Ironman world Championship Final Preparation

5 September 2023

Update on Today’s Plan’s Ben Hill’s final preparations

The last blog was 6 weeks ago and I’d just started back into Ironman training after the Olympic E-Sports week. So how has the training been going? Have I avoided sickness and injury? I’ll break down my last big block of Ironman training. 

With Cycling and Running I have slowly Increased the intensity spending more and more time at and above race pace.

Swimming is often the first session of the day so I rarely miss my swim. Along with swimming with a squad, this has led to great consistency. Adding many drills to the sets has meant I have continued to improve my pace in the pool. I will now include some open water sessions in Nice and hopefully this translates to a better position out of the water.

So overall training has been going very well. I set myself a training plan where I aim to do many short workouts throughout the day but due to one reason or another I need to shift sessions around and adjust the plan constantly. I think about it first and foremost as wanting to hit my targets for my key workouts during the week. These workouts are squad swims, threshold rides and tempo runs. Outside of this I simply supplement with as much zone 2 training as time and body allows. The image below is an example of a week of training. 

So where does all this training leave me now? Well I’m feeling great. My swim splits are faster than ever in the pool. My running tempo workouts are at, or faster than the goal race pace (4 min/per km) and are feeling comfortable. Although my riding has been a little inconsistent, I have hit good numbers in enough key workouts to give me the confidence that with a taper my bike will be good too. 

That said, I’ve been in France for 3 days now and my bike has still not arrived so I am getting a little nervous about my diminishing bike form. I don’t like to run too much especially in the final 2 weeks before the race so I do feel the fitness leaving me. I hope it will arrive soon so I can go check out the course and get the legs going again.