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.