Quick Ironman training catchup, back with more soon!

It’s been a few days since my last post and I have been a little slack over the past week. I’m going to try to get back into regular posting and finding some more useful information for you guys. Look forward to it.
Training is going well and I’m back on track for Ironman after the injury that slowed me down for a while. I am having regular physio visits to deal with some neural problems leftover from the quad strain I had a few weeks back. It appears that my bike setup has something to do with it and some tweaks to my bike might help. I have a group magtrainer session tonight which should be a tough’n. Can’t wait…

Learn to love your magtrainer

This evening I did a strength session on the magtrainer. It was 90mins long and involved a lot of sprinting in short bursts with the tension and gears cranked to the max. It started to hurt by the end and it seemed to go on forever.

Now I know a lot of you will have done magtrainer sessions and a lot of you probably hate the magtrainer. Like me until recently you probably only used the magtrainer as a last resort, when the weather just wasn't playing ball.

I am learning to love my magtrainer.

My coach uses the magtrainer as a tool for taking environmental factors out of the equation, so that the only excuse I have for going slower is that I'm out of gas. I can't blame the head wind or the road surface or the hills for slowing me down. My pedals stopped turning because my legs stopping pushing.

The magtrainer needs to be elevated from the 'last resort' category, to the 'essential training' tool category. True, you don't learn the essential bike skills that you get from hitting the road and it lacks the satisfaction of actually going somewhere that you get on the road.

However, despite the fact that it allows you to train when the weather outside is not suitable, on the magtrainer you can focus on the task at hand and forget about avoiding traffic and glass and you can quit trying to look like your feeling fine. On the trainer you can groan and grunt and sweat on the floor and look like death warmed up, and it's fine. More importantly you can focus on one particular task, such as maintaining the exact cadence, or that perfect pedal technique. The magtrainer is the perfect tool to dial in your technique, or to smash yourself and not have to worry about getting home, or to build mental toughness. I think one of the keys to magtrainer survival is not to just get on and spin for long sessions every time, because that will become old real fast. You have to mix it up, one day do sprints, the next vary the sprints, another day do cadence work, the next some one leg work. Variety is the key to remaining sane on the magtrainer.

I foresee many happy hours on the magtrainer in my future, so I'm going to maintain this pro-magtrainer attitude as long as I can, and if I sound fanatical it may be because I'm losing the plot already...

Which reminds me of a joke I read somewhere a long time ago.

One Ironman says to the other Ironman “You will never believe it, but my wife left me this weekend”. “Thats sucks, what happened?” says the other Ironman. “She couldn't stand my peeing on the bike during my long rides” said the first Ironman (I bet you can see where this is going, but I'll carry on for the slow ones) “Really? Its all part of the sport and everyone has done it at some point” says the second Ironman. The recently separated Ironman replies ”Yeah, I guess it was more because it I was on the magtrainer in front of the TV in the lounge.”

Day off work after yesterdays Mag Trainer day of hell

Just got in from this mornings swim squad. I was feeling pretty flat when I got up at 4:40am but once I got in the pool I felt pretty strong and despite the aches in my legs, I had a solid session. I'm glad its the last day of the school holidays, because the pint sized pool demons that invaded our squad two weeks ago will go back to burning up the pool wherever they came from and let me rebuild my self esteem. I admire their swimming skills but being carved up by kids that look about 12-13 is killing my ego. Be gone little critters!

Yesterday morning was a strength session on the Mag Trainer which was reasonably painful, but was short and sweet. It was an hour including 10min warm up and down with a bunch of 20sec max efforts with the tension and gears cranked to the max, on a two minute cycle. Coach says that they will stretch out to five minute plus intervals as we get closer to Ironman, eek!

Last night I went along to the Mag Trainer group session. Usually its held in a gym in the city but we didn't have keys this time for some reason. when I arrived everyone was debating flagging the session, I said “Nah, we can do it outside over here.” So we did our session on the footpath outside the gym under the light. It was actually pretty sweet, I normally cook in the gym, outside last night was nice and cool. We did a 15min warmup then 4 x (3 x 5 min @ 90, 110, 120 rpm), it was a full on cadence session. The goal of the workout was to develop the ability to pedal efficiently at high cadences. The optimum cadence to cycle Ironman at is around 90-100 rpm, which is around the same cadence you should run at. The theory is that if you cycle at the same cadence you run at, you will adapt to running faster when transitioning from the cycle to the run.

I had a day off owing to me from Easter, so I thought that since I was struggling so much the last few days, that this would be a perfect opportunity to rest up and prepare for this weekends training. It feels good to do a training session then head home to relax and recover. I guess this is how a professional athlete feels, heh.