I was very conscious last year of my loss in motivation during the run up to the event, which I put down to long overtraining. Its largely recommended to have time off during the winter and then pick up training again during the new year. However when I did London Triathlon in 2012, and consequently decided to do Ironman in 2013, my enthusiasm got the better of me and I trained solidly right the way through. I don't think this did me any favours at all as it meant after what was almost 18-months of training I was pretty much sick of it all, with the exception of racing.
This year I trained for a month post IMUK, but then all but stopped running and swimming for a few months to give myself a rest. I was still cycling, but nowhere near what I'd call proper training volume.
Result of this now? I'm raring to go more than ever, and I'm loving training!
So this year the date is 20th July, and so 30 weeks back from then works out as the 23rd Dec 2013, so it was then that I began my training, largely in line with last years 30 week plan, albeit with a few changes. The first week was scheduled to be a 6-hour week with 2-hours of each activity. I decided to go easy on the swimming as I'd had a fair amount of time off from swimming over the last few months, as well as believing the Fink program is a bit swim heavy for me. So I made up the time on the bike putting in just over 4-hours. I stuck to the program on the running, which was also to me the most interesting.
The sum total of my run volume from the end of September to late December was just over 5-miles. So that's nigh on 80 days of not running. As you might expect the first couple of runs were hard work to say the least. The third run (only 4 miles) was the hardest of the lot. To just hold 8-minute miles I was pretty much redlining, and even had to stop for a rest. The fourth run however was like an epiphany, I just felt like I was pretty much cruising at 8 min mile pace which was great, and it felt to have some semblance of run fitness coming back, having largely maintained my bike fitness over the past months. I even managed the total 45 minute long Sunday run.
The bike I'm pretty happy with. I love riding my bike and so it wasn't difficult to keep getting the miles in. During the past few months I'd also been commuting to work by bike which was also keeping the miles coming in. As you might expect my power numbers took a hit after the summer, but they seem to have stabilised nicely now, and should start increasing again as I put more volume down. Looking forward to seeing where I can get my FTP into the summer too.
So below is my summarised training week. Looking forward to next week now, and even more volume!
