Fat Kid’s Ironman Fitness Blog

Final Ride & Final Thoughts Before Race Day

So I took my bike out for a quick spin today before dropping it off into T1. I rode from T1 up the rode for 18 minutes and then turned around and headed back. It turned out to be 5.5 miles out and back… and since I finished in a little over 32 minutes, that put my pace at 20.6mph, my average HR was 147, and max of 172… this has me a little bit concerned.

“What?” you ask!

Well, my concern is that 147/172 is too high of a HR for me to survive this race at… I will need to keep it lower than that. And although coming out of T1 is a big hill, it’s not the biggest hill of the ride by any stretch of the imagination… no, the hills just get bigger and bigger from there.

The thing is, I love to climb hills. I love to eat them up. I can usually climb a hill, jumping in to Zone 3, bouncing off the bottom of Zone 4, and do pretty well for myself all the way up… 20-30 minute climbs… no problem. And I recover quickly… I’ll usually be back to Zone 1 in less than 2 minutes after the climb. And if I have a similar decent, I can easly drop sub-aerobic and get down to as low as 60-80bmps after 20 minutes of descending or riding flat.

But… probably, this pace would kill me by 112 miles, and certainly it would ruin my run… so I know I need to keep it down.

Here’s the problem, I thought I was riding pretty slow… and although my HR alarm was going off on the climb out of T1, I really was going as slow as I thought I realistically could for a climb.

So… tomorrow will indeed be a true test of my ability to keep myself in check.

I will have to watch my heartrate and REALLY REALLY back off, as soon as my heart rate goes into Zone 3.

With that in mind, here’s my expected schedule tomorrow:

• 3:00am wake up, start coffee, get dressed
  • 3:05am make breakfast,
  • 3:10am drink coffee, eat breakfast
• 3:40am drive to Sunset Station Hotel to get Shuttle to T1
• 4:00am Shuttle to T1
• 4:30am Arrive at T1
• 6:30am Swim Starts
• 8:30am Done with swim - into T1
• 7.5 hours or so of riding my bike
• 3:30pm-4pm - Done with ride - starting run.
• 6pm-6:30pm - First Lap complete of Run
• 8pm-9pm - Finish Race

That’s right… My last IM was 12:38, my PR is 12:18, and I am predicting that I will complete this race in 15.5 hours… Ok, maybe I’m being a little conservative, but consider this…

Dave Scott, 6 time Ironman World Champion, described this race course as “Ridiculous”… as a good friend of the race organizer, he apparently discouraged him from make this course this hard.

If that’s not bad enough, also consider that the current forcast is for 20mph SUSTAINED winds, with gusts to 35mph!!!

Oh boy! Thank goodness I brought a spare wheel.

As for mid race updates, check my sidebar, I’ll be attempting to phone in live twitter updates as the race progresses using Twitterfone.

Thanks to all of you who wished me well.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 11/08/2008
• Time: 20:54:26
• Total Time: 00:32:03.00
• Average Heart rate: 147
• Max Heart rate: 172
• Distance: 11 miles
• Average Speed: 20.59 mph
• Ascent: 400 ft
• Descent: 400 ft

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