Jun 10
14
Lance at Kona 2011
I recently, bought the latest issue of Inside Triathlon, it’s the first tri-magazine I have bought in a long time. What caught my attention was the article on Lance Armstrong and how Chris Carmichael will prepare Lance for Kona. The article also asks some other coaches to give their personal insights as though they were coaching Lance. The guys include Paul Huddle, Lance Watson, Mark Allen and Gordo Byrn.
The whole article raises some really good points on how to prepare for an Ironman and here are some of the key points I found most interesting.
1. Nutrition
This one seems to be a stand out and critical to success, amongst these coaches. This is something I have brought up a lot (re: Blood shunting article) and I believe is critical to success, but one of the most neglected aspects of any training program. Carmichael points this out believing one of the biggest challenges faced with Lance competing in Kona will be to fuel his monster motor over the course of the day. “cycling is fitness constrained; Ironman is fuel constrained” (Gordo). In fact, Carmichael believes the training component of getting ready for Kona will be the easy part. The hard part will be teaching Lance to be able to absorb his massive energy requirement throughout the day. In other words, Lance won’t run out of fitness, he will be able to pace well, what could potentially slow him down is FUEL. “He needs to bring together his swim so he’s so economical and not going to go through a lot of energy just to stay close” (Carmichael). Already you can see right from the start and how important it is to save energy on the swim. Of all the disciplines the swim has the potential to use up a big % of your limited supplies of glycogen (approximately 2000 cals). For someone who weighs 80kg and swim a 1hr swim split at IMeffort they will burn 518 calories. If you swim faster than IMeffort, then that will be closer to 690-863 calories, which is getting close to using up almost 40% of your limited supply of calories in the first hour of an Ironman event. Even swimming at the correct effort you are using up close to 25% of your stored calories. Whoever said the swim was not important in an Ironman event? Fast forward to the run and if your 80kg athlete wants to run 5:00min/k then expect to be burning around 1000 calories per hour. So just on the run alone you need at least 3500 calories. Remember we only have 2000 calories stored at the start of the race and we can only consume around 250-350 calories effectively per hour at Ironman race intensities. You can start to see where the sums just don’t add up, and why it becomes so important to not only pace our races effectively but to also teach out bodies to metabolise fat effectively, otherwise we’ll just run out of fuel, as we physically can’t absorb and store enough calories in the form of glycogen. I believe nutrition is the number 1 factor for slowing people down in an Ironman event and the hardest one to get right.
2. Pacing
“so you give up a little on the bike to be able to get off and still run well” (Carmichael). Isn’t this the truth. People do train well, but they make the mistake of riding to their 180km potential and not their Ironman race day potential. They ride like they do in training, which is very well, but leaves very left in the tank in order to run well. Ironman athletes need to realise their IM bike leg will be one of their easiest long key bike training sessions, not hardest, which often occurs. The carnage you witness at the 150km onwards is incredible. He amount of people that fall off the pace in the last hour and struggle to stay in the aero position in the last hour clear demonstrates they are riding their hardest 180km bike ride for the year, even if it is being paced correctly, they haven’t taken into consideration the demands, in terms of fatigue, the swim beforehand has placed on their bodies. Even though they are only 4-5hr into their bike leg, they are 5-6hrs into the race and people just don’t spend enough time training long enough to set up realistic race day execution plans. If you were to put together 3-4 x 180km training rides including your race day ride then the race day ride should be the easiest of those 3-4 long rides you have completed. “…..we all know you could do something spectacular on the bike, but the run would then be the real spectacle. You deserve more than that” (Allen). That’s the sort of sustainable power you need to develop in training in order to execute a decent bike split and still run well. It like saying get into 5hr bike split shape, but execute a 5:15 bike split in the race. If you make it easy enough in the race you then have the potential to smoke the run. “he (Lance) needs to determine how much time to give away on the bike for the sake of gaining more on the run” (Huddle)
3. Intensity
People always want to train harder and faster, which is good to do to some extent but it can also have a negative impact on your nutrition and you ability to absorb and process calories and also pacing and you ability to make realistic judgements on what you can handle. “….avoid getting caught up in intensity. This is a long aerobic day that requires the ability to assimilate calories. Train accordingly. In saying that athletes that do know how to pace correctly and can implement and sustain a nutrition plan on race are in a position to focus on raising their threshold paces. This sort of protocol would only apply to athletes who have proven run pace economies at IMefforts. What that basically means is that they need to be quick (economical) at IM efforts before even considering raising their Threshold. For example, if you want to run a sub 3 hr marathon then you’ll need to be able to run at least 4:15min/k at the top of your zone 1 (ie Aet). If you don’t have that sort of running economy to start with then threshold training probably won’t help you much. “when I ran my 2:46, I was running at 3:55min/k at baseline (Aet) your run economy is a critical area for improvement” (Gordo).
4. Specificity
This one sounds simple but people are not willing to accept. Athletes will often substitute their key sessions for short higher intensity sessions believing this will work. It will work in terms of build your overall fitness but it will have a negative impact on improving your ability to handle the demands of the event. “The primary adaptation from his normal training would be to hold flat-line sub threshold watts for 4 hours in the aero position at a heart rate of 162-166bpm (Lance’s lactate threshold is listed at 178bpm)” (Watson). Wow, this coach believes that lance needs to be riding at high zone 3 efforts and then still be able to run well. Let’s put that into perspective. Your typical age group Ironman athlete will race at the bottom of zone 2 (145-150bpm). Your front of the pack age group athlete has the potential to race in mid zone 2 (150-155bpm) and your elite Ironman athletes would race at the bottom of zone 3 (158-162bpm). That is what the statistics and results have shown over the years. So to put Lance at mid to high zone 3 just shows you the sort of engine this guy must have. The year Sindabelle came third at Hawaii he rode one of the fastest bike splits with an average heart of 140bpm which was towards the middle to high zone 3 approximately. However, this set him up for his fastest run leg and consequently third place overall. http://www.2peak.com/tools/hawaii3.php
Hope it helps
fluro
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