Before I move on to talk about, explain and possibly justify to you the brick training for an ironman triathlon, I want to go more into our analogy of the fire to further explain the ‘theory’ behind it all.
As your burning and access to the coals becomes more efficient and ‘hotter’, and the more fires you efficiently and properly build and burn, you will find, as in a real fire place, a nice rich bed of coals remains. These coals can then be heated up not long after the fire has been lit. Not only that, the faster burning sticks and thinner logs don’t burn out as fast, and some of their fuel is saved, possibly for later. In actual terms, this is referred to as glycogen sparing. This is important as further on down the road of the race, and as glycogen stores would otherwise be dwindling, the ‘spared’ glycogen can then be used to either fuel a fast burst of speed (such as in a sprint finish, or to help you in that final and often painful final kilometer), or further help the metabolism of stored body fat for energy. This sparing is an important product of training, as the more a sustained release of glycogen you have, the longer and more efficiently you can utilise your stored body fat as your energy source. You may have heard the term ‘fat burns in a carbohydrate flame’. This is what we are referring to here. I don’t totally understand the process, but somewhere in the Krebs Cycle (an important and essential physiological process occurring in the mitochondria whereby ATP (energy) is produced in the presence of oxygen.......... etc etc) carbohydrate, or a product of its metabolism, is a necessary ingredient in the production of energy from fat. You cant use your energy abundant fat if you don’t have any carbohydrate present.
Now is probably a good time for a brief explanation of the aforementioned theories from which I have based this discussion of brick training, but only briefly so as to help readers understand further the discussion intended for this blog article, i.e. brick training for ironman triathlon.
Firstly lets touch on the Central Govenor Theory, primarily proposed and discussed by the famous (and one of my favourite) running authors and exercise scientists Dr. Tim Noakes of South Africa, and further researched by others. A very good site to refer to is Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas’ site, The Science of Sport:
www.sportsscientists.com
Then check out their discussions and research (in conjunction with Noakes) on the central governor. The theory basically postulates, and I quote from The Science of Sport, “ that your ability to pace yourself during exercise is the result of an "anticipatory calculation" that is made by the brain during a race/training session, and whose purpose is to prevent you from causing physiological damage to your body.”
The “anticipatory calculation” is the result of feedback from an unknown number of ‘centres’ monitoring any number of homeostatic variables, and the result of the calculation causes you to either slow down, maintain, or even increase your pace. It is anticipatory in that it is designed to anticipate any danger you may be under as a results of exercising, and to slow you down accordingly.
I support the belief also that there is a conscious element to the practice of the theory, and I have certainly found this in my own experience. You can consciously decide whether or not to slow or speed up from the early messages that are sent to you through bio feedback from your body. And these messages can only be learned through experience (and knowing your heart rate responses). It’s like learning to read early behavioural characteristics of your children before the onset of a tantrum. When the first signs appear,l you can decide, for example, tats it’s a good time for lunch, or it’s the right time to put your baby down for her midday sleepy.
I am also a firm believer in the conscious element going even further. In determining a pacing strategy you can help the Central Governor in it’s “anticipatory calculations” by consciously determining and then telling the Central Governor what the task at hand is.
When I set out on a long brick, I always first imagine that what i am doing is performing the exact task I will be performing come race day. And it is in this process of imagination and visualisation that i ask my Central Governor to adjust it’s pacing strategy accordingly.
When this little transaction and deal making process has been done, It is then my conscious responsibility to maintain the image in my mind of the task at hand, and to listen to the physical signals my Central Governor is sending me as to what I need to do to maintain homeostasis, and keep the Central Governor happy. My Central Governor then learns what the pacing strategy will be on the day of the race, and I learn what signals to look out for, and together we reach the finish line with a perfectly paced race, and result (according to the level of conditioning my training has taken me to).
I’ve probably missed a whole lot and my explanation is probably full of holes, but I believe enough has been said so that people understand why they do the training they do (to me a big, big gap in the training process). And it is now time to move on to training and the periodisation of such. I also need to cover where swimming fits into the equation.
ironman ‘specialists’ heeded the rule and never ran long off a long ride. Needless to say, they were left wanting in the marathon on race day. They were essentially asking their Central Governor to adjust to a new condition without having already been exposed to it, or in other words the specificity in training was not present.
Another area of training that I believe can contribute to an unacceptable performance on the day of the race is the long group ride. I mean the social type where the only goal is to cover the kilometers, and is done slowly with much chatter and drafting. This type of riding is sometimes the favoured and only long ride of the week, and is inadequate, to say the least. For the purposes of an ironman triathlon, what is really needed is a long ride on your own, preferably followed by a long run. This is what the race requires of us. In doing this the process of determining an effective pacing strategy for your physical conditioning is achieved, as well as pacing yourself to deal with the up coming run.
By way of definition, a long bike ride can be anything from 100k to 150k+, and a long run is anything (for a marathon) from 20k to 35k, and sometimes more. Therefore, when it’s time to get right into your ironman training, these are the numbers we will be looking at. I would define an ironman specific brick workout to be anything from 100/20 (100k ride, with a 20k run off the bike) to 150/35. If you want to do it effectively on race day, then you have to do the training equivalent of it first. No one can, by definition, disagree with this.
Of course there are some guidelines to ensure your training works. So, lets cover those, in point form.
1 - To ensure that you are not going too hard and to ensure you are training specifically to utilise your fat stores and learning to spare glycogen, wear a heart rate monitor first to guage your efforts. What you set your heart rate upper limit to differs from person to person, but I would definitely point you in the direction of Dr. Phillip Maffetone and his 180 formula for determining a fat burning heart rate zone. Read this article from the man himself to fully understand what the 180 formula is, and how it applies to your training:
http://philmaffetone.com/180formula.cfm
When you have determined your upper aerobic heart rate, you have an effort bench march from where you can determine your training intensity. While out training, you want to stay at or under this zone, with the understanding that in some circumstances it can’t be helped if you go over the upper number. Just try to stay predominately under the upper reading that corresponds to your aerobic maximum heart rate.
For me, I have determined my upper aerobic heart rate to be 155 bpm (beats per minute), and this is a heart rate that is easy enough to stay under, while at the same time telling me to slow down and relax when going up hills, or pushing it on the flat, in both cycling and running.
2 - Discover a food source (carbohydrate drink, gel, bar or similar) that works for you, and practice taking in fuel in your training as you would on race day. You need to be able to continue that sustained carbohydrate flame in which your fat will burn. An average athlete (of lets say 70kg or about 150 pounds) needs around 50 grams of carbohydrate per hour. But you need to find out what works best for you. You also need to consider a replacement for the electrolytes you may be losing, so check the labels of the bars and gels you are choosing. Drinks such as Gatorade usually help with this, but again, experiment and find what works best for you.
3 - Drink plenty of water while you are training to the tune of 3 ml per kg of body weight every 15 - 20 minutes. This will help to stave off any dehydration and over heating. Too much water, however, will cause a condition known as hyponatremia which is basically diluting your body of sodium, and is quite dangerous. Sticking with the guidelines and just being sensible about your water intake will help to avoid this.
4 - Realise that in training specifically through performing long brick workouts, you are improving all the possible homeostatic variables that are considered by your Central Governor in performing its “anticipatory calculation”, and it in turn allows you to go further and faster before it deems it necessary to slow you down. Remember it is also up to you to keep in mind what it is you are trying to achieve (through imagination and visualisation), and then listening to the signals given to you by your central governor. i.e. when to eat, when to drink, when to slow down and when it’s O.K. to speed up, among other things.
5 - Train as close to the conditions you will encounter on the day if you can. This is as easy as studying the description of the bike course you are training for and then trying to simulate it on your local rides as much as you can. If this means finding some long hills because this is what the course is made up of, then find some. Likewise, if you need to train for an undulating course, do that, and if it’s flat, practice riding for long distances on the flat. This last piece of advice is particularly valuable as riding long distances on the flat is quite unique and without the specific training athletes can encounter cramping from continued use of the same muscles.
