Monday, February 28, 2011

Just a heap of crap carbon

Photo from yesterday´s time trial training. 4 hours with two 20km pushes at full throttle.
Must admit I was pretty burned on the second interval - after 7 hours on the bike the day before.

8 beautiful Argon 18 bikes. Mostly E114 but also a few E112

Sunday, February 27, 2011

My 8 steps to faster recovery:

As the trainings are getting longer and harder, the need for faster and more efficient recovery becomes more important. Here´s my take on better recovery, which I (more or less consciously) do after long trainings:

  1. Stretch - My good Swedish friend Haakon Weibull once said "Warm-Up and Stretching is gay"... very precise with a good Swedish accent. Some say "nay" and some say "yay", but most people still recognize the benefits of stretching. I spend 15-20 minutes after long trainings, working with some pretty straight forward exercises. Girls digs boys who stretches ;)

  2. Shower - may sound pretty obvious, but hit the cold water over the legs for 5-7 minutes, which has some (still unexplained) magic effect. It´s painful and it sucks - but it works.

  3. Drink - I have learned that I drop 3-5 kg of liquid during long rides, even when hydrating well during the day. So drink well, isotonics, coca cola or whatever works for you. Until your pee goes transparent again!

  4. Eat - as soon as possible, preferable within 20 minutes after the training 40% proteins (tuna, chicken and what not) and 60% carbs (pasta or rice works for me)

  5. Supplement - I take Amino Acids (BCAA) and a mix of salts sold on the pharmacies here, sodium, magnesium, etc. It´s called "RecuperatION" (great name for a Spanish product, huh?) - works wonders.

  6. Compex - this electronic muscle simulator works wonders on sore muscles. It´s fairly expensive and hurts a bit - but gets your legs back in shape in 25-60 minutes. Takes out the feeling of "heavy legs" which means a lot, especially if you do back-to-back quality (short and fast) trainings!

  7. Massage - do it yourself or find a serious sports pro (like my homie Roberto Ortiz) - hands of magic on the legs every 8-12 days. Works deeper than the compex (THAT actually came out a bit gay) and can work on specific areas, which needs special attention!

  8. Rest - even though my room mate still laugh at me when I pass out on the couch, this is the best moment of the day. Spanish people got it right with the "Siesta" - it´s next best thing after sliced bread! Hit Mythbusters or whatever on the old telly and sleep until some foolish soul wakes you up.
Hope it´ll work for ya too! Enjoy... I´m taking a nap. Besos - T

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Accumulated Volumens

Below my accumulated volumens since October 2008, when we ran the Berlin Marathon


Swim Bike Run

km Hours km Hours km Hours
IM France Totals 133 60 3949 178 1233 102
IM Lanzarote Totals 233 89 4893 203 1478 126
IM CopenhagenTotals 30 14 1900 67 466 34
IM St. George 97.8 37 5425 206 714 60
IM Zurich
Summarized Totals 493 200 16167 654 3891 322

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Quality Training

So - as we´re getting closer to Ironman St. George race day on the 7th of May, it´s time to start getting more quality training in the legs. That means more hours running and biking close to, or over the lactate- or functional threshold (max pace or power you can maintain for 30 minutes). This hurts, but it´s also fun and definitely more my kind of training; Shorter & tougher, preferably until you feel the taste of blood or metal in the mouth.

This weekend the order from Master Lladó was Road bike Saturday and time trial test for Sunday. With two long trail runs (19km and 22km with around 500m+ altitude) on Tuesday & Thursday, my legs we´re already pretty much worn out, but here we go:

Saturday:
With a pretty large group (15-20) of experienced riders we headed straight over the mountains and towards the national park around the Montserrat mountain, which always means long and hefty climbs. There was a whole lot of battling going on between the strongest riders, who kept attacking and defending the whole day. It´s really stressful with tempo-changes and bikes moving all the time, but the training is excellent as you need to push hard all the time to keep up.

Big, big respect to at least two gentlemen in their mid-fifties (Javier & El Moracho) who both dropped me and several other young riders on every climb. I will never stop admiring people who keep themselves in this kind of shape through-out the whole life - a great inspiration!
Summarizing 110km with 1800m+ of climbing in 4h15m

Sunday - TT test:
After a good warm-up we hit the industrial area just before Martorell, a 6km flat stretch through smelly metal-factories which ends up in a 100m hill-climb, which was the scenery for today´s time-trial test. A lot of fun between the 6 A18-Mafia riders on their E-112 and E-114 - and straws we´re drawn to determine the order of the day. I went first with the disadvantage of having no reference in front of me (no complaints, as I am by far the slowest in this pack) and the remainders came after me with 90 seconds intervals.

My aim was to keep my HR steady on the flat (160 BPM) and also on the small, but tough climb (170 BPM). You can see the result on my HR and altitude below, so I stuck pretty well to the strategy, but lost around 2 mins to e.g. Guillermo - I still have much to learn on this kind of test.

This was very close to a Functional Threshold test and my HR was 165 over the 47.5 minutes, avg. speed was 34.7 km/h, which is OK with 200m climb over the 30km course. Total volume was 90km in around 3hours.



After the test I continued straight into a brick-run of 12km with a bit of climbing. I was surprised that I fairly easy maintained 4:20 min/km, which is much faster that the bricks I did before Challenge Copenhagen (around 5:00 min/km), so hey - maybe all this training and celibacy is actually working ;)
Cheers - Thomas


Sunday, February 6, 2011

Badly Overworked - But that´´s OK!

So - as you´ve seen from my latest posts - we have really stepped it up since New Years. With 3 months to go to Ironman St. George we´re hitting a period of long and hard work, under the regime of Guillermo and his mighty team of tough and experienced bikers. Every Saturday and Sunday during January we have been going harder and harder - and longer and longer. Putting this on top of the long trainings we did in Lanzarote quickly left my body in a state of shock. Compare it to try to jump on a carousel in motion - head first. You just gotta hold on really hard, or you´ll be kicked off. Apart from a bit over normal leg soreness, I have experienced nauseousness, tunnel-vision (seriously), almost vomited and just the feel of being in the back of the pack ALL the fucking time is just another mental test. To the level where Guillermo said "Eres una niña" ... you´re a little girl - and he was right!!!

Mondays and Tuesdays I have been walking like an old man, eating like a maniac (totally carb overload) - to be honest, I have never been pushed so hard. People ask "but you must feel you are getting stronger" - yeah maybe, but that´s really hard to spot through the feeling of pain, just walking down a 3-step staircase.

So definitely a bit over-trained and that´s good. Yesterday was a great day - we had 18 degrees, blazing sun and was bound for 160 km through Catalan Wine country - and almost 1500m of climbing - only Guillermo, myself and our trusted steeds - the Argon18 E114s.

Check below today's training with the whole crew - a video made to demonstrate how training without drafting is just a bit tougher, both physically and mentally: