Fantastic feedback Liz! Your race recap tells me that you were dialed in to the components of the half Ironman distance that can make or break your race…nutrition and pacing. You can have all of the fitness in the world. However if you don’t get these two variables nailed down, it doesn’t matter particularly when crazy other variables (like no swim, mass bike start) are thrown at you. You nailed it!
While you didn’t officially do a 70.3, you did succeed in the half Ironman offered to you on race day. You didn’t skirt anything to secure this accomplishment. That said, I had an athlete that trained for years for IMFL and the swim was cancelled for her first IM race. I bet you know what happened next. Yep, she signed up for IMFL the following year to secure that full 140.6 distance. Let this situation motivated you to take it on again!
Finally, to answer your question on speed. You can do all of the strength training and HIIT (please be very careful with this mid season!) in the world. Will it help? It will help but this isn’t the key. Just like you can’t lose weight and optimize performance at the same time, you can’t build endurance and optimize speed at the same time particularly at a new distance. You can do one or the other but not both.
Thus this season was all about preparing you for the volume and ‘endurance’ of the new distance. Now that you have this foundation to work upon, you can continue on your journey, even training for another HIM, and this is where you can start focusing on speed. In addition, speed comes from when you can really dial in your HR and//or power targets. You need that HR variability to start working on finding speed. Again, this season was all about learning HR zone training and understanding it. Once you are comfortable with it, it’s the execution of it and really dialing it in that brings the speed.
Thankfully you made huge strides to better understand HR zone training and pacing (evident by your pacing strategy on the run). Now you can start using HR variability to develop your speed. If you want to know more (or if you have no idea what I am talking about here), I will see you on Monday. Perfect timing to dig in more to heart rate zone training and pacing strategies! See you there!
And great work Liz! You are a (half) Ironman!
HEART RATE ZONE TRAINING & PACING SEMINAR
Place: West End Library – 2301 L St NW, Washington, DC 20037 (near Foggy Bottom – GWU metro station; Also accessible from Dupont Circle and Farragut North metro stations)
Date: Monday, June 17th, 2019
Time: 6:30PM
RSVP: Register Here
Heart rate zone training is a quantitative manner to measure the athlete’s level of intensity to stimulate different training responses, optimize training time, maximize the body’s use of fuel and minimize an athlete’s risk for injury or overtraining. However it has a steep learning curve and it can be challenging to execute during training and racing. Join us to learn more about this training method and how to better implement and execute it for optimal pacing for your race season. Please RSVP here to attend.
