Anna`s Blog - Trainingslager Österreich - Vorbereitungen für den Ironman Nizza

It´s now time to slip into the athlete role with only 4 weeks until the Ironman in Nice. Having organised our second event, the Worldclass Marathon Challenge, two weeks ago we now have some breathing space until our next event on the 18th and 19th of July, the Hansgrohe Offenburg Triathlon.

Record number of competitors
This year we had a record number of competitors at our Mountain Bike Marathon Event with 2180 enthusiastic mountain bikers. It was again a success with perfect mountain bike weather and a great atmosphere in the city centre. It was great to see all the competitors come into the finish line pleased with the effort, you could see on the facial expressions that each and everyone had given their best on the day. As they say after the race is before the race, it´s time to start organising for 2010!
 
Ironman Training
Now that we have a bit of spare time we can prepare for our Ironman Journey. With only 4 weeks until the big day we are getting the most out of our training. The plan is for the next 3 weeks to overload the body with big hours of training, then one week before we will cut back on the hours to rest up for the race. This week we have a 30 hour training schedule. I will report here on my blog all our training up until Nice.

Race practice
We both raced on the weekend, an olympic distance race in France. For me it was an introduction to racing again, having missed the half marathon due to a cold. It was a great wake up to the system, I felt fresh and ready to go. Unfortunately I missed a swim group and ended up swimming alone. Not the ideal start to my race. I felt good in the water considering the break from the water (10 days due to the cold). The time was okay 22.30 mins for 1,5 km. Then onto the bike I found my rhythm straight away, into the aero position riding 38 km/hr. It was a great feeling passing the other women. I rode into 5th place with 10km run to complete. The run course was pretty tough with a small climb that we had to run up twice. It was also extremly hot, meaning drink, drink, drink. I was surprised after the first lap with my time of 21.30 minutes for 5 km which gave me a little motivation. One girl had passed me so I was now in 6th place determined to hold this to the end. Sure enough I came into the finish line in a respectabe 6th place and 10km run time of 43.30 mins. Not bad for a training race.
 
Jörg ended up 7th with a very respectable start field. He had a great swim, under 20 mins, his best swim time for 1,5 km. His swimming has improved immensly which is great to see. Unfortunately he was directed the wrong way on the bike course which costed him vital time. He worked his way into 5th position before heading out onto the run. He finished in 7th place, also happy with his performance.
 
Training camp
We are now in Austria preparing for the Ironman. Last week we trained 28 hours, didn´t quite reach the 30 hr mark due to a snow storm in the alps. We did however get in some quality training. For example on Saturday we rode to the base of the Silveretta Alpine Road and then ran up the mountain (14 km windy road) to 2000 m and then back down again (see the photo, hard long road to Hawaii!), on the bikes and back to our training base. Total of 6 hrs training.

Sunday we road long climbs all day, until we hit the snow storm. The temp was nice to begin with, 18°C and sunny. When we hit the second pass it started to hail, very cold, then turned into rain/sleet. Not good. We were not prepared for this surprise, with summer hand gloves, knee warmers, no shoe covers, luckily enough we had the rain jackets with us. We were forced to stop at that stage we were at 1400 m, it was way to cold to continue. We found a hotel and sat and drank tee until the weather cleared up (2hr wait!). By then we were dry and jumped on the bikes to continue our training ride.

36 hr week planed
This we we have an extreme training week planned. Stay tuned to hear more training stories....

Til then
Anna & Jörg