June 18-24: Commence Heat Acclimation

 

In the aftermath of my not-so-awesome performance at Eagleman, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how to deal with the heat at IM Louisville exactly two months from today. There are quite a few things I can do – get serious cooling clothing/gear, and switch to mostly liquid nutrition for the race – but nothing is more important than just getting out there in the heat and doing my workouts to force myself to acclimate well in advance of race day.

This wasn’t really possible before Eagleman, since we had a string of cooler weeks leading up to (a hot) race day there. I started to worry that maybe DC weather would stick in the 70s and 80s all summer, and that I’d NEVER get my chance to acclimate to hot weather before race day.

Right. And I also regularly worry about $3 million showing up in my bank account unannounced. The latter is probably more likely.

Witness the weather this week: Lots of heat, lots of sun, and some humidity for good measure. commence acclimation

Monday: Rest day.

Tuesday: Morning swim of 3300 meters at Wilson, 45 minutes of strength training and stretching with a focus on one-legged work and glute activation in the evening. Left glutes sluggish and unresponsive.

Wednesday: A HOT track workout in the evening.

 

In that weather, a tempered effort of 1600m (8:44), 2x800m (4:07-4:14), and 2x400 (2:07, 2:11). The heat sure impacted the splits, but we’re on an acclimation mission here, not a speed mission.

Thursday: 3500 meters of swimming with some faster 100s at Wilson in the morning, another 45 minutes of strength training in the evening. Left glutes so unresponsive and lazy that I wake up the next morning with sore glutes on my right side and sore hamstrings on my left side. Time to go back for dry needling in the next few days!

Friday: 17.3 miles of biking in the morning, mostly around Hains Point with some company.

This is why I am not a photographer.

4.5 miles of hilly stop-start bike commuting in the evening.

Saturday: A 5 hour brick workout. First, a 70.6 mile bike partially with the DC Tri crew, including Sarah, but mostly with Rachel between DC and Poolesville

We each dropped our chains once, and I missed one turn. We spent most of the time playing the game where I use gravity to bomb downhills and then Rachel schools me anytime we go up a hill. It evens out. Followed immediately with a 30 minute run in the sun with the heat index well into the 90s. Death averted. Heat acclimation continues.

Sunday: 12 miles of “running,” with a 1-mile walk interval every mile to simulate walking the aid stations in the Ironman, at an overall pace of 10:38/mile. Rachel “ran with me” which means that I dropped back to walk at the start of every mile, then ran after her for a couple of minutes. Does that sound like it is annoying to the person running the whole time? Yeah, it is. I think Rachel was just too tired from the previous 24 hours to kill me right next to the Lincoln Memorial. Lucky me.