Afternoon Run - L2 "Long Run"

Today was an easy long run of about 1 hour. I started from home and ran out 30 minutes and back 30 mintes at an easy Endurance pace. My heart rate never went above 160, which is right about where my "tempo zone" begins. Pace was just about 8:30/mi, so I feel pretty good about that. I'd really like to see my goal marathon pace be 8:30/mi (~ 3:45:00 marathon), but as of now, I'm targeting 9:00/mi (~4:00:00 race) for the Colfax Marathon in May. The graph is pretty boring. Pretty much a generally straight line after I got going. There are a couple of prominant dips where I had to stop and wait for a light to change. I felt great the whole way, though.

I'm riding long with the cycling club tomorrow. 48 miles starting from Golden, Colorado and heading into the foothills. Should be fun!

Morning Swim - L1-L2 Form and Kick Focus

Yesterday's run was a no-go. I'm apparently a moron, and forgot to pack my shorts in the gym bag. Of course, I didn't find this out until I was at the gym getting changed. Sometimes I think I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached.

Easy swim this morning. About 45 minutes (1500 meters) of easy form work and kicking. Basically, I warmed up with an easy 300 swim and easy 200 kick. Then, I did 1000 meters of stroke and kick drills, and called it a day.

This week is likely to be my last week of "freedom" to train pretty much how I want. If the boys don't come sooner, Laura's being induced a week from today, and the boys should be here Saturday or Sunday!

Morning Ride - L3 Tempo Ride on the CT

Well... work and my self-imposed "no evening workouts" rule hosed me on my easy run yesterday. I got busy and couldn't do my run in the afternoon, and I promised Laura there would be no evening workouts, so I couldn't do it when I got home. So... no run yesterday. No biggie.

Today's early workout was one hour on the computrainer with a 20 minute warm up, 30 minutes at L3 effort, and then a 10 minute cool down. The power/hr/cadence graph from the ride is included at the right. It's fairly uninteresting, but you can see from the graph that the first 20 minutes were done at about an average power of 190 watts. That's solidly in my "endurance" zone. Cadence stayed fairly constant at about 95 rpms, which is my comfort level for an endurance ride. You can see the heart rate data gradually rising throughout the first 20 minutes to about 130 bpm as I warm up.

At about the 20 minute mark, the Computrainer was programmed to give me a very slight simulated "hill" at a grade of about 0.25%. I switched to a slightly higher gear to get me into a higher power output, and then stuck to that for about 30 minutes. Power was roughly 225-230 watts (209-249 is my "tempo zone"). Cadence stayed fairly constant at around 97 rpms. Heart rate again steadily increased to about 153 bpms, comfortably in the "tempo" range.

At about the 50 minute mark, I switched back to the endurance zone, as reflected in the data, and cooled down. A nice, moderate ride. Later today, I'll do a tempo run to cap off this L3 day.

Morning Swim - L2 Form/Endurance

This morning's swim was a nice easy L2 effort (although I'm sure my HR hit L3+ a few times). It was an easy 3000 meters broken down as:

• Warm up: 500 easy pull
• Main Set:
• 5 x 100 stroke drills
• 1 x 1500 swim
• Cool Down: 5 x 100 alternating breast strok and free style.

Afternoon Workout - L4 Run (LT Intervals)

This was basically a repeat of last Thursday's L4 workout. I moved this workout to Tuesday to coincide with my L4 bike workout, so that I could have a "hard" training day. My theory here is that I can recover better by placing both really tough workouts on the same day instead of spaced apart by an active recovery day. Now, I'll have a very hard L4 day followed by an active recovery/endurance L1-L2 day followed by a moderately hard L3 day. We'll see how that works.

This workout consisted of a 10 min. warm up at L1-L2 effort (about 8:30-9:30/mi pace) followed by 3 sets of 5 repetitions of 40 second L4 efforts with 20 seconds rest between intervals. Between the 3 sets, I rest 3 minutes at L2 effort. The cool down was about 4-5 minutes of L2 effort. Total workout time was 35 minutes, with about 10 minutes (29% of the workout time) at L4 effort. Nice little effort there. Total mileage was almost 4.5 miles.

