First Competative Blast!

Competed in an 8km X-country last Wednesday and although it was just a 'military' race, there was still a good turnout with 130 odd runners, mainly consisting of Army but with a fair sprinkling of RAF and Navy. The weather was proper x-country weather...horizontal rain, high winds and flipping freezing! Ah, good old South Atlantic sunshine! I managed to grab second place in a time of 30 mins 30 secs, which is a time I'm pretty happy with. It was a tough race and I did push myself quite hard coz I wanted to test myself. And test myself I did! I lost out to another RAF bloke so it was good to see the 'fly boys' taking the top 2 spots and show the Army a clean (ish) pair of heels!
At the end of the race my legs felt heavy but aerobically I felt great! Which suggest to me that my endurance base is pretty good but I'm probably lacking a bit of power?? I've got 6 weeks to address that before my first triathlon of the year...so that will be me introducing more intensity in to my running then!

As for the rest of last week, it was mainly moderate effort intervals of swimming, biking and running until last weekend where I went long...

Saturday morning I knocked out 3.5km in the pool in 1 hr 03 mins. In the afternoon, after lunch and a kip, I did a 3 hour turbo ride where I threw in a '10 min hill' every 30 mins. I used my ipod on my bike which is something I've never done before, thinking that the ear plugs and the bucket loads of sweat I produce in the gym wouldn't mix too well! It was actually a great help having The Prodigy egging me on!
Sunday morning I braved some of the worst weather I've ever ran in! I had planned to run outside, up and over the Peak, and nothing was going to prevent me from finishing my 'long distance weekend' the way I had planned! So this meant getting up at 7am to do battle with winds gusting 50mph mixed with rain and hail which felt like needles on my skin! At some points I was running backwards to lessen the pain of the hail stones on my face! The pain of hail was temporary but it was my hands that suffered for most of the run. Once my gloves were wet (I only brought a pair of woollen running gloves with me...schoolboy error!) the chill of the wind froze my hands and I just couldn't get them warm again until I was thawing out in a hot shower back in my accommodation. It was a tough run but I got a great buzz from having still completed what I had set out to do...2 hours of tough hilly running!

The following day was an easy swim in the morning before work, and after work was an easy bike with a bit of core work.

This week will be a bit more 'intense'.

Train smart y'all.