Training for IM Canada. The Bike

Training The Bke:
My goal with these entries is to discuss my personal training that I am going through to prepare for IM Canada. The idea here is to learn from my personal training and life experiences. While you read these entries you may find yourself saying "hey that sounds familiar..." and even if the exact scenario or method isn't similar to yours the concepts may be. Please feel free to read between the lines and leave some good constructive comments; good or bad.




So, some further explaination of my goals and training objectives listed in the last post:

~I will still be bike racing. I love it. I love being a domestique for my teammates when they can use my help and its a killer workout, plain and simple.
More specifically bike racing has made me the cyclist I am today, obviously. I post very fast, if not the fastest, bike splits in the triathlons that I have done. Furthermore I run pretty well off the bike with little run training. You might ask, why?
It's because I am very efficient on the bike. If one can handle the up and down of a bike race, the unknown, the lack of any control, the 5 day stage races, the rain, wind, avoiding crashes, etc, then riding your own pace in a triathlon becomes a straightforward affair. Yes, there are plenty of mistakes to be made. So far, I and many other cyclists tend to execute the sub-maximal TT effort of a tri very well. So I will hold on to what roadie skills I have.

~TT Focus: I'm good at TT's, but I need to be great. There is more to it than crushing your threshold watts. I have a lot more TT's on the race schedule this year.

~Threshold intervals at 90-95%: Many people have great success with threshold intervals right at their tested threshold power, but not me. Any progress I've had has been small over the last 4 years. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result", right? Maybe changing things up instead of doing the same old routine is the way to go? The concept here is that I will still be in Z4 durining these intervals but i will be able to accumulate more time. The longer the interval, the worse I am at it compared to others and its always been that way. this should strike at my weakness. In summary, longer intervals, more time in Z4 equals more adaptation, or at least that's what I'm hoping.

~Boulder Peak is an Olympic distance tri. It's a very steep 5-10 minute climb in the early miles. Very few amatuers break 1 hour on this course.

~Pace rides: Yes, your IM pace is somewhere in Zone 2. "so that means its your kinda default endurance ride, long ride, wattage right EK?" Well, yes, but again I have never been great at longer efforts, ie. I am a genetic VO2 machine, not a long haul threshold guy. While my goal IM pace IS in zone 2 (the upper end) its tough work for me. My default endurance ride was mid to low zone 2 in past years. I think it's time to notch it up a bit.