If you don’t believe you can do something, it’s unlikely that it will ever happen. If believing was all that mattered, one wouldn’t have to train or prepare, but that’s just life. Confidence matters in everyday life. It certainly matters in athletic endeavors. Yesterday, I laid out a plan of attack for the next six weeks. It’s a fairly ambitious plan. But I’m confident that it’s doable. For my own internal confidence, I decided to look back at the weeks preceding one of my best ironman performances ever, Ironman Boulder in 2016. My major achievement in the months leading up to that race was doing 20 mile runs every week. My cycling, however, never really rose to a significant level of volume. However, during weeks 4-6 prior to that race, I did put in some solid cycling volume. My goal over the next 3-4 weeks is to exceed that. And, somewhere in this time frame is at least one 20 mile run. At the very least, this will let me know if I’m prepared to give this race my all. My fall back has always been to use the race for training purposes. I can’t really lose, as Kona is my ultimate goal. Still, I harbor some hopes of finishing close to or on the podium in my new age group at Boulder. So, I look for ways to stoke my confidence.
Traveling on a plane for 5 hours is never fun, and yesterday, after arriving in Philadelphia, I went to the fitness center, got on the treadmill and worked out for an hour. As the treadmill can sometimes be monotonous, I alternated running for 8 minutes with walking on an 8% incline for 2 minutes. My running pace was around 6.8-7 mph, nothing too fast. My walking pace was 4 mph. Since I was just one day removed from my first truly long bike ride (five hours), I wanted to see how my legs felt. They felt fine! Check.
Traveling to the east coast always presents sleeping issues, but I managed to go to sleep by 10pm EDT and woke up at 6am, giving my the opportunity to hit the treadmill again. My legs felt a little sluggish, and it would have been easy to just run for 20-30 minutes, but as the session went on, I actually increased my pace. I ran 5 miles in 44 minutes, most of which was at a 6.8-7mph pace, but I increased my pace during the 4th mile to 7.5mph, and felt fine. I often like to do faster, shorter intervals on treadmills, but felt the risk of injury was too great and the benefit to my ironman run was probably nil.
A 5 and 6 mile treadmill run in a 12 hour time period, following a long bike, give me the knowledge and the confidence that I’ve got my running legs despite my recent layoff. Before I fell, I had been getting close to doing a truly long run closer to 20 miles. I’m thinking that I’m almost there again. The power of knowing that a 20 mile run is a matter of course is key to a successful ironman run. The next three weeks will allow me to test my fitness and bolster my confidence even further. Let’s see what happens!
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