Thursday, 24 March 2011

No more marathon

I am not doing well at keeping the blog up to date, and before I leave on a skiing holiday I deemed it appropriate to do a brief roundup of what has been happening recently.

Training has been going really well, and the ramp-up in distance and time spent training have left me quite exhausted. Work has been taking its share of my time and energy so I have probably bordered on over extending and inevitably overtraining myself.

Last week I had to make the tough decision not to run the London Marathon on the 17th of April. Physically I can still do it, and finish in a respectable time, but I just do not want to increase the risk of sustaining an overuse injury for the sake of a race that means very little in the bigger scheme. By raising enough money for my charity Asthma UK, I have also been offered a place in their team for next year, so I will make my assault on a solid sub 3 hour run at that even. I will probably end up having a more challenging goal, but as I have not gone below three hours yet I will stick with that goal until I start the specific training next year.

While we are on the topic of running, I have so far managed to run more than 50km in the last 3 weeks, with my longest run of 13km last night in about an hour. My average heart beat was 130bmp showing just how good my aerobic fitness is coming along. I just have to work on my running specific base, and that won’t take long as in January when I got injured I was obtaining some decent pre-build form.

Most of my recent running has been on the treadmill apart from two half hour sessions after the last two Saturday long bike rides. It is incredible how good it feels to start a run after 5+ hours on the bike. Saturday saw us doing a very long and easy ride of 140km that took around 5 ½ hours. My average heart rate for the ride was 124bpm so the run afterwards felt easy and the heart rate also stayed very low although we were doing 5min/km for about 25 mins to complete a 5km brick run.

The ride itself was a great tour of Surrey and Surrey hills (thanks Edo). It was a sunny day and most of us managed to leave the overshoes and rain jackets at home. The ride’s main purpose was to get in proper base miles under the belt, so we were chatting all the way and only during the last 40km did we do any drafting and faster riding. The increase in speed was only brought on as our bodies and not our legs started to complain.




This week is generally a bit easier as I clocked up more than 16 hours of training from Monday to Sunday last week. The worst session was definitely a masters swimming class where I could not even stick with the faster group during the 500m (!!) warm-up. This was down to a couple of heavy sessions leading into Thursday combined with the inability to keep form when getting fatigued. I will have to work on my general conditioning and technique as my running and cycling are miles ahead in terms of ability at this stage.

My first event (not race) of the season is a 100 mile sportive in April, so for that reason I am very happy that the cycling miles have been building up in my training log. Next week will hopefully be a great week of skiing which should leave me fresh to continue building a solid base for the summer months ahead.

Monday, 14 March 2011

Finally running again, and ramping up the training hours.

Last week has been my first full week on a new structured training program. Things have been going well with 13 hours of training squeezed in. I have been a little nervous to start running again, and have been putting it off for a couple of weeks to make sure that the ankle is in good nick. Since I ramped up the swim and bike training, the ankle rehabilitation exercises have taken a bit of a backseat. This is slightly worrying, as flexibility is still severely hampered, and the joint still swells up after harder sessions in the pool and on the bike.

My newly acquired program is in the 4 week preparation phase before proper base training starts. This week has been challenging in some respects and I can honestly say that the ramp in training hours can be felt. The program specifies close to 3.5 hours of running in the first week, and so far I am happy to report that I have been able to do about two hours of running without too many problems. Thursday night I went to the gym for a gentle 20 minute swim before jumping on the treadmill. I have never had a workout on the treadmill before, but running on a treadmill carries a couple of advantages. The first is that you don’t actually go anywhere, so the ankle became sore I could just hop off.

Another advantage is that the impact of running on a treadmill has nothing on pavement pounding, so I will try and do most of my running on the dreaded indoor running tool for the next couple of weeks. The first run was good and I set the pace way below my usual recovery outdoor speed. It felt good not having to worry about pacing, and I finished the 6km run in 35 minutes with an average heart rate of 120bpm. It must have been the slowest 6km I have ever done, but it felt really good to be running again. As far as the ankle goes, I could feel that the joint was fragile, but the run was pain free and quite rewarding. I think that run served as confirmation that I will be running the London marathon after all, so that is quite a relief. The sad part is it will be on very little training, so it will be a long slow affair, not the sub 3 effort that I have been building up towards before I smashed my ankle in the dreaded cross country race....oh well. Sunday night saw another swim/run double and I managed around 12km in just over an hour, so a good first week back onto the running train.

After missing out on an outdoor session last weekend I was happy to ditch the turbo trainer. The aim was to get up around 8am and head out for a 120km loop around Box hill and then towards Windsor. On closer inspection we worked out that it would be closer to 120 miles, we opted for a flat 100km to Windsor and back. The pace was quite brisk and we averaged around 30km/h for the whole ride which is probably a bit fast for the base period. The 3.5 hour bike was closely followed by a 5km shuffle to start getting used to running off the bike. It was my first proper run after a long training ride, and I can now see why athletes say they look forward to the run in an Ironman, as the different posture and position when running actually feels quite comfortable after hours in the saddle.

Last 2 weeks of training, click on image to see a larger view



Next week is more of the same and I will try and do even more running with a couple of quality Masters swimming and spinning sessions with another 4+ hours ride planned for Saturday.






Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Swim baby swim

It has been a while since my last post. The reason has been two-fold. Things are really busy at work, unfortunately that is not something that I have any control over. The other reason is I have been ramping up the training hours and that is a good thing! 


Between all of the waiting to start running again I have done a fair amount of reading on triathlon and endurance training in general. What most experts seem to say is that if you are injured and it is possible you should concentrate on your weaknesses as much as possible. Unable to do anything about my inability to get up before 6am, I decided to go for the other low hanging fruit and tackle my swim stroke. 


Having swum 6 days in the last 7 I can say that I feel a lot more comfortable and economical in the pool. My swimming started with a masters swimming session at my local gym two weeks ago, and I was given some good advice on improving my stroke length and efficiencies in the water in general. My sessions have mostly consisted of easy 100's with drills mixed in for good measure. Two weeks ago I had a real hard time keeping up with the faster group. Tonight was a different story, and although I still felt like giving up halfway through the 200 repeats I felt much better in the water and know that things are improving. I will keep focussing on taking things easy as technical flaws are just reinforced when swimming faster than a comfortable pace.


Apart from swimming I have also been getting back into the saddle with a bit more than a few pre-season eBay purchases to make sure that my rig is ready for a lot of spring mileage. Cycling currently consists of commuting to work and back with a couple of spinning and turbo sessions mixed in. I am looking forward to joining my regular riding buddies this weekend for a medium to long ride.


Training summary for the last 3 weeks:


week 1 - 9:20 (mixture between long rides, gym work and swimming sessions)
week 2 - 5:25 (no long workouts with flu interrupting training on the weekend)
week 3 - 9:07 (more strength and core work, at least 4 hours of swimming and a solid 2 hour base session on the turbo on Saturday)