Early Bird Catches Some Speedwork

Last week was a solid week of fairly hard and fast training, which was nice!

Early shifts at work last week meant more very early starts than I would have liked! Whacking that alarm clock at 5am and crawling out from beneath a cosy duvet just to sit on my turbo in a cold and drafty garage, or to hit the treadmill in a lonely gym is bad enough once a week, let alone 3 days out of 4! Hey ho, needs must.

Although I'm primarily training with Ironman UK in mind (base, base, base!) I have my first race of the year coming up next month (Stokesley Duathlon) so this week I thought I'd better introduce a bit of speed work into my regime.

Its been a while since I've done any out and out speed work on the turbo but it made a nice change. Mondays early sesh was simply 1 min fast (minimum 95 rpm) 1 min easy, repeated 10 times. I did 3 sets with 5 min easy spinning between. This was a pretty tough workout so the evening session was a bit of core and a LOT of stretching! All my weekday bike sessions last week were on the turbo (yawn...) but the days are getting longer so hopefully it won't be too long before I get the chance to ride on tarmac before and after work.

My 'break through' swim this week was 7 x 300m on 5 mins. This was a good old lung buster! This was done on Wednesday; I don't normally feel too sore after swimming but my shoulders and triceps were still smarting on Friday night during my long swim of 3.4km (well, it's long for me!)

Running wise, during the week I kept to my 'speed theme' with some 'sharp' intervals and even managed my first hills session in nearly a year! I'd kept away from dedicated hill workouts since I struggled to shake off a couple of annoying calf injuries last year so it felt great to feel the pain that only hill reps can dish out! With the weather on Saturday being almost tropical, well double figures, I managed a 12 mile run in a short sleeve top! Felt good on the run and felt I was taking it fairly easy so was surprised to clock 1hr20.

My Sunday ride was a brisk 2 hr 30, on my race bike, followed by a 20 min run. It felt good to unleash my carbon steed for the first time in ages!

Monday this week is a rest day, which will be my first total rest day in 2 weeks. I feel as though I need it too, my legs are a tad sore.

It's fitness test time on Tuesday so I will see if I've improved on my last test back in September. (14:4 to beat on the run, 70 press-ups and 52 sit-ups). As far as the rest of the week goes, I'm on nights for most of it so hopefully it'll be, 'wot, no turbo?'

Stay fit.

Blog's Away!!

Well, this is it..my very first post on my very first blog!

I thought I'd give this blog lark a shot, mainly to force me into taking a more organised approach to my training. Time will tell if it works!!

I suppose I should put in a few details about myself to start with.

I'm 39 years young and will hit the big four 'oh' in July this year. I have a lovely and very (ish) understanding tri widow wife and 2 great boys (13 and 15) and live near York in North Yorkshire.

My sporting background is in running, which I started at around 11 years old and sort of dipped in and out of until my mid 20's. I was never a superstar but did compete at county level until leaving college and reached my 'peak' with a 2 min 800m in my early 20's. From then on I dabbled with football and hockey until I saw the light and found triathlon whilst serving in Cyprus in 2005.

When you start a new sport like tri, (especially in the warm weather of the Med) if you get hooked you can make quite quick gains which only serves to get you even more hooked!

Those early super sprint races, for me, were all about surviving the 300m sea swim, then I would spend most of the bike (mountain variety) thanking my lucky stars that I had actually made it out of the water in one piece! As most of you know, the buzz you get from completing your first tri is awesome and was enough for me to realise that I wanted to be more competitive.

In Cyprus I was fortunate enough to have some great facilities right on my doorstep and a club with some very experienced athletes who were happy to pass on tons of tips and advice.

By the time I left Cyprus at the end of 2007, I had managed to get my standard distance time down to 2 hr 10 mins, due to a fair bit of hard training and a bling bike!

Returning from Cyprus I picked up a couple of persistent calf injuries and kinda 'limped' through 2008, only competing in a few races.

So, bring on 2009! So far things are going pretty well and my base training has been going according to plan i.e. NO INJURIES!

I have been fortunate to pick up a place in the TriUK Team for 2009 and am looking forward to racing for them. Also, because I am currently a member of the RAF Elite Team, I get a supply of For Goodness Shakes which are an excellent way to refuel my poor old muscles after a session. I will also be stuffing my face with Eat Natural Bars at every opportunity!

Although I am 'going long' this year, attempting IM UK in Aug (somewhere in Bolton!) I am still planning to have a pretty fun packed race calendar as long as my limbs can take it!

I reckon I've waffled enough for my first post, so that's it for now, stay fit.