Recently on slowtwitch there was a thread where someone was asking for "the secret" to training for a fast Ironman marathon.  While my 3:27 and 3:28 IM marathons aren’t the fastest ever – I think that I have a decent understand what it takes to run a good IM marathon.  Despite what some people think it’s not really that complicated.  In my opinion it’s all about pacing – mostly on the bike.

I know of a fella who has done a 1:15 open half marathon – that is smokin’ fast.  Way faster then I could go – way faster.  This same guy recently did Ironman WI and put out a 3:38ish run.  Considered by itself, 3:38 is a great run, but when you consider his raw running speed it’s not so great.  In my opinion a good run for this person would have been in the 3:05 to 3:10 range.  My personal opinion on why the run was a 3:38 versus faster was this person’s 5:12 bike split!  He took 10 minutes on the bike, and gave up 20+ minutes on the run!

Just a good reminder for me in Hawaii!

I had possibly my best weekend of training ever last week – it was crazy!  Here’s how last week broke down in reality

• Monday – Off
• Tuesday
  • AM – slept in
  • PM – 2 hours on the bike trainer – steady – 18.8 average (fastest to-date for a 2 hour ride) + 6 mile run in 43 flat
• Wednesday
  • AM – alarm was set for 5:20 PM not AM – DOH!
  • Lunch – Treadmill speed workout – 8×1000 @ 6 minutes – 4 @ 6:15 pace (3:53 work), 4 @ 5:49 (3:34 work) pace
  • PM – 2 hours steady on trainer – 19.0 average – wtf?  I thought I did good yesterday
• Thursday
  • AM – 3,800 yards – 4×100 @ 1:20, 4×150 @ 1:55, 4×200 @ 2:45
  • PM – 90 minutes on the bike – 8×4 minutes @ threshold, 1-7 were good, faded on #8
• Friday
  • AM  – 8 mile run (1:00:40)
  • PM – Easy hour ride outside – it was cold and windy – really sucky
• Saturday
  • Swim – 3,500 SCM – 3×600, negative split and descend 1-3.  Nailed them all – last one 3:58 + 3:57
  • Bike – 5:30 minutes on the trainer, 18.8 average (was up to 19.0, but I backed off the last hour)
  • Run – 8.5 miles (1:00:29)
• Sunday
  • 20.6 mile run in 2:29 flat – 7:13 mpm, first 5 ~ 7:06, second 5 ~7:15, 3rd ~ 7:2X, last 5 ~6:59
  • Easy 30 minute swim to work out some soreness

Today is definately a total rest day – maybe some yoga, or a nice walk tonight, but I really need to make sure my I don’t ask to much of my body after a week like that.  It wasn’t huge volume wise (21 hours), but I really put a lot of stress on my body and it responded like a champ.

I’m not sure what the plan for this week is.  My original training plan called for this to be a rest week, but I’m not sure if I want to do a full rest week, or beat myself silly before going into my taper.  We’ll see how I feel tomorrow at my swim.  It was a big confidence booster to have such a killer run as my last really long run (if I go hard this week my long run will only be 2 hours) before Hawaii.

Now to just figure out how to keep myself cool on the run.