As your burning and access to the coals becomes more efficient and ‘hotter’, and the more fires you efficiently and properly build and burn, you will find, as in a real fire place, a nice rich bed of coals remains. These coals can then be heated up not long after the fire has been lit. Not only that, the faster burning sticks and thinner logs don’t burn out as fast, and some of their fuel is saved, possibly for later. In actual terms, this is referred to as glycogen sparing. This is important as further on down the road of the race, and as glycogen stores would otherwise be dwindling, the ‘spared’ glycogen can then be used to either fuel a fast burst of speed (such as in a sprint finish, or to help you in that final and often painful final kilometer), or further help the metabolism of stored body fat for energy. This sparing is an important product of training, as the more a sustained release of glycogen you have, the longer and more efficiently you can utilise your stored body fat as your energy source. You may have heard the term ‘fat burns in a carbohydrate flame’. This is what we are referring to here. I don’t totally understand the process, but somewhere in the Krebs Cycle (an important and essential physiological process occurring in the mitochondria whereby ATP (energy) is produced in the presence of oxygen.......... etc etc) carbohydrate, or a product of its metabolism, is a necessary ingredient in the production of energy from fat. You cant use your energy abundant fat if you don’t have any carbohydrate present.
Now is probably a good time for a brief explanation of the aforementioned theories from which I have based this discussion of brick training, but only briefly so as to help readers understand further the discussion intended for this blog article, i.e. brick training for ironman triathlon.
Firstly lets touch on the Central Govenor Theory, primarily proposed and discussed by the famous (and one of my favourite) running authors and exercise scientists Dr. Tim Noakes of South Africa, and further researched by others. A very good site to refer to is Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas’ site, The Science of Sport:
www.sportsscientists.com
Then check out their discussions and research (in conjunction with Noakes) on the central governor. The theory basically postulates, and I quote from The Science of Sport, “ that your ability to pace yourself during exercise is the result of an "anticipatory calculation" that is made by the brain during a race/training session, and whose purpose is to prevent you from causing physiological damage to your body.”
The “anticipatory calculation” is the result of feedback from an unknown number of ‘centres’ monitoring any number of homeostatic variables, and the result of the calculation causes you to either slow down, maintain, or even increase your pace. It is anticipatory in that it is designed to anticipate any danger you may be under as a results of exercising, and to slow you down accordingly.
I support the belief also that there is a conscious element to the practice of the theory, and I have certainly found this in my own experience. You can consciously decide whether or not to slow or speed up from the early messages that are sent to you through bio feedback from your body. And these messages can only be learned through experience (and knowing your heart rate responses). It’s like learning to read early behavioural characteristics of your children before the onset of a tantrum. When the first signs appear,l you can decide, for example, tats it’s a good time for lunch, or it’s the right time to put your baby down for her midday sleepy.
I am also a firm believer in the conscious element going even further. In determining a pacing strategy you can help the Central Governor in it’s “anticipatory calculations” by consciously determining and then telling the Central Governor what the task at hand is.
When I set out on a long brick, I always first imagine that what i am doing is performing the exact task I will be performing come race day. And it is in this process of imagination and visualisation that i ask my Central Governor to adjust it’s pacing strategy accordingly.
When this little transaction and deal making process has been done, It is then my conscious responsibility to maintain the image in my mind of the task at hand, and to listen to the physical signals my Central Governor is sending me as to what I need to do to maintain homeostasis, and keep the Central Governor happy. My Central Governor then learns what the pacing strategy will be on the day of the race, and I learn what signals to look out for, and together we reach the finish line with a perfectly paced race, and result (according to the level of conditioning my training has taken me to).
I’ve probably missed a whole lot and my explanation is probably full of holes, but I believe enough has been said so that people understand why they do the training they do (to me a big, big gap in the training process). And it is now time to move on to training and the periodisation of such. I also need to cover where swimming fits into the equation.
ironman ‘specialists’ heeded the rule and never ran long off a long ride. Needless to say, they were left wanting in the marathon on race day. They were essentially asking their Central Governor to adjust to a new condition without having already been exposed to it, or in other words the specificity in training was not present.