In the graph at the left, you can see a nice representation of the run. For the first 10 minutes, my HR gradually increases to the middle of L2 effort. At 10 minutes, there's a "hump" where my effort suddenly spikes up to L4 effort. Within each hump, you can just make out the 5 "peaks" and "valleys" showing the 40" efforts and the 20" rest intervals. At the end of the run, you see me head back to L2 effort. Notice the L2 effort at the end of the run is a little higher than the beginning. This is caused by HR drift, which tends to happen as you get fatigued. The work done in the intervals in the main set are the cause of this drift. I'll know my run fitness is improving when in the future this workout produces a cool down HR that is closer to the warm-up HR.

Morning Ride - L4 Big Gear Climbs

Today is an L4 block, meaning that I have to L4 workouts (bike and run) scheduled on the plan. I started the day off with a L4 computrainer workout this morning focusing on building sport-specific strength on the bike using big gear climbs. This workout is essentially a repeat of last week's big gear climb workout, except this time I remembered to set the CT to use English measurements instead of metric, so I got the proper distances. :)

The focus of this workout is building strength on the bike in order to help me power over all those rollers on the Ironman Wisconsin bike course. My goals this year are to ride between 5-5.5 hours (~19.5-20.5 mph) on the bike, but to conserve enough energy and have enough fitness to rin between 4-4.5 hours (9-10 min/mile) on the marathon. Last time (IM Moo 2004), I was underprepared for the hills, having trained almost exclusively in pancake-flat Dallas, Tx, and way undertrained for the marathon. This translated into a 6+ hour bike split and a 5 hour (11:30/mi) ego death march on the marathon. I was pleased with my overall time, but I know I can do it faster.

On to today's ride... Like last week, this ride was a 6 mile L2 warmup at high cadence (90-95 rpm) and power output between 180 and 210 watts followed by a series of quarter-mile hills of vaying grades (4% - 6%). I finished with a cool down of another 6 miles at L2 effort. As you can see from the graph, the quarter-mile hills are the "strength-builders." I chose to climb the "hills" using fairly high gears that allowed me to maintain a cadence between 50-60 rpms and power output in the L4+ range between 275 and 315 watts. As in last week's efforts, my HR lags the power output by quite a bit. Also, I never really got into the L4 heart rate range... again probably because the efforts were so short that my HR never really got a chance to significantly increase with the effort.

I really like this workout. I think I'll make it a staple of my strength-building phase, and work on some variations to help improve my strength and power at threshold. For example, I'll probably extend the "hills" to about 2-4 minutes of climbing so I spend more time working hard. This should cause some decent training stress and hopefully improve my fitness and climbing ability in the saddle.

Next up: L4 run intervals this afternoon. Working on foot turnover speed and L4 pacing.

Morning Ride - 2 hour Easy Effort

Well... I was supposed to swim on Friday, but got caught up with work, and has to skip... Also, I was supposed to run long (1 hour) yesterday, but I bagged it. So, today, I rode 2 hours with the Rocky Mountain Cycling Club.

It was a very easy ride. We averaged only about 18 miles an hour, and I didn't push at all. No ride data to post. I managed to accidentally delete it. Oh well.

Total training time this week was almost 7 hours. 3 rides, 4 runs and a swim.

Afternoon Run - L4 Lactate Threshold Intervals

Today's workouts were fairly tough. After a tempo ride this morning, I did a short run (35 minutes), which included some three sets of repeats at lactate threshold pace. I've estimated this pace to be between 6:30 and 7:00/mi. Because the intervals were very short, I opted to do them at 6:30/mi pace. The graph for the run is at the right. You can see the little "humps" that indicates the interval work. My HR never really got into the threshold zone. I think that's because these intervals were so short that it was difficult for my HR to catch up with my effort. If I'd held the intervals for about a minute to a minute-and-a-half, I'd probably have seen HR levels closer to my calculated threshold level.

