot Extract)
- Also use the AMPHuman PR Lotion
- Total: 857.3 Cals & 35 gr Carbs
Ride Fueling;
- 1.5ea of 24oz bottle with 2 scoops of SFuels Train each (120/2 per bottle – Ttl 180/3)
- 1ea of 24oz of SFuels Race+ (100/15 )
- 1ea 24oz plan water
- 1ea Vespa at 2 hours – 18/5
- Totals: 298 Calories – 23 gr Carbs
- Totals for Pre and During Ride: 1155.3 Calories – 58 gr Carbs
The Week Ahead:
Plans for this week is to get back into riding and be in the 250-275 mile range. If I do a long ride this week will sort of depend on how things go but will adjust my rides Thursday and Friday to accommodate. With regards to running the plan is to run 3-5 days this week but no more than 5 on any of those days. I will ride in the AM and then run in the afternoon as time allow and how my shin feels - goal is just to get back into running. Depending on what I ride will fit it all in with Sunday being a rest day.
Last Week's Overview #51
Also, check out the whole line of SFuels products: SFuels Life , SFuels-Train and SFuels-Race products. Also, just back after reformulating them are SFuel LIFE Bars. You can also access the new QuickStart Guide.
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