Another area of training that I believe can contribute to an unacceptable performance on the day of the race is the long group ride. I mean the social type where the only goal is to cover the kilometers, and is done slowly with much chatter and drafting. This type of riding is sometimes the favoured and only long ride of the week, and is inadequate, to say the least. For the purposes of an ironman triathlon, what is really needed is a long ride on your own, preferably followed by a long run. This is what the race requires of us. In doing this the process of determining an effective pacing strategy for your physical conditioning is achieved, as well as pacing yourself to deal with the up coming run.
By way of definition, a long bike ride can be anything from 100k to 150k+, and a long run is anything (for a marathon) from 20k to 35k, and sometimes more. Therefore, when it’s time to get right into your ironman training, these are the numbers we will be looking at. I would define an ironman specific brick workout to be anything from 100/20 (100k ride, with a 20k run off the bike) to 150/35. If you want to do it effectively on race day, then you have to do the training equivalent of it first. No one can, by definition, disagree with this.
Of course there are some guidelines to ensure your training works. So, lets cover those, in point form.
1 - To ensure that you are not going too hard and to ensure you are training specifically to utilise your fat stores and learning to spare glycogen, wear a heart rate monitor first to guage your efforts. What you set your heart rate upper limit to differs from person to person, but I would definitely point you in the direction of Dr. Phillip Maffetone and his 180 formula for determining a fat burning heart rate zone. Read this article from the man himself to fully understand what the 180 formula is, and how it applies to your training:
http://philmaffetone.com/180formula.cfm
When you have determined your upper aerobic heart rate, you have an effort bench march from where you can determine your training intensity. While out training, you want to stay at or under this zone, with the understanding that in some circumstances it can’t be helped if you go over the upper number. Just try to stay predominately under the upper reading that corresponds to your aerobic maximum heart rate.
For me, I have determined my upper aerobic heart rate to be 155 bpm (beats per minute), and this is a heart rate that is easy enough to stay under, while at the same time telling me to slow down and relax when going up hills, or pushing it on the flat, in both cycling and running.
2 - Discover a food source (carbohydrate drink, gel, bar or similar) that works for you, and practice taking in fuel in your training as you would on race day. You need to be able to continue that sustained carbohydrate flame in which your fat will burn. An average athlete (of lets say 70kg or about 150 pounds) needs around 50 grams of carbohydrate per hour. But you need to find out what works best for you. You also need to consider a replacement for the electrolytes you may be losing, so check the labels of the bars and gels you are choosing. Drinks such as Gatorade usually help with this, but again, experiment and find what works best for you.
3 - Drink plenty of water while you are training to the tune of 3 ml per kg of body weight every 15 - 20 minutes. This will help to stave off any dehydration and over heating. Too much water, however, will cause a condition known as hyponatremia which is basically diluting your body of sodium, and is quite dangerous. Sticking with the guidelines and just being sensible about your water intake will help to avoid this.
4 - Realise that in training specifically through performing long brick workouts, you are improving all the possible homeostatic variables that are considered by your Central Governor in performing its “anticipatory calculation”, and it in turn allows you to go further and faster before it deems it necessary to slow you down. Remember it is also up to you to keep in mind what it is you are trying to achieve (through imagination and visualisation), and then listening to the signals given to you by your central governor. i.e. when to eat, when to drink, when to slow down and when it’s O.K. to speed up, among other things.
5 - Train as close to the conditions you will encounter on the day if you can. This is as easy as studying the description of the bike course you are training for and then trying to simulate it on your local rides as much as you can. If this means finding some long hills because this is what the course is made up of, then find some. Likewise, if you need to train for an undulating course, do that, and if it’s flat, practice riding for long distances on the flat. This last piece of advice is particularly valuable as riding long distances on the flat is quite unique and without the specific training athletes can encounter cramping from continued use of the same muscles.
Well, this has gone on a bit longer than expected, and I still have yet to get to training suggestions. So I will post with the promise that I will cover this soon.
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