Tomorrow will (thankfully) be a pretty easy day. No running, and only an easy swim in the morning. Time to recover!

Morning Bike Ride - L3 Tempo Ride

Today was a fairly short (1 hour) Computrainer ride focusing on 30 minutes of Tempo work. Now that I've finally figured out how to create Computrainer courses correctly, it worked out pretty well. This course was 24 miles long (although I only rode 19 of them in an hour), starting at a slight 0.25% incline for 7 miles to warm up, switching to a 10 mile 0.75% grade for the main set, and then back to 7 miles at 0.25% grade for a cool down. Due to the speed I could maintain at these grades and the proper effort, I only got in 19 of those miles.

Switching to the graph at the top left, the ride is pretty self-explanatory. For about 20 minutes, the pink line (power) is consistant at an upper endurance level. When I hit the tempo grade, you can see the watts jump up to about an average of 226 watts. Then, the watts drop down again for the last couple of minutes to the endurance zone. Heart rate was comparable as well. All in all, this was a pretty good workout. I do notice that the power drops off toward the end of my tempo work. Need to keep that more consistent.

Run Workout on 9/20/2006 - 30 min. L2 Run

Another boring workout today. Just slogging away in the Endurance Zone trying to get used to running frequently. This is exactly what yesterday's HR graph would have looked like if I'd remembered to bring my HR monitor... The only difference being that the average HR would have been a little higher. I took today very easy at about 8:45-8:50 /mile pace. My reasoning behind this is because of the fairly hard effort I put forth on the bike yesterday morning. As my training progresses, I'll need to schedule "active recovery" days where I really back off the intensity of workouts that follow very difficult workouts within about 36 hours.

In fact, I probably mis-scheduled for the week. I should have sheduled a harder run yesterday to take advantage of a "high intensity block." All this means is that I should make hard days really hard, and make easy days really easy. By following really hard days with really easy days, I can increase the training stress on the hard days and still recover on the easy days.

Morning Swim on 9/20/2006 - L2 Effort (Form)

This morning was an easy swim, mostly working on kick sets and stroke form. I've decided this winter to make a concerted effort to improve my kick. Although you don't use the kick that much in an Ironman swim, working on kicking can have a real positive benefit to strengthening your legs and core. Having strong legs and a strong core helps to improve your body position in the water and to improve your ability to hold that body position for the length of the 2.4 mile swim. Hopefully, that will translate into a faster swim split as well as less fatigue.

Today's workout was as follows:

• Warm up: 300 easy swim + 200 easy kick
• Main Set:
• 2 x 500 done as:
• 200m kick with a board, building 50m from easy aerobic to best effort (60")
• 50m kick on your back
• 2 x 50m kick on your side (balance drill)
• 150m freestyle, building the kick to over-kicking for the last 50m
• 20 x 25 stroke drill
• 200 meter cool down, easy swimming.

Total distance for the workout was 2200 meters.

Endurance Run on 9/19/2006 - 30 min L2 Effort

This was just an easy run at about 8:30/mi pace. I forgot my HR monitor, so I had to go by pacing and perceived effort. Not much to say about this one. I was feeling pretty good, though, so I upped the pace for the last 5 min to about 8:00/mi instead of "cooling down." I did do an extended stretching routine after the run. No HR graph for this one.

