Today's inspirational post

Sponsored by Nat.

It was my thitieth birdthay and Nat got me a nice photo collage of me racing. It hang out there next to my bed for a couple of  years and now it's on the dressing room window.

Anyway, I was coming from my bike ride today and got a glimpse of the photos. 

Next minute I am looking at each of them and remembering old races. It is quite amazing that only 4 years ago I was completely ignorant of many of the joys of this game.

That was all i needed to be a happy man, and get even more in race mode.

I'll share parts of the collage.

check

Bike is in order.

Just need to tick on everything else.

Out for a long ride now.

And house cleaning.

And stretching and core work.

One thing that I was cautious about is the diet.

 

The face of dissapointment

The last 4 weeks I've trained in the region of 20 hours, and since last Sunday things went