Ditto and a further comment

Mr TOTKat did a bit of a mad parkrun this morning.  Having decided to cycle to Eastbourne for their inaugural parkrun, he (unintentionally) tempted me to join him, but I knew I wouldn't be confident in being able to get to the start before 9am and didn't want to hold him back so I decided to do my long ride followed by a run by sitting on a turbo trainer in the garden, under a heater (and I still got cold toes!) for almost 4 hours before running around the neighbourhood a bit.

It seems that while the circumstances of our mornings were different in that Mr TOTKat went all the way to Eastbourne, leaving the house shortly after 04:30 and I didn't even leave the grounds of the house until after midday we had a shared experience overall.  We both felt great on the run.

We've both been training consistently since the end of December and we both felt completely fine running after just under 4 hours in the saddle.  I felt particularly pleasantly surprised when I started running off the bike... the sessions of brick circuits that Jez has had me doing in the gym(*) have made a huge difference to how my legs feel off the bike.  Previously, they'd feel almost like they were someone else's legs; heavy, wobbly and slow.  Today, I just felt like I'd had a really good warm up before my run, not that I'd been slogging in the saddle for nearly 4 hours, and I boinged off down the road.  Loving that very much!

* example brick circuits
 - 10 minutes warm up on the static bike
 - 5 minutes hard spin in a high gear, 2 minutes standing climb, 1 minute seated climb, 2 laps of the running track
 - 6 minutes hard spin in a high gear, 3 minutes standing climb, 1 minute seated climb, 3 laps of the running track
 - 7 minutes hard spin in a high gear, 3 minutes standing climb, 2 minute seated climb, 4 laps of the running track

Back in the gym

Finally!  A week where I went to the gym three times!  And I already feel loads better for it.  My core supporting bits and bobs are feeling so much more -there- and useful.  OK, so I didn't get my planned swim in (as wasn't well early in the week) and due to busyness at work I didn't get to get a run in either (though I'm planning to get out tomorrow), but THREE gym sessions!  Woooo!

It's now that I need to get the base levels of strength and endurance on the increase; start to get some longer and longer bikes and runs in.  And that's where I run into some difficulties...

The "easiest" way to get a long run in, given time constraints, is to get on the treadmill at the gym in a lunch break at work.  But I can't use treadmills.  I can't run on them at any decent speed and feel seasick when I get off the damned things.  So.  Sod that.  It will have to be the old trick of using my commute to get a run in.  Start off by getting on the tube and going part way home before getting out and running the rest of the way.  Gradually making the tube journey shorter and shorter until I'm not using it at all and just running all the way home.  I can make that a 15km run if I start from the door of the office and finish at the front door at home, which is good enough for me for now.

Thankfully, cycling on a turbo trainer is actually not difficult (in terms of getting used to the sensation).  Plus, it gives the chance to get long, constant power output stints in.  That's something you can't do on the roads around here as there are so many interruptions (remember, 75 traffic lights from home to office... that's a lot of stop start if even only 15% of those lights require a full stop).  So, when we get back from holiday later on in the year, I'll be cutting back the bushes in the garden and erecting a gazebo (kindly lent to us by my parents), so the turbo trainer can be set up in the garden (we don't have anywhere in the house with a large enough expanse of concrete floor to put it on to absorb the anti-socially loud vibrations which make it sound like a jet turbine) underneath it for lots of sitting and grinding through turbo sessions and not getting too cold or wet.

I've not got a plan laid out yet as I've not sat down and thought it through and done all of the research around building a base level of fitness just yet.  I'm thinking November, December and part of January should be a good start to that before the real training plan begins 16 weeks out from Wimbleball.  Some re-reading and thinking to be done, then I can lay out a plan that's achievable rather than too difficult to fit in and resulting in huge amounts of stress.