Sunday 28 February 2010

A low volume week.

Monday was some sort of recovery run.  Turned up the club run session, which was descending sets.5 min run, 5 rest, 4 run, 4 rest....1 run.  I didn't run too hard during the ons, and slow jogged during the some of the rest breaks.  Calf felt a bit tight, guess that is to be expected.  A decent run season all told, felt much better for having gone out and done it.  Nearly 8km in total.

Tuesday was my swim session, was the only one in the lane reserved for the club for the first 30 minutes so got quite a few dirty looks from the other people crowded into the other lanes. Oh well.  After 400m of crawl and backstroke to warm up a healthy dose of kick sets then some drills.  Did some drill sets then, 75m sets of 25 kick, 25 drill, and 25 full stroke with 10s between sets.  Quite like these as it gets kick and drills working together without getting boring.  Main set of 5x200m on 4:00 and then some more kick to finish off.

Wednesday brought my weekly spin session.  Forgot my HRM so felt rather naked during it.  Didn't have the benefit of the fan either so ended up rather hot.  Felt like I had actually worked hard after it though.

Thursday was to be my rest day, in the end I've had three (Saturday and Sunday too, oops).

Friday was my second swim session of the week at the club session.  Reasonable warm up of 4 x 125m then a  10x100m main set.  Coming in on 1:43 ish.  Not wonderful, really want my shoulder to get better so I can improve on it.

D day is getting closer and my training is suffering badly now, not gonna have much time in the evenings for trainings for a while whilst I try and finish my thesis.  Hopefully something good will happen next week.

Monday 22 February 2010

T minus 13 weeks and a 10K PB

I seem to have moved to weekly updates to this blog, a side effect of writing a thesis during the rest of the day.

Monday was the club "run" session.  Running was not the main activity, it was suppoosed to be simulated hill reps, and consisted of doing 40 squats, 125m sprint, 30 squats, 250m sprint, 20 squats, 375m sprint, 10 squats, 500m sprint.  Then back down the pyramid.  Did I mention the squats as a warm up and cool down?  Well I'd call that a squat session personally, it felt nothing like hill running.

Tuesday morning brought the swim session.  It went rather well for me.  It was made up on the fly, but I managed most of the session before I felt anything from my shoulder.  Plenty of kick sets and some 200m efforts.  The afternoon is when Monday's squat session caught up with me.  My legs started to hurt a fair bit, so compression tights on as soon as I got home, and slept in them overnight.

Wednesday morning and the compression had done nothing for my DOMS, no morning swim.  Come the evening they had loosened a bit, but not much.  Wednesday evening was a spinning session.  Turned up to the gym 30 minutes early to run on the treadmill first only to find them all in use.  Mostly with women walking on them. What is the point of that? Really what is the point of going to the gym, getting on a treadmill and walking at 5 km/h with no incline?  Is there any cardiovascular benefit from it?  I could rant for hours on this subject and my proposed solutions to the problem, but if you've read this far I don't want to bore you too much.  Eventually managed to get on one for 15 mins before spinning, a reasonable 2.5km effort at 2% incline.  Spinning session was good and my legs stayed loose. 

Thursday was a rest day.  Friday was the club swim session in the evening, after the 4x100 warm up it was 8x100 on 2:15, all things considered did rather well coming in consistently on 1:37/1:38.  About 3-4 seconds slower than a month ago, but considering the volume of training I've been able to do it isn't too bad at all.  Then following this it was 6x50m kick.  My kick has progressed a lot and came in around 1:08 to start with.  Was told to kick faster and slightly deeper and managed to come in on 1:06. Incidentally I was beating some of the guys in the fast lane, which was good to know.  Some pull and a cool down and a total of 2000m at a reasonable effort with no shoulder pain at all.  I think I may be able to get back to proper swim training soon.  Only problem is I start my job next week, so can't swim in the mornings anymore.

