NEW YORK CITY MARATHON 2019 TRAINING UPDATE: WEEK 3 & 4

This is the second of my New York City Marathon 2019 training series, in the WEEK 1 & 2 UPDATE I posted about my recovery from a calf tear and the plan to work with a run coach. That plan comes into effect from week 4, although the early stages shouldn’t see much change from the current recovery plan I have put in place.

Week 3:

• Running:  12.4 Miles – 1hr 35mins
• Bike:  109.2 Miles – 6hrs 4min
• Swimming: 3,767 yrds – 1hrs 4min

After a big week on the bike in week 2, this week was going to be easier, but with the Abersoch Sprint Triathlon on Saturday. You can read my ABERSOCH SPRINT TRIATHLON 2019 RACE RECAP for more details on that race.

The plan for this week was to continue with the hip & glute strengthening and calf stretches 3 times per day. Running I increased the distance from 2-miles to 3.1-miles (5km), still at an easy pace and fairly flat ground. I ran on Monday, Wednesday & Thursday. The first consecutive days of running since April. No calf pain as a result and felt good on the run. These runs gave me the confidence needed going into the 5k run leg of the Abersoch Tri on Saturday. Four 5km runs completed this week. Things are beginning to return to normal I feel.

Swimming was just one pool swim which I broke up into three sets of 750m to give a good indication on where my sprint tri pace is at. All three were low 14mins. The only other swim was the 750m swim as part of the triathlon, that turned out to be 992m as I over-swam it.

Bike wise it was just four rides outside of the triathlon. These were a 1-hour race pace ride on the turbo, which was 45mins at 230w. A 90-min hard turbo effort, this was 10 min warm up, 5 mins at 260w, 30 mins at 230w, 10 mins at 270w, 30 mins at 230w then a 5 min cool down. Friday and Sunday were easy outdoor rides to rest and recover from the tri.

I have picked the shoes I will use for training and race day in November. I have decided to stick with the Nike Pegasus 35 Turbo and Vaporfly 4%, given the speed I have felt from these in all of my 2019 races it seems silly not continuing on with them.

I have added a pair of the new Nike Pegasus Turbo 2’s. I will use both pairs of turbo’s for the daily training miles and probably use the Vaporfly 4% for speed sessions. For race day I have brought a pair of the new Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next%. I need to try out a fast run in these before November to be sure, but it will either be the 4% or Next% for race day.

Week 4:

• Running:  14 Miles – 1hr 57mins
• Bike:  161.3 Miles – 8hrs 17min
• Swimming: 5,687 yrds – 1hrs 46min

A slightly bigger week across all three disciplines. Running is still building slowly whilst I rebuild the strength in the calf muscle. I have now been running every other day for four weeks which is encouraging. This week I stepped it up to 4-miles on two of my runs. The first two were easy paced 3-mile runs, then a 4-mile run with half at 8:30min/mile pace and the other half a little faster at 7:30min/mile, the second 4-mile run was at an easy pace to recover the legs but bank some time on my feet.

I swam twice this week, one technique set and one distance swim. Nothing much to say about them other than I somehow set 750m & 1,000m PB’s during a 1km pull buoy set. I guess that sums up how poor my kick must be.

I went out on the bike every day this week, mostly easy to steady paced rides, nothing too taxing. Sunday saw the return of the Long Sunday ****, in this case, it was ride, most of my Sunday’s over the past few years have been long runs so it was nice to head out for a couple of hours on the bike.

Tuesday, I took a Zwift FTP ramp test. This is a pre-req for the Zwift academy I will be taking part in August & September. My current FTP of 288w was set back in February so I thought it would be interesting to see how or if I have improved since then. I was aware that I am still recovering from an injury and taking the test 9 days after the mammoth 122-mile White Rose classic plus nearly 600-miles in the legs of the past three weeks.

The test went well and wasn’t as bad as a full FTP test, starting at 100w, Zwift increases the power by 20w every 60 seconds until you can no longer turn the pedals. I made it up to 20 secs into the 420w block which gave me a new FTIP of 307w, an increase of 19w over the last four months. I think I will take this test again in August and see if I can go higher as the calf gets back to full strength.

Speaking of strength, this week I increased my strength training from the daily 10 min legs, hips & glutes sessions I had been doing to 20mins Legs, Hips & Glutes and 20mins Core on alternating days. I will post a screenshot of my plan for each workout below, the hope is these sessions will increase my core and hip strength to give better stability over the marathon distance. In some previous marathons,

I can see my hips dropping in the race photos towards the end of the races, not so much in the last two marathons so maybe things have been improving anyway, but a little more strength cant be a bad thing.