w/c 15th April

My thoughts and motivation towards Ironman have been quite strange and worrisome at times during this week. I seem to go through stages of thought towards my goal varying from: “I’m well prepared for this, I’ve done the training I’ll be fine” to “what on earth am I doing! I won’t even finish the bike leg, ahhhhh!!” I’ve also had pretty varying levels of motivation. Anything from, “I can’t even be bothered to move today”, to “I can’t wait to go for a run/cycle”.

Luckily thoughts an motivation erred slightly on the more positive side and I ended up having a pretty good week, that’s if you discount swimming being included, as I basically missed all three of my scheduled sessions, and only swam a paltry 500m or so when I did get in the pool. I’m putting all this down to increased pressure and stress at work, with longer hours which I’m not used to all straining my schedule. Where before I was out of work at 4 on the dot and raring to go, I’m now lucky to get away at 5.30 and much more worn out.

Anyhow, Tuesdays run session went pretty well. I decided to go a little harder than usual, and ended up surprising myself with a 10k pb for the year of 50 or so minutes and a total distance of 7 miles so I was pretty happy with that. Wednesday was unfortunately spent on the turbo due to severe winds. However, I went much harder than usual in this session, and really gave it to myself for the 45 minute interval course I had set out. 30 minute run straight after felt pretty decent too.

Thursday rolled around and after leaving work I felt decent for another cycle spin and perhaps even a swim, but on getting home I was sapped, so took the evening off and just chilled out instead.

Friday I felt refreshed and went for a steady 6.5 mile run after work which felt good.

Saturday I woke a dead calm day and glorious sunshine, it was still a little chilly when I set out on the bike, but it’s the first ride of the year I’ve gone without gloves, in a jersey and shorts with just a baselayer top underneath. It was soon warmed up and it made such a change to be cycling in gorgeous weather. My speed reflected this, although I consciously was pushing a lot harder than last week’s effort. Ended up clocking up 55 miles, in a minute over 3 hours at an average speed of 18.5mph. Still a massive amount off where I’d like to be, but an improvement nonetheless. I felt pretty burnt out post ride so just relaxed.

I was surprised to wake Sunday with pretty achey legs, although was equally surprised at how an hour long morning spin corrected this, and they felt surprisingly good after that. Spent the rest of the day watching F1, cycling, and moto gp before an evening run. I was scheduled for 1:30, but didn’t feel up to it, and clocked just an hour instead.

Overall a decent week, although I’m still slightly worried at the lack of speed on the bike. I’ve booked in for a bike fit in two weeks time, so hoping this can solve at least part of this!

w/c 08/04/13. How do you pedal again?

This week begun where the prior weekend left off. Poorly, quite literally. I was still feeling under the weather through Monday, although a major improvement compared to the weekend. No exercise missed Monday as that's always been my rest day. Tuesday arrived and again I felt considerably better, enough to consider some exercise at least. I kicked off the weeks efforts with a simple jog on the running machine at the gym, and some simple weights. Nice and easy.

I then managed to get outside Wednesday and Thursday for some outdoor bike sessions, which I always look forward to. Reasonable sessions, just putting the volume in at Z2, and spending some time spinning at 100+RPM.

My first outdoor run came on Friday, and I felt up for it but as soon as I started I knew it was going to be tough. My body seems to dislike any more than 4 or 5 days off, before it begins to forget how to exercise. The legs felt completely blocked and even the slowest pace was tough going. I stuck with it and got a solid 45 minutes in.

Then came the weekend and a few home truths really started to kick in, with a few realizations and what I hope will be light-bulb moments too! I shall explain.

I've made no secret of the fact that I've always felt that my strongest discipline is my cycling. A 1:02 split at London Triathlon on my road bike, is none too shabby in my opinion. Last year I also managed over 150 miles in  a day and felt pretty good at the end of it to boot. It was always my thought, that if I could improve my cycling from there, I'd be in good stead for a decent IM bike split.

However the last few rides have been disappointing to say the least. Even taking into account the windy and rainy weather they just haven't been up to par. I've got off the bike feeling wiped out after 50-60 mile rides, pace has been mediocre at best, and I've been petrified of bonking again. (Pathetic I know, but I've really not experienced it until this year). For context, the 150 mile ride I mentioned earlier was done on a beautiful day, with not much prior thought, at a 15.5mph average, and feeling good after. My previous longest ride was just over 40 miles at that point!

So I got off the bike feeling pretty gutted at being completely shot, after just 65 miles at 15mph average, albeit in pretty harsh conditions. It just didn't seem to stack up. I'd never been this bad at cycling, and I'd taken care of everything before during and after the ride nutrition and hydration wise.

