The Ironman Quest: Week IM – 15 : The Real Fun Begins

I mentioned that I had completed the base period in January – that was effectively the grunt work – weights, swimming and runs in the dark. January, February and March was Build 2, where I was starting longer cycles, still keeping the running distance down. With 4 months to go, I started the Build phase this week: probably the type of training regime that you would most associate with an Ironman program: long, hard sessions – long cycles, long swim sets, mountain running and increasingly long runs. The hope is that the technique, strength and efficiency I concentrated on developing over the last 6 months will materialise to make the super-long distance stuff possible.

Next week is the start of my competitive season – I’m doing the Wicklow Adventure Race (WAR!). It’ll be ~18Km mountain running across two mountains, 55km cycle through the Wicklow Mountains and 2km Kayaking across Loch Dan. It’ll be a good, tough start to the season.

We went out for a 70Km spin on Monday which turned out to be an epic battle in gale force winds.

I got a puncture also, the first I’ve gotten on the La Pierre bike in about 3000Km- fair enough. It’s no harm getting the cobwebs out of my tube changing abilities also, lest it happen in a race.

I had some shorter evening spins during the week and a good run on Wednesday.

On Saturday, Kevin and I ran Lug na Coille, the highest Mountain in Leinster at 925 m (3,035 ft). We ran from the bottom to the top in 1:08 and back down in 43 minutes for a total of 1:51. I was happy to break 2 hours, although the IMRA record for the mountain run is an unbelievable 48 minutes. Unsurprisingly, a Kerry man set the record. The mountain is covered in bog so running down uncontrolled is both a lot of fun and not much impact on the knees. It’s like running on a giant sponge. There was still snow up at the top: