Train like you play

Last week I booked myself in for Ironman Malaysia in Langkawi in October. I did two half IMs in Malaysia last year and didn’t do well on either of them. Finished – but it was very hard work! So why book the full Ironman, you ask?

Well one significant reason is a half Ironman I don’t take particularly seriously. Not like I do with the full Ironman. I’ve done that distance before in my late 30s and so I know what’s involved! It’s a lot of hard work, otherwise you are not going to finish and you’ll possibly die in the process! And it’s because it’s so hard that it means so much more to me.

The tropics adds an additional complication that I’ve been trying to understand. It really is all about heart rates. We have an endurance heart rate which is Zone 2. Above this is low aerobic/high aerobic, threshold and HR max. Zone 2 for me is 122-134. Aerobic 135-143. Threshold Zone 4 is 144-151. You might be able to run for about an hour at threshold pace.

Training for an hour at threshold makes you good at running for an hour at threshold! It’s not much use for running a marathon, particularly after a long bike ride and swim.

I used to be quite a good runner in my late 20s and would run 10km in 36 minutes on the back of a tri. I was also relatively fast for longer distances too. 20km would have been between 1hr20 and 1hr30. This was my favourite distance.

However, here in the Malaysian tropics, to be in zone 2 or even low 3, I need to run 7min kilometres. Which is crap for my ego!!! Yesterday the air temp was 30-35C. You might say well why not run when it’s cooler, Paul? Because the race is hot.

The difference between 7min kilometres and 6min kilometres, for me, is the difference between zone 2/3 and zone 4/5. One is sustainable and gives me a five hour marathon time. The other gives me a 4 minute 20 marathon but I die after only about 60-90 minutes.

So what I need to do between now and October, is to work on my zone 2 running. By being smoother and more efficient I hope to get faster at endurance pace. Going harder will cause me to blow up. I know this from the half Ironmans of last year. Yesterday was the first time I managed to run 1hr40 at this steady pace and keep my heart rate down. I also feel good today which is a first in a long time!

The same thing happens on the bike too. I have one long (indoor!) ride per week in Zone 2 as well as a mixture of other rides (it’s not all Zone 2 training).

Swimming, well that’s technique training. I’m really trying to improve my skills and breathe bilaterally. Swimming is all about efficiency through the water. You would think that, living on a boat, I would be swimming all the time but I have hidden fears about swimming into parenting Snakehead and them recognising me! If I can overcome these fears then I’ll be a good swimmer! If this actually happens and I get attacked then I will always have problems swimming here.

So what does all this have to do with fly fishing? Well I think you really need to know what it is you need to accomplish in order to train effectively. For example: fly fishing for Snakehead. If you don’t practise the right skills (slipping line, picking the right targets, checking the shoot, casting under pressure) and were to just practise your casting generally, then you wouldn’t be successful over here. You might as well turn up with midge pupae.

Fortunately, most of the information can be found quite easily. That’s not to say that the wrong information doesn’t exist on the Internet. There is lots of wrong information to be found! Fortunately there are some really good triathlon coaches online and I’ve been learning a bunch. And for fly fishing/ fly casting, Sexyloops is an excellent resource. Just avoid anything written by Artificial Intelligence or people who don’t know what the hell they are talking about :)))

Have a great week!

Cheers, Paul