Some deep thought, and a post on Tri-Talk (Thanks very much for your genuine help everyone on there!) I had a couple of things to think about.

Firstly I took a look back through all of my bike training this year. I estimate about 65-70% of this was done on a Turbo to begin with. Nearly every single ride was Z2 as well, barely anything above a 140bpm average.

Secondly I looked back at all my training prior to London Triathlon. Now I know the ride is much shorter, but as I didn't really know too much about training back then, nearly every ride was spent sprinting, or at Z4 for anything from 20 minutes up to an hour. So I really knew how to rev the engine and go for it. Something I appear to have completely lost.

Thirdly I remembered how to pedal properly! This sounds utterly ridiculous, but I put this down to spending the winter almost exclusively on the Turbo. On an easy Sunday ride I realised my pedaling technique had gone wrong. I was constantly pedaling toe down, and had lost the good technique I previously had, which was much more shared amongst the large and the smaller leg muscles. I had been spending all my rides previous to now just mashing toe down, with my quads. I just hadn't considered it in the least. No wonder my legs were burnt out after a ride. I was concentrating everything into poor form. And the results had been showing for the worse. I'm yet to do another long ride, but am sincerely hoping this is almost completely what I've been doing wrong this year. I'm pretty sure it is, so am looking forward to this weekend for that reason.

Not to mention the fact, that I've also decided to change some of the prescribed Z2 sessions, for slightly harder Z4 sessions to really get my top end power going. These two things combined I'm hoping will see me making some progress soon.

So after that reasonably eventful Saturday I hit my Sunday goal of a 1:30 run. Much better than Friday's effort, my legs felt decent, and I just struck out and kept a decent pace for the whole length of time. Covered almost exactly 10 miles in that time. Now I know this is pretty sedate pace, but its an improvement for me and I'm pretty happy with my running overall now.

All in all a good week. I feel slightly revitalized due to the rest, and keen to crack on. Looking forward to getting more decent cycling miles in too! Almost 3 weeks until my first race of the year is helping to focus my mind.

In total my week in training has looked like this:


Swim: 1500 Metres
Bike:  95.7 Miles
Run: 15 Miles


Thanks for reading!

w/c 01/04/13

Looking outside at the bright sunshine a clear skies, and seeing the outdoors not looking like the arctic tundra for the first time I can remember this year, this weekend was not as pleasant as it should have been.

The week started off very well after a good Tuesday and Wednesday's exercise. However on Thursday I did not feel right, and through better judgement decided to take a rest and miss my scheduled sessions. I awoke Friday with a nasty cold, and so Saturday and Sunday was spent sofa bound feeling consecutively worse, spectating the best weather I've seen at a weekend this year! Gutting does not begin to cover it.

Especially gutting as I had my first 10 mile TT booked for Sunday, which I had to miss as well. To improve recovery and moral I did my best to increase the McVities share price by consuming my body weight in biscuits and other horrendous foods, so I suspect I have gained a stone across the weekend as well!

Feeling better as of Monday, so am hoping to get back into training by tomorrow if not Wednesday, albeit a cut down volume to start me off.

However, its not all negative, this week has seen me take part in the least physical activity since September last year (Probably to me detriment). So its my expectation that my body really could have done with the rest, and should have hopefully recovered quite a bit now. My motivation to get back out there has certainly improved as well, so I can't wait to get back on it now!

So this weeks stats are as below. Stop laughing at the back!!

Swim: 500 Metres
Bike:  19.8 Miles
Run: 10.9 Miles

w/c 25/03/2013

Just a short update this week.

Motivation partially returned upon the realisation that I wasn't getting as much sleep as I had been used to in previous time of heavy training. Action taken, earlier bedtimes. Result, my best training week (sessions hit wise) in nearly 7 weeks. Also helped by a redoubled and much more concerted effort to drop a couple more kilo's in preparation for the upcoming races. I suspect also very much helped by having had the Friday off for Easter!

So this weeks stats are as below:

Swim: 6,000 Metres
Bike: 96.5 Miles
Run: 22.3 Miles

Stats for March:

Swim: 16,000 Metres
Bike: 360 Miles
Run: 77.4 Miles

In comparison to stats for Feb:

Swim: 12,500 Metres
Bike: 275 Miles
Run: 62.1 Miles

I also spent the Friday getting the TT bike a little more IM friendly. As stock the chainrings are 54/42 and a big cog on the back of 23 teeth, so its safe to say not the best for climbing! I swapped out the small chainring on the front for a 39 tooth ring, and added a 12-28 on the back. So I'm much happier spinning up the climbs in the saddle now, which will also hopefully save the legs on some of the climbs.

Looking forward to another good week, and my first 10 mile TT next weekend.