Saturday was a sort of rest day, spent 2 1/2 hours walking to and around the shops.  I'll call that taper training.  Sunday was the Winchester 10K.  I entered this last weekend as a few people were doing this, so as I'm not ready/have no time to do a duathlon next Sunday thought I would do this.  Having worked out my projected pace of 12.5 km/h based on my half marathon time I positioned myself in the 43-55min start bin along with the others.  The start horn goes and it seems lots of people can't read as I get stuck behind lots of people walking.  OK it was a bit of a quagmire on the rugby pitch, BUT YOU COULD AT LEAST JOG.  After 200-300m managed to get on the path and was again stuck behind people that were way to far forward. Dodged a few of them then came up behind the girls from the club who were running well, up the hill and out onto the road and my path was clearing.  I was running way faster than my projected pace.  After about 2.5K I hear a "that's where you got to" from Mark who ran up behind me, he overtook me and made it 10m in front of me, where he slowed down, or I sped up, but we stayed that way for about 5K.  A few step hilly bits, but no much to report till the turn at 6.4K onto the dual carriageway.  Something happened here and I could see I was slowly reeling Mark in, that spurred me on, and around km 7 I passed him and managed to hold on for a km.  The hill took it out of me too much and my HR shot up to 92% and I started wheezing.  Mark passed and I tried to get back on the downhill section.  But that was possibly my undoing.  HR spiked again and a more serious bout of difficult breathing.  With him now out of my grasp about 20m in front, I pushed on for the last km.  The finish was on gravel which scuppered any chance of a decent sprint finish, but I pushed hard with everything I had left in me.  Crossed the line in 45:36 officially, 45:23 self timed from when I crossed the start line.  177/764 overall, but I'm not sure how much value a statistic like that holds.

That is it for this week, just realised I've written more than I have on my thesis over the weekend. %$^&. 12 weeks to half distance hell.

Sunday 14 February 2010

Another weeks training down

Wednesday was a club spinning session.  Same session as last week slightly lower average heart rate, but that's probably because my legs were knackered from the previous few days training.  Thursday evening brought a run.  A few loops of the common, wasn't really feeling it though so done as a gentle L2 effort.  Managed a reasonable distance, partly because I needed to work out where the flats I was viewing on Friday afternoon were so it turned into a 11.6 km run. Friday evening was the club swim, 2100m in total, my shoulder just about managed to hang in there. The 100m efforts were fairly average as I wasn't pushing too hard, the kick sets were pretty decent though, under 65-75s for 50m.

On Saturday I went to the TCR show.  First order of business wetsuit.  Tried on a 2010 Blueseventy Helix.  Wow, what a nice wetsuit. After some fitting advice from Dean I had it fitted nicely and it felt really really good. It was so much more comfortable than my Orca S2.  You can really feel the isolation of the shoulders and arms. Unfortunately all the retailers were under orders not to discount them, so the best deal I could get was about £40 off.  My BCTTT discount will be being used this week or next to seal the deal on that one.  Whilst I was there I also had a free 15minute sports massage.  Oh my god it hurt.  Said I was having some shoulder pain and it was quite bad in the muscles around it, so had it on my neck and shoulders.  I can't say it was relaxing, apparently Camilla went easy on me as she could feel me twitching.  I felt pretty good afterwards though so it worked nicely.  I may have to have a few more of them when I finally have some money.  I managed to be quite restrained otherwise, only subscribed to Triathlete Europe, bought some compression tights and a nice lightweight cap for the run in Barcelona.  Got a free mini kit bag and technical t-shirt with the cap as well bargin.  I managed to come away with an armful of gels as well. TFN were giving away 3 packs of High5 gels, so I managed to acquire 4 bags, plus some other gels so not a bad effort.  Managed to feed myself on carb gels, sweets and energy drinks as well.  Perhaps not the most balanced diet and it did give me a bit of a sugar buzz.  But I know now that the Cliff Bar Shot Bloks are really nice, albeit expensive and I shall be buying some of those come the summer.  The Torq energy drinks are bad either.

