A first time for everything...

I got back from Vancouver late last night and by the time I fell asleep it was 2:40 am. I scheduled the day off work and my plan was to sleep in and catch up on my sleep. I woke up thinking I slept in and it was only 8:30 am and I was tired. Maybe it was jet lag from 10 hours of flying within a 30 hour period.

I was debating taking today off and not doing my tempo run in order to give my body a rest. Exercise gets rid of jet lag so I opted to go for a run. I knew it would help reset my clock. I was really nervous about how I'd feel. I still have bad blisters and had no blister pads. I ended up using the next best thing, hockey tape.

I switched my watch over to record my pace in kilometers and I don't yet know what that means in terms of speed. I was running blind. For the first third of the run I was around a 4:22 pace and ended up with a 4:43 pace while keeping my heart rate under 143 bpm.

I was ecstatic when I got home and converted to miles and realized that is a 7:37 pace, even though it felt much slower. Something doesn't make sense, Monday I did a moderate run and had one of my worst runs of the year at a 5:25 pace and then two day's later I'm running a 4:43 pace at roughly the same effort.

I got an email from Mark Allen today. He was reading my blog and wanted to know if anyone got back to me about my bonk on the bike. I was impressed that "out of the blue" he reached out to me. Frankly, I was also impressed that he takes the time to read my blog. It just shows MAO is more than a computer generated plan. His timing was good and I asked him this question:

Mark, I just realized I had an important training question.

For the past few bike rides I've had a tough time getting my heart rate up to my MAHR as my legs have no more power to do so. My times are faster than in the past but the legs just don't have anymore power than what I'm using. My running however is very good and I have no trouble getting the heart rate up.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing. One thought I had was that I need to push through the pain and it will give me gain. Someone else told me I should take some time off.

What are your thoughts?

B

Hi Bryan,

What you have is basically a good problem to have. It means that you are faster at the same heart rate (a good thing) and that now you are limited by your ability to generate power rather than by your physiology. There are two ways to get through this type of experience. One is to push through it. However, that is not necessarily the best and can potentially set you up for getting overtrained. A second is to indeed back off a bit for a few days and see if the added rest shifts how your legs feel. If you do this and then you feel better, that was the answer to what was going on, which is that you are starting to get a bit overtrained and just needed to recover. This happens often when you start to get quite aerobically fit because each session if you are pushing toward the upper part of your HR zones you are taxing your body. So a little extra rest on occasion is usually all it takes.

A third solution is going to be longer term and that is to focus on the leg weights to continue to build lean muscle in the legs that can then be used to develop your power in the pedal stroke. Again, this is a longer term thing that will help out.

Then the final thing would be to look at the bike drill videos, specifically the one about Power. There are tips there to help you generate power in a way that doesn't load the legs up. Check that out if you have not seen it yet.

I hope that helps,

MARK ALLEN :: Co-Founder : Head Coach

Great advice that I'm going to follow. This may be the beginning of me making some big gains on the bike. I hope so.

It feels a little strange today. It's the first time, since we've moved from Winnipeg 5 years ago, that we are not going back to Winnipeg for Christmas. It's just the four of us this year. With us not going back, Christmas has just crept up on us. It doesn't even feel like Christmas. Normally we've been in Winnipeg for the week and have visited family and friends and partied all week long.

I also need to find a new tradition. Every year I order Chinese food for the entire family. This year the kids don't want Chinese food and I'm not sure what the new tradition should be. I've got two more hours to figure it out. For the rest of the night were going to play games and I'm going to take Reid's money by beating him at pool.

Merry Christmas to all my blog and Ironman buddies from Training Payne.

Tempo Run - 55:05 / 11.66 km / 4:43 kph / 143 avg hr

184.2 lbs 21 % BMI

Diet 0/10

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