Morning Ride on 9/19/2006 - Big Gear Climbs

Today was a sport-specific strength-building workout designed to improve my strength on the bike, and hopefully to help me become more powerful riding hills on the tri-bike. For this workout, I designed a custom Computrainer course. It was supposed to give me a 6 mile warm up at a 0.5% grade between L1 and L3 efforts. Following the warm up, I would launch into a series of 8 hills, each at an increasing grade from 4-6%. The goal was to stay seated and maintain a cadence between 50-70 rpms and power output at around L4 level. Unfortunately, I don't think I've quite figured out all of the Computrainer nuances that go along with building custom courses. I thought I'd built a course that was 20 miles long, and should have taken slightly longer than one hour to complete. I think the CT may have used metric measurements, 'cause I ended up doing about 13 miles, and it took me only 45 minutes. No biggie this early in the off season, but I need to figure that one out. :)

On the left, you can see the graph of the ride. As ususal, pink = power, red = heart rate, blue = speed and green = cadence. After the warm up, the hill climbing intervals began. You can see from the graph that I started out too hard. The first 5 or 6 intervals have an average power that is much higher than my L4 effort range (250-291). So, I was actually doing some VO2max work here. In the last 2-3 intervals, power dropped a bit, but was probably still too high. Interestingly, my HR seemed to be a bit low, and never really got solidy into the L4-L5 range. I think this is because the hills were short enough ((1-2 min) that my HR never really had a chance to catch up to my effort before I was in the midst of a rest interval. At about the 34 minute mark, I switched back to a constant 0.5% grade and reduced my effort to around L2-L3 level. At that point, I thought I still had nearly half an hour to go, so I decided to do some high effort 30" spin-ups. Those are short intervals you see at the end. Unfortunately, my workout ended on me before I could finish all the spin-ups. So, I didn't get a cool down and I was short-changed 15 minutes. Next time, I'll make sure I have the right units.

UPDATE

Yep, the Computrainer workout was set to use metric measurements. My first clue should have been the section of the workout file that said "Units: METRIC." :) My second clue should have been the computer screen during the workout, which indicated the course distance at 12½ miles, which is approximately 20 kilometers. Okay... lesson learned.

Run Workout on 9/18/2006 - Tempo Run

Today's run was a "tempo run" consisting of a short warm-up, 20 minutes at L3 intensity and then a cool down of about 5 minutes. This run (like almost all of my weekday runs was done on the treadmill. Some people don't like treadmills, but I find them good for short, targeted workouts. Workouts longer than 1 hour really can't be done on a treadmill, but these short runs are well-suited to treadmills. The godd thing about them is they force me to have a good, quick turnover, even when I get tired. On the down side, running outside is different in that you don't get a constant grade like you do on the treadmill. In any event, I like the treadmill for these short workouts, and it's more convenient and economical (time wise, that is) than running outside for me.

Looking at the heart rate graph on the right, you can see how the workout went. As I started at L2 effort (about 8:30/mi), there was a sharp rise in HR to about the upper 150's. At 10 minutes in, I started the tempo pace (about 7:30/mi). There, my HR increased to the mid 160's until about 10 min. into the tempo portion. From there, you can see a gradual drift upward toward 170 bpm over the last 10 minutes of the tempo interval. My effort didn't really seem to change, but the HR drifted up, probably because of 1) lack of run fitness and 2) I was rather warm. At 30 min., I backed off to an easy pace (about 9:00/mi). Interestingly, my HR stayed firmly at upper L2 to Lower L3.

I think that if I can continue to do these short, but frequent (4-5 days/wk) runs, it'll really set me up to be ready for marathon training in January, which, in turn, will really set me up for the Ironman in September.

Weekend Workouts and This week's Schedule

No training data on this weekend's workouts, 'cause they just aren't that interesting. I was a little time crunched this weekend, and so I only got in a couple of ver yshort, but intense workouts.

Saturday, I did a 45 minute "VO2Max interval" workout on the Computrainer. Warmed up easy at L2 intensity, and then did five very short intervals at L6 intensity. Cooled down at L1-L2 intensity, and then called it a day.

Today was even shorter. I warmed up for 5 minutes and then did 2 x 10 minutes at L4 level and then cooled down for another 5 minutes. Total of 35 minutes.

