Team,

Congratulations on completing Big Brick I - yes, that means there are more to follow. Triple brick is a day of pacing, nutrition and hydrating. Ironman race day is the same. The coaches continue to be very impressed with this team. We saw lots of smiles as you completed a workout that is one of our toughest. For those who did the double brick - nice work and thanks for those who were able to hang around and support the triple brickers.

This week brings us to many stages of our training calendar - recovery week, Epic Weekend and taper (for CDA).

The training schedule for this week is light but builds us towards the weekend. Please make sure to take the time to allow your body to recover from the previous build pyramid. Take time to get some added sleep this week.

This coming weekend brings us to our Epic Weekend. A long weekend of workouts - Saturday will be a long swim followed by a 98+ mile bike ride with lots of climbing. Sunday will be a long trail run followed by brunch at Coach Dan’s house.

There are lots of logistics, and lots of information here, so please be sure to read the whole e-mail.

The goal of the weekend is to push your limits. In order to succeed, you will need to pace yourself, hydrate, and fuel well. Saturday begins with a 2-mile open-water swim at Stevens Creek reservoir. Following the swim we will transition to a 98-mile hilly bike ride. This will be a tough one. Expect to be on the bike for most of the day. When the ride is over, we’ll celebrate the accomplishment with a pot luck picnic - watch for an email from Social Captain Christina for more details on the picnic. Sunday we’ll run at Rancho, then have Brunch at Coach Dan’s place! The pool will be cool and the hot tub will be bubbling.

This is a pretty major undertaking and we’ll need your help to make it work.

SAG and support: We are planning for 5-6 aid stations along the route, plus a few roving-sag vehicles. In order to pull this off we need:

1. Everybody please bring 2 gallons of water to donate to the SAG support team

2. We need volunteers! Friends, family, co-workers, whoever you can find. Volunteers don’t need to sign up for the whole day. Whatever they can do, we can use them. Please send names and contact info to me or Cilla. We need water support - 2 people for kayaks, one for a surfboard - water stop support (5 stops) - we provide everything - just need people to man the stops.

3. Picnic: The post ride picnic will be a potluck. Watch for details from Christina.

Sunday Run and BRUNCH:

1. The run will start at Rancho  - parking is notoriously bad there on weekends. Please plan to carpool. You can park at my house and carpool over and back. Do not believe you can show up at Rancho 10 minutes before the run and easily find a parking spot.

2. Please RSVP to me so that we can get an accurate count for brunch.

3. We will ask for a nominal donation to cover the cost of food.

The timeline is as follows:

Saturday 6/6:

7:15 AM: Arrive at Stevens Creek Reservoir Dam.

8:00 AM: 2 Mile open-water swim

9:45 AM (approx - after last swimmer):

Move cars to Upper Parking Lot of County Park - parking passes will be available for sale from LLS.

Leave potluck stuff for the picnic

10:00 AM: 98 mile Ride begins - we’ll plan to start riders as you are ready after the swim. Quick transition will be important.

4:00 PM: (est) First riders return/ picnic Begins

6:30 PM: (est) All riders return / picnic Continues!

Sunday 6/7:

7:00 AM: 10-14 mile Run at Rancho (Please carpool - parking gets pretty crowded)

9:30 AM: Brunch at home of Dan and Karen

Workouts like this are supposed to be hard. They’re designed to make your Ironman day seem easy. We used to call this part of the training schedule the “Iron Forge” phase. Forging is the process of heating a metal near the melting point, and pounding it with a hammer. When the metal cools, it is much stronger. Now, I promise, you will not melt, and nobody will hit you with a hammer. But at the end of this weekend you will be stronger and one step closer to your Ironman.

Since we have the 2 coached workouts this weekend there are no coached workouts during the week. That doesn’t mean there are no workouts. Take the time to recover as you need it but try to follow the calendar.

Stay strong, go long, very long.

Your coaches,

Ann, Chris, Steve and Dan

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 7:47 pm and is filed under IT2009 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.