Road to Kona Training : Week of Aug 22 (PIVKON -5)

5 Weeks away from the big day. 38 days to be exact! Last week was intense with 5,200 yards of swimming, 23 miles running and 142 miles of biking. This week was a little more swim intensive but overall a bit easier on the body with 6,800 yards of swimming, just under 130 miles of biking, and only 12 miles of running. Much less pics this week than prior weeks but here are the details…

Oh BTW – the manuscript is coming along very nicely! About 10 chapters in so far. Can’t wait to start sharing more details as the book project progresses!

Monday didn’t start with the usual Pilates because my instructor was on vacation so it was only a swim workout today for 2,300 yards. I managed to continue at a good pace over long sets and averaged a minute 52 per 100 which I was really happy with.

Tuesday was also only a single workout which was an indoor bike for 15 miles.

Wednesday was a short brick workout with another 15 miles on the indoor bike followed by an easy 2 mile OTB (Off the Bike) run.

Thursday it was back into the pool for 2,000 yards.

I moved my long bike workout to Saturday so a friend a could join so on Friday I resumed Pilates, hit the pool again for 2,500 yards and did another 15 mile indoor bike ride to bring the Week-To-Date miles to 45.

Friday also included a visit to Elevate Performance on 23rd Street in Manhattan to conduct a sweat test. You lose so much sodium from sweating that it is important to replenish it properly. I’ve never truly calculated the exact amount I lose but with Kona coming up and the intense heat and humidity I want to leave as little to chance as possible.  The sweat test started with a colorless, odorless chemical (pilocarpine) and a little electrical stimulation applied to the arm to encourage the sweat glands to produce sweat. The sweat is then collected on a plastic coil and analyzed. The technician found that I loose 600 mg of sodium per liter of sweat.  The 2nd part of the test is to perform 2 hard runs and 2 hard bike workouts for an hour to measure how much liters per hour of sweat is lost. These will be done over the next week or so.

Saturday it was back to the Empire State Trail. My friend Vlad knows this trail and the surrounding areas pretty well. A carbo loading stop at a cafe called Runcible Spoon in Nyack NY at around mile 30 hit the spot. The chocolate pastry was so good that I had to have another before reloading our water bottles and hitting the uphill climb up to Rockland Park Lake in Upper Nyack. The return started on a trail right by the Hudson River. Couldn’t go too fast but the views were awesome. We clocked just under 70 miles for the day with 2,800 ft climbing. I topped off the training day with a 5k OTB run.

   

   

Sunday was meant to me my long run but I wanted to incorporate the 1st of 4 sweat measurements. I weighed myself and set out to central park for an hour. After a 1 mile warm up and a series of 1/2 mile pickups it was back upstairs to see how much I sweated.  4 lbs worth!! I was pretty hungry so I planned on a small breakfast and was going to go back outside for more running but that didn’t happen. Oh well, had to settle for 7 miles for the day. I have to enter my sweat loss data into a spreadsheet that was provided to me and when the testing is complete I will have a much better idea of what my sodium intake should be per hour during the race.  This will go a long way to prevent dehydration and cramping.

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