Next week's schedule looks like this:

	Swim	Bike	Run
Mon	--	--	35' Tempo Run (L3)
Tue	--	1:00 Big gear climbs (L4)	30' Endurance Run (L2)
Wed	1:00 Form and Kick sets (L2)	--	30' Endurance Run (L2)
Thu	--	1:00 Tempo Ride (L3)	30' LT Intervals (L4)
Fri	1:00 Form + Endurance (L2)	--	--
Sat	--	--	1:00 Endurance Run (L2)
Sun	--	1:30 2x20' Tempo Intervals(L3)	--
Total	2:00	3:30	3:05

High Intensity

Moderate Intensity

Low Intensity

Active Recovery

Run Workout on 9/15/2006 - 30 min Endurance Run

This was another easy workout... just 30 min. on the treadmill at Endurance (L2) effort, with no hills or intervals. Like yesterday's run, the graph at the right shows a very consistent effort over the 30 minute course. You'll see that my effort over duration of the workout never gets above 156 bpm. That keeps me solidly in the Endurance Zone. Again, this run was pretty easy, as the goal is to first build up to a frequency of about 4-5 runs per week, 2-3 of which are short, low effort endurance runs, one is a "long" endurance effort run, and one is high intensity interval work done at harder efforts and faster paces. For now, I just want to get my system used to running frequently, but at low volume.

Swim Workout on 9/15/2006 - 2700 meters

I haven't been in the pool for a while, so I decided to make this morning an easy swim. I typically do about 3000-3500 meters in an hour of hard swimming, but since I haven't swum in a while, I decided to take it easy. I did mainly short intervals focusing on form and some speed. Workout was as follows:

• Warm up: 500 meters done as 300 easy swim + 200 kick
• Main Set: 2000 meters done as:
• 20 x 25 drills
• 10 x 50 easy, mod, hard
• 5 x 100 descending
• 2 x 250 moderate
• Cool down: 200 meters done as 2 x 100 easy swim
• TOTAL: 2700 meters

Felt good to be in the pool, but I felt a twinge in my right should every time I took a stroke. I hope there's nothing major going on with that...

Run Workout on 9/14/2006 - Easy 30 min

This was a rather uneventful workout... just 30 minutes on the treadmill at Endurance (L2) effort, with no hills or intervals. The graph at the left shows a very consistent effort over the 30 minute course. I chose to do a short "endurance" workout because I pushed a little on the bike this morning, and I wanted this to be a low level effort, so that I don't push myself too hard. In addition, I've barely run since I decided to bag the Denver Marathon, so I'm keeping the sessions fairly short and very low intensity in order to rebuild run fitness and recover well. As the weeks and months progress, I'll steadily increase the intensity and then the volume so that I'm ready to start marathon training in January for the Colfax Marathon in May.

That's a nice segue into another point about the training program. To make it more fun, and to promote my "training blocks" approach, I've added two running races into a 5 month "run focus" block to try to improve my running using "crash cycles." I'm planning to do both the Platte River Trail Half Marathon and the Colfax Marathon as benchmarks for run training. Hopefully, after 5 months of run focus training, I can then maintain most of that run fitness through June, July and August while I focus on adding a much larger volume of bike training and increase my swimming volume as well.

Bike Workout on 9/14/2006 - FTP Intervals

Today started off with about an hour on the Computrainer this morning. Today's bike workout was, overall, not intended to be too taxing, but to include some spinning drills and a few very short intervals at or near my functional threshold power (FTP) level. The concept here is to start building a FTP "base" so that as the training year progresses, I can extend the length of these intervals and train my body to go harder for longer periods of time. Hopefully, that will translate into being able to go faster over the Ironman bike distance.

I've included another graph of my ride in the picture to the right. It's pretty easy to tell what work is being done and where. The red line is heart rate data, the green line is cadence data, and the pink line is power data. I did this workout on the Computrainer using the Coaching Software and a self-created ERG file. ERG files are a terrific tool that let you pre-set target wattage ranges throughout your workout, so that you know you're hitting the target wattage you want in your workouts. In this workout, I started out with a warm up at about 150 watts for 10 minutes. Then, staying at a load of 150 watts, I did 10 x 30" spin ups where I increased cadence to about 120 rpms to work on leg speed and pedaling technique. The spin-ups are the 10 small "sipkes" you see in the graph at the right. Notice the power and cadence graphs spike here. The HR curve shows increased effort, as HR starts to rise a bit more rapidly.

Following the spin-ups, I did 5 x 2 min at L4 (FTP) effort. These are the wider humps in the HR curve and the "square" waves in the power curve. Notice that I kept my cadence fairly constant at about 90 rpms. The interesting thing to me in this graph is noticing that the HR curve is slightly off center of the power curve. This is because heart rate lags effort by up to a minute and-a-half. So, even though you're working at a higher effort, your HR monitor may not show it for up to a minute or so. This is why being able to train (and race, if you're lucky enough to own a power meter) with power is so nice. You get instantaneous, objective feedback on your effort, and can adjust accordingly.

The workout ended with a 15 minute cool down at L1 effort.

Run Workout on 9/13/2006 - Tempo Intervals

Today's run workout was supposed to be a short (30 minute) interval session focusing on repetitions at "Tempo" effort (L3). Unfortunately, I accidentally hit the "stop" button on the treadmill just after the last interval, and missed my cool down. No biggie. I just decided to cut it short and stretch for my cool down.

The workout was to consist of a 10 minute warm-up, about 12 minutes of interval work (2 minute work intervals at L3 effort + 2 min. rest intervals), and then 8 minutes of cool down. This is not a terribly stressful workout. It is intended to be just a short run to help me start getting back into running, because I haven't run much since I decided to bag the Denver Marathon. From the graph at the right, you can see three little "bumps" in the hear rate graph that represent the 2 min. "work intervals." During these two minute stretches, I ran at a pace of about 7:30/mile to raise my HR to between about 160 bpm and 170 bpm. As my training progresses, these types of runs will include longer work intervals aimed at training my system to run longer periods at this higher effort.

Today's Early Computrainer Ride

Today I officially kicked off my training for next years Ironman Wisconsin with an early morning ride. It was a fairly easy ride on the Computrainer, focusing on maintaining a power/hear rate level at or near the Aerobic zone.

I'm including a graph at the right showing Power, HR, and cadence data from the entire. I rode a pre-built, rolling course that had a few minor hills. Overall, my goal was to keep my effort level in the upper aerobic (L2) to lower Tempo (L3) zone for most of the ride. You can see that my HR (the red line) gradually rises toward the end of the workout. Power data (the pink line) is fairly stochastic, but you can tell overall trends. For example, there's a section at about 5-10 minutes where the power levels are between about 160 and 180 watts. This was a simulated downhill section, where it's hard to keep power levels high. If my speed sensor had been working, you'd see that my speed was relatively high over that 5 minutes as compared with the surrounding sections of the power graph.

There's another section at about 27 minutes to 37 minutes on the x-axis where power output is relatively low. This was a very long descent, where I shifted to a much higher gear in order to try to maintain higher power output. My HR hovered around the upper 140's here until I hit the "bottom" of the "hill" and then started to climb. That's where the power level spikes quite a bit. As the climb continues, you can see my HR climb up to the 160's.

I did manage to maintain my cadence (the green line) between about 85 and 95 rpms for most of the ride. I feel most comfortable at about 90-100 rpms. When climbing in the saddle, I'll drop as low as 85 rpms. Much lower than that, I tend to feel better out of the saddle.

All in all, a good ride. 45 minutes of aerobic activity. Time spent in training levels as follows:

Power:

Zone	Minutes
L1 (0-153 W)	1.52
L2 (154-208 W)	22.07
L3 (209-249 W)	18.30
L4 (250-291 W)	2.62
L5 (292-332 W)	0.35
L6 (333+ W)	0.28
Total:	45.14

363 Days and Counting - 1st Ever Perkins Twins Ironman Smackdown

It's official... Dan and I are IN for Ironman Wisconsin 2007, thus kicking off the first ever Perkins Twins Ironman Smackdown.

