The last of the big weeks in 2013

Last week was, on paper, the last of the big training weeks this year.  The message from my coach was "get your head down and get through it".  So.  I did.  And, come Sunday's 3.5 hour bike ride I was knackered.  My hamstrings were already battered from still being unused to the new set-up on the Fuji and having put in a lot of miles of bike work in the last fortnight from Ride London 100 onwards; 100 miles that day, a few gym bike sessions during the week and a ride home, then a 65km ride from Winchester to Bagshot, some more quality gym bike sessions in the week, then a 3 hour ride on Saturday.  Sunday, I headed out for my usual 3 Hills route in Surrey with quite some fatigue, but it felt OK.  I wound it up gently at the start and then hit Hungry Hill Lane with less horror than usual at the terrible road surface, ground up Staple Lane in my second fastest recorded time, followed by the same performance up Crocknorth and then PBd chunks up to Box Hill and some of the segments up the hill and then all the way home from there.  Even fatigued and with hamstrings on fire, the grind seemed less difficult up the hills and I felt able to push through the discomfort and tiredness with more than usual ease.  This is exactly how I felt in the latter stages of Ride London; tired but with plenty of power and drive left.

On paper, this has been the most successful (unsupervised) training week since Galway last year... only one missed swim:-

The bike work is really paying off and it's making me a little excited for Zell Am See.  In my head, I'm starting to believe that I might be able to do something good at that race.  I should be able to and I'm starting to believe that my body can do stuff when I tell it to.

This week, I have a couple of runs (one sharp one, one recovery) a couple of bike (one sharp, one cadence work), two swims (one sharp, one endurance) and that's it.  Then it's 4 races in 4 weeks; sprint, 70.3, Olympic, sprint.

FUN!  (gotta get race plans set in my head that aren't just "SMASH IT!1!!}#&*^]!]@1@J+ZZ!" )

Raaaaar!

I have a new coach.  And I think the chemistry/cultural fit is a hell of a lot better.  Where coachJez did a great job with my swim technique, the rest was very much lacking and not working.  So, having really got on with the guys from TheTrilife.com at the Wimbleball (UK 70.3) familiarisation weekend, I decided to take the plunge and move to being coached by one of their coaches.  I was lucky enough to be able to get a place working with Richard Jones, head coach at TheTriLife.com and not only a very well qualified coach, but a very experienced and talented triathlete himself.

The first few weeks of training programme look pretty intimidating, to be honest, but there's a lot of work to do and not very long to do it in.  A lot of the initial sessions are about getting me to understand pacing at all and setting some good habits and basics in place that are simply missing at the moment.  The first swim session on the programme looked horribly complicated but ohgod was it so much fun to do!  I really enjoyed it and it wasn't as complicated as it looked.  The run and bike sessions have been similarly fun and mentally stimulating as well as helping to get a good base muscular feel for cadence and pace.

Noisy graph, but it shows a nice average of around 92rpm.  Good start!

Today's bike ride was a very positive and confidence boosting.  I managed to keep to the cadence target set and got myself into a great position with some bike handling skills that I've been worried about so far - I can now actually take a drink in the saddle almost easily!  I managed it 9 times over the ride as well as getting on and off the clip-on tri-bars in the sections less busy with traffic.  It sounds silly and trivial, but I've struggled with it to date and I think a combination of a huge confidence boost plus a steady cadence has tipped me over the sticking point from where I couldn't manage to do it to being a lot more comfortable with it.

After today's ride, I feel absolutely fabulous.  Full of confidence and the joys of spring.  I guess the sunshine helped as well as the successful ride.  Raaaar!

Game on

First tri of the season on Monday! GAH!

It's been a long time coming and I've actually been training since December.  Consistently.  Unlike any of the races I've done before.  However, due to social obligations I didn't have any long sessions at all last weekend and due to wanting a rest day this week, there's none this weekend either - just a bimble down to the sprint bike leg, a spin around it, a swim and then a bimble home again.  That will have caused a bit of dropoff in endurance, but hopefully not in the power/speed that I've been doing a bit of training on.

I'm really quite excited.  I'm hopeful of an appreciable improvement on the bike leg.  I've been doing some structured training around power and endurance on the bike which has made one heck of a difference to my hill climbing and my distance capability.  But if there's a course change on Monday due to the stupid roadworks that have been on the Thames Turbo course for months, there's no comparison with previous races.  And that'll be annoying.  I crave benchmarks and comparisons to tell me how and if I'm improving.  I'm hopeful of a strong swim that's less draining than before for the same speed.  And I have no idea about the run, but there are three factors at play there; lots of long slow running, a change in running style to stop heel striking, and a bunch of speed/power work.  So it's hard to tell whether I'll be slower or faster there.

There is a 5km "time trial" for me tomorrow morning (a parkrun - probably Roundshaw) which should give me some idea of run speeds for Monday - my first all-out 5km in a very long time as I've been doing either 15km+ runs or really short intervals sessions for the last couple of months.  So we'll see about that in the morning.