Sunday, June 01, 2008

Eagleman final preparations

Eagleman half ironman is one week from today. It will be the fourth time I tackle that course.

I had optimistically planned a tough two weeks of training immediately after Columbia two weeks ago. When I made that ambitious plan I had forgotten about all the end-of-school activities, field trips, art show, twin birthday, doctor visits, etc., that would interfere. That's life!!

So here's what I actually got done:

Swimming: 5000 yards planned, 2600 yards done
Cycling: 175 miles planned, 120 miles done
Running: 34 miles planned, 24 miles done

I still have 6 days to get in some easy taper workouts - which will probably bring up the running total 10 more miles to the goal, but I'll probably only get perhaps another 800-1500 yards of swimming and 10-25 miles of cycling done this coming week. That will have to do!

I am very encouraged by today's ride: 56.3 miles at a reasonably comfortable pace (heart rate average about 5-10 bpm below my planned racing heart rate) on a hot, humid morning that ended up equaling last year's Eagleman pace (16.4 mph). I'll be pleased if I can replicate that on race day - but especially pleased if I can follow it up with an actual half marathon run instead of a nine mile run and a four mile bonk. If I can skip the bonk part, I should be able to (finally) break 7 hours - but that's still a big IF since I've lost so much training time this spring.

I still need to give Buttercup a good pre-race cleaning and swap out her climbing cassette for the flatlands cassette. I'd like to try the new wheel cover but I may not have time to put it on and test it before race day, and I don't want to race on it without fully testing it first. But the extra bit of gearing will help - if I have a lovely tailwind on race day next Sunday I want to make full use of it!

3 comments:

Lesser is More said...

Here's to praying for tailwinds! Best of luck this week with knocking out the last few workouts before the big day.

LBTEPA said...

good luck Nancy!

IronWaddler said...

Good luck and hope you hit the numbers and enjoy.