At 9:00 am Mountain tine this morning, the Active.com website went live for registration for Ironman Wisconsin 2007 (affectionately known as Ironman Moo), and I was there! 25 minutes later, I had my registration in hand as I waited for Dan and my friend, Matt, to let me know they were in. The race sold out in just under an hour. Fortunately, Dan made it in, but Matt did not. We're hoping he might be able to appeal it as there seemed to have been server errors on Active's part, but we aren't too hopeful.

Matt and I did Moo in 2004, and I had what I considered to be a banner day, finishing in just under 12:30. I would love to have finished in less than 12 hours, but I know I was underprepared for the hills on the bike outside Madison. A hard effort to get a 6 hour bike split left me pretty decimated for the marathon, and I shuffled my way to a 5 hour split.

This year, I face a different type of hurdle. Laura and I are expecting twins in about 3-4 weeks, and I know it's goign to be really hard to juggle family, work and Ironman. I've made a commitment to my family not to get too self-involved this time around, and Laura holds a fail-safe in the right to veto my participation if she feels I've crossed the line.

We shall see how it goes. Only 363 days 'til race day!!!

Training Levels Explained

It occurs to me that my training benchmarks may not be readily apparent to most, since I'm sort of using a hodge-podge of power training, heart rate training and perceived exertion training. Basically, what I've tried to do is incorporate all of those systems into my own, which accounts for all three methods.

Basically, my scale, L1-L6 (training zones or levels) refers to the different physiological systems that are trained at each level. There is a corresponding range of power, heart rate or perceived exertion data that fits within those zones depending on my current fitness.

The system is based on Lactate Threshold, which I define in the same vein as Joe Friel as the point at which training intensity is such that lactic acid builds in the muscles at a faster rate than it can be cleared by the circulatory system. It is at this point that work being done by the muscles becomes very difficult, and breathing is fairly "labored" making it difficult to carry on a conversation. This is L4 on my scale.

Level	Name	%FTP	%LTHR	RPE	Description
L1	Active Recovery	0-55%	68+	0-2	very low level exercise. Minimal sensation of effort or fatigue. Typically used for active recovery after strenuous training days (or races), between interval efforts, or for socializing.
L2	Endurance	56-75%	69-83%	2-3	"All day" pace, or classic long slow distance (LSD) training. Sensation of leg effort/fatigue generally low, but may rise periodically to higher levels (e.g., when climbing). Breathing is more regular than at level 1, but conversation is still possible.
L3	Tempo	76-90%	84-94%	3-4	Greater sensation of effort/fatigue than at L2. Breathing is deeper and more rhythmic than L2. Conversation is somewhat halting, but not as difficult as at L4.
L4	Lactate Threshold	91-105%	95-105%	4-5	Just below to just above time trial (TT) effort. Continuous sensation of moderate or even greater effort. Conversation is difficult.
L5	VO2 Max	106-120%	106% +	6-7	Strong to severe sensations of effort/fatigue. Completion of more than 30-40 min total training time is difficult. Conversation is not possible due to 'ragged' breathing.
L6	Anaerobic Endurance	121% +	N/A	8+	Short high intensity intervals designed to increase anaerobic capacity. Severe sensation of effort/fatigue. Conversation is impossible.

*These levels are a combination of the Friel (heart rate) and Coggan (power) training zones. Typically, there is a 7th level that (Friel-Power, Coggan-Neuromuscular Power) that works on training explosive bursts of power. Since this is an Ironman plan, I won't be using L7, and will likely not venture into L5 or L6 much, either.

Glossary:

• Threshold - The effort at which lactic acid accumulates in the muscles faster than it can be flushed. Muscles tire quickly at this effort.
• FTP - Functional Threshold Power is a training benchmark that establishes power at threshold, or the average power you can sustain at threshold
• LTHR - Lactate Threshold Heart Rate is the HR "equivalent" of FTP. This is essentially the average heart rate a person can hold while exercising at threshold intensity.
• RPE - Rating of Perceived Effort is a subjective 1-10 scale that ranks your effort as you perceive it, 1 being easiest and 10 being extremely hard.