Today was a sort of rest day.  Went sailing for 4 hours which doesn't really count as training, still sport though and it appears we came 4th and 3rd in the two races so not a bad effort.  was going to go swimming but my shoulder is disagreeing with the sailing so holding off.  Might go in the morning if I can drag my sorry @r$€ out of bed.

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Pain free swimming, and pain inducing turboing

This morning started with a swim session.  I managed 900m of front crawl in total, 2x200, 1x400 and 1x100m, all without feeling pain in my shoulder.  So I didn't push it too much too soon I also mixed in 600m of FC, BK and dolphin kick.  Good news at last,  so tomorrow I'll go for another short swim session.

Tonight was murder on the turbo.  Another endurance set.  After the first 10 minutes my quads were complaining.  So I pushed on for another hour. Oww oww oww. The set was 10 minutes on aerobars, 5 mins off 3 times then 5 on 2.5 off twice. They are getting easier, the first two just seemed to fly by, the third was getting tough and the shorter ones were all I had left in me  To cool down I did 4x1 mins single leg drills.  These seemed easier than the ones I did last week.  There are some serious dead spots in my pedal stroke though.  More single leg drills are in order. Maybe in my warm up as well as cool down.

Monday 8 February 2010

A couple of runs

Yesterday morning I got to go and play in the mud.  I went for a run in the fields by the river at my parents.  It was a nice run, started off a bit quick, but was soon slowed down as the mud got wetter and thicker.  I crossed over the river and ended up on an area of wet mud where building work had recently finished.  Bedford mud is really clay, London was rebuilt with bricks dug from Bedford.  I picked up so much mud my shoes must have weighed an extra 500g each.  I now agree with the idea that weight is 7 times worse on the feet than on the body.  It was like running through treacle.  Looped back and down by the river where I was running at christmas. Managed 13.5 km in 1hr15, not a bad effort considering the terrain.

Tonight's club training was 4x1km reps. It was cold and it hurt.  4 good reps all things considered.3:43 (downhill), 4:04 (uphill), 3:48, and 4:08.  Max HR pushing 89% on each set, with average HR about 85%. Good % recoveries during the short rest periods.  My calves were burning by the end though. Oww.  Swimming tomorrow, a chance to see if another week off has allowed my shoulder to recover properly.

Saturday 6 February 2010

Runs, Turboing and Fraudsters

So I've been lazy with the blog for another week.  Monday brought the club running session, short sprint sets.  Wasn't really feeling speed after the brick session on sunday.  Had a little issue with the Garmin as well, the screen locked an the keys became unresponsive, not sure if it was a gremlin or I managed to lock the keys.

Tuesday I got up and went to the pool, my shoulder wasn't up to it though so had to make do with some kick sets.  I think the planks in the cool down of the running might be the culprit there, oh well.  Tuesday evening I decided to do a Turbo session.  An hour set, in front of the radiator.  Doing 10mins on tri bars, 5 mins relaxed on hoods/drops.  Good workout, although a tad wet.

Wednesday was spinning in the evening, somehow I managed to achieve a decent HR in the session, not sure how but it worked out alright in the end.

Thursday and I did the same Turbo session again, this time I weighed myself before and after.  Lost 700g even after drinking 700ml of fluid.  Hmmm a tad hot I think.  Then training possibilities took a down turn. 2-4-1 cocktails at the triathlon club social + late night + early morning = not feeling good. So when the Friday night swimming session was cancelled Friday became a rest day.

Then Friday evening went bad.  whilst browsing the 220 forum I came across a post about the Challenge Barcelona.  It seems I have been duped into entering with the former organisers who have been stripped of the contract.  This is all rather annoying, having followed a link from the main Challenge site I entered.  It seems that this organiser is still selling places for the event, with this years dates even after they have had their contract cancelled.  After searching the internet it seems challenge have promised that all age groupers can race without having to pay twice, so having emailed the new organisers I'm hoping my place is guaranteed, although it is a week earlier, so I now have a weeks less training time.  All a bit of a mess really, my credit card company should hopefully cover the fee, but as someone that is very careful about ordering online a rather stressful experience.