Planning + TnT

I rode up to Philly today to check out the course I'm going to do next week. As I got to the first of 4 climbs, I met a couple of local guys who offered to ride part of the course with me. They gave me some useful pointers. One of them got a flat and I helped them fix it (apparently fixing a flat was a new experience for them and they had no tools, patches, tubes to do it).

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the course. I wasn't riding particularly well today, but it should be interesting to do eight climbs on a 40K course. The course has a center loop and 4 outer loops, each outer loop moves away from the river and takes you uphill, then back downhill to the center loop. You have to go around the whole thing twice. The first hill seems to be the hardest and I'm sure I won't be warmed up on the bike when I hit it the first time around. The second hill looks to be medium length and medium grade; the third is very steep, but short; and the forth hill is medium grade and a bit longer than the second hill. I'm mostly concerned about loosing time on the downhill turns since I don't want to loose time, but I don't want to crash.

A friend of mine did Eagleman last week. He is slowly building his triathlon capability and seems to have worked out the nutrition and endurance stuff, and now needs to work on run and bike speed. Here is a simple workout routine that I sent him that seems to work for me...

TnT - Recommendation for improving speed on bike and run: At least one speed session every 2 weeks and one tempo session every 2 weeks starting 8 weeks before a big race, but not the week of the race (doing these once a week is better, but hard on the body). For run speed, you should start with 12x1x1 (1min hard 1min easy 12 times) and working to 6x6x1 (6 min hard 1 min easy six times). For bike speed, do 12x3x1 working to 20x10x1. Alternate each week where one week you work on cadence (>95) and the next week you work on strength / speed (i.e. as big a gear as you can manage as fast you can go). For run tempo, start with 2 miles at 90% effort and work to 4-6 miles at the same effort. For tempo bike, go at 90% for 20 minutes 3 times and work to 6 times (for IM distance training). When you are not 8 weeks before a race, you should add some speed into a training session.