By considering FTP, LTHR and RPE during each workout, I can get a sense as to how I am performing, and how well I'm recovering from previous training stresses. For example. If my power on the bike or my HR seems low, but my RPE feels high, I may not be adequately recovered from a previous workout, and I should either stop the workout (if it's a run) or scale it back to active recovery or endurance effort (for bikes and swims).

It's a science, but one about which I've learned quite a bit since I started this training thing four years ago.

As a last bit on this entry, I'm having to try to be much more efficient with my training for this Ironman race. In 2004, I tried to do large volumes, and ended up alienating the family and probably doing more harm than good to my training plan. I was always tired and I ended up bagging a lot of workouts, so that my overall volume really wasn't that big. This year, I have promised to be more attentive to the family and to restrict workouts in a couple of ways.

First, from the day the twins are born until January 1, 2007, I have promised that no weekend training will take more than 1 hour. In addition, my entire plan must leave weeknights free. So, all training must be done in the morning and/or at lunch. Finally, as a self-imposed restriction resulting from my training plan, no long rides (3+ hours) will occur until late May, when I start ramping up to Ironman volume.

This should be interesting. Stay tuned for updates. Only 362 days to go.

Today's Workout - 9/9/2006

I haven't been on the bike (or done any other workouts) since last Saturday. After riding in the rain and cold... and being fully unprepared for it, I managed to catch a cold, which has finally decided to leave. So, I'm back on the bike!

Today was a L4 Computrainer bike workout aimed at improving my funtional threshold power ("FTP"). FTP is basically just a benchmark that described your average power output over a 40K time trial. My FTP has been measured (okay, guestimated) at about 275 Watts. Today's workout includes some short intervals targeted to be at or above that level. I've included the power, heart rate and cadence graphs if you're interested. Explanations to follow.

The power graph at the right shows the workout from the power output perspective. You can see that I did about 15 minutes of warm-up at an average of about 190 Watts of power. My endurance power zone (the power range at which te work being done is mostly at an aerobic effort) is from about 150 Watts to about 200 Watts. So, I was working at the upper end of the endurance zone. That's probably too high for a warm-up. The graph should show a gradual rise in power output. I started out too hard. I'll need to work on that in the future. You can see in the heart rate graph (red graph below) that my HR gradually increased to a fairly stable level. I kept my cadence (green graph below) very constant at about 90-95 rpms during the warm-up.

Following the warm-up, you can see a series of 10 short intervals. These were "spin-ups" where I raised my cadence to spin at much higher RPMs in order to work on pedaling efficiency. This is readily apparent from the cadence graph below (green) and the power graph above (yellow). I tried to spin up from about 95 rpms to 120 rpms over 30 second intervals. You can see that pedaling faster requires more effort, as the power graph spikes up. The first interval spikes more, bcause I hadn't found the proper gear in which to pedal. Since I was pedaling quickly in the original gear, the power really spiked. After the first one, I dropped into an easier gear.

After the spin-ups, I rested another 5 minutes in the endurance zone and then started the lactate threshold intervals. In the power graph (yellow) you can see that I raised my power to about 270-300 watts for about 2 minutes per interval. Cadence (green) stayed at around 90 rpms. Heart rate increased to between 170-176 bpms. Based on the power levels and the HR for these intervals, I clearly went too hard. My power levels should have averaged about 275 and certainly no more than 290. The average power of these intervals was almost 300 watts. My lactate threshold heart rate is approxomately 170 bpm. At 176 bpm, I was clearly working too hard. Cadence was good at 90-93 rpms. This feels comfortable to me, and works well.

I felt good on the first three intervals, but really felt the last two. For future workouts, I need to make sure I'm working at the proper level. This was a good learning workout. More to come later as I prepare for Ironman Wisconsin 2007.