IMLP 2014-Week 17 Training Update-Turning Up The Heat

The heat is turning up…in temperature and training intensity. After a very demanding Black Bear Half Iron race, I had a good rest day and then back to it again. The weather for week 17 could not have been nicer, although the weekend got a little hot. It takes me a little while to get going in the mornings, so by the time I get out it is usually the hottest part of the day. I guess I might as well get used to that since I could be racing in it.

Creaky Bike

I had a really annoying creaking sound on my bike the entire Black Bear ride, so I figured it was a good time to drop it off at Sleeping Dog Pro Cycles for a quick tune up. I had not been able figure out where the noise was occurring, but thought it was in my drivetrain somewhere. Turns out is was my headset!   I guess when I had taken the bolt out to try to install my X-Lab computer mount, it must have loosened it up a bit and started creaking. John also indicated that the headset was almost seized up again with my ever-corrosive, dried sweat. Apparently, my new bike thong was not enough to keep all my sweat drippings out of there. John was also able to find a longer head bolt that would accommodate my X-Lab computer mount which will now sit nicely behind my aerobar mounted water bottle. That should get me a watt or two I hope. I also needed a new chain and my rear Reynolds carbon race wheel  to be trued. It was running smooth on my Wednesday night ride and no creaking!

Heading out for long Saturday ride

Speed Work

On Thursday I headed over to the local high school track to do some track intervals. I always do 4-5x400m’s, so I thought it was time to take it up a notch. I did 3×800’s to try and increase the speed endurance a bit. The first one is always rough and I was trying to get a handle on my pacing. The 2nd and 3rd were a bit faster but felt pretty good overall. I separated the intervals with a very easy 400m in between. I then did a mile tempo after fully recovering from the intervals and then easy last mile. It was a pretty good workout and my legs were feeling it by the end.

TGIF!!

The original plan for Friday was to take a half day of work and head over to Dutch Springs for an open water swim. Due to a late start and running short on time, I ended up bagging that and just going to the pool for my LSD swim. I thought it would be empty on Friday afternoon, but to my surprised it was packed. I was able to get in a lane fortunately, but was sharing the whole time. I did get a solid hour swim in but I am not sure of the true distance since my Garmin was missing lap turns left and right. It was especially bad on the last half hour were it said I was swimming a 2:20 pace…LOL! I am a slow swimmer, but not that slow!

Friday evening I was able to get out for a nice bike ride. One thing I noticed is that many of the roads in Longswamp Township, which are most of the roads I ride, have been marked with “Fresh Oil and Chips” signs. This is really bad news. Some of these roads are newly paved, pristine macadam that was a pleasure to drive on to a now horrible surface that will sandblast the paint off your fenders. The stones actually get caught in between my tires and my frame and jam the wheels. Other roads they have marked are extremely deteriorated ones that need to be paved. Apparently they are too cheap to fix them properly, so they figure they can just cover the potholes with this crap. If you ride a bike or a car in this township I would highly advise staying away for some time to avoid ruining your bike or vehicle.

Quad County Long Ride

I decided to ride the Quad County metric course on Saturday for my long ride. I needed to ride a 4:40 ride so I thought ~60 miles would workout well and I could supplement that with some extra miles around home. Might as well enjoy it before it gets crusted over with oil and chip shit(I am not bitter!). This is a pretty hilly ride and with the 80+ degree temps it made for a pretty challenging Saturday. My pace ended up in the 15+ mph range; a fairly slow ride. It is a very scenic ride though. It all went pretty well though, the only highlight was getting “smoked” by some asshole in a jacked black truck about a mile from my house. I will remember you buddy…karma!

I quickly changed into my run gear when I got home and banged out a half hour brick run around town. Legs were feeling the hills, but my pace actually faster than it felt like I was going. I was pretty wiped out after that and quick nap was in order before heading out for dinner.

Long Run on the D&L Trail

Running D&L Trail-Cove Rd Trailhead

The training week concluded with 2:50+ run on the D&L Trail. I was procrastinating this run all morning and the day just kept getting hotter. I finally got up Cove Road trailhead around 1-2pm. It was packed with kids tubing down the Lehigh and I wished I was doing that. I had been feeling a bit nauseous most of the afternoon so that just added to my reluctance. I pushed on with 8 mile out-and-back down to Cementon and back. Then I refueled at the car and headed north for the 5 miles up to Slatington.

I had felt pretty good most of the time now and was keeping a decent IM pace the whole way. When I reached the turnaround at 13 miles I started walking while I had an Amrita Bar and drinking some Skratch Labs drink and my right hip started hurting. It was actually painful to walk. I realized it was probably the IT Band where it connects by your hip and started doing some stretchs right away. It felt better and was not as bad when running. It kept getting more sore though as I ran and I had to stop every once in a while to stretch it out more. My pace immediately dropped down to more than a minute a mile, so my hope of running the whole thing at IM pace went out the door.

Running D&L Trail-Looking North towards Slatington

I made it back to the car running the whole 18 miles, just not as fast as I would have like to . I also ran out of drink with around 3 miles to go. The last 10 miles from Cove Road to Slatington are nice and shaded so it is a good place to run on a hot, sunny day.

So that finished up the week with just hair under 16 hours of training. Not too bad considering I had Monday as a rest day. My plan was to hit 17 next week and then a rest week before my Lake Placid camp. Perhaps 16.5 may be enough.

Running D&L Trail-Running selfie

Monday, Monday…

So a day later, my hip/IT Band is pretty sore today. I am hoping with a day off it will get back to normal again. If it is still bothering me I may need to skip a run early this week to let rebound a bit. Not sure if the flatness of the D&L trail could be part of the issue. I had IT Band issues before there when I ran the marathon a couple years ago.  May be a sign I need to scale back the long runs a bit. We’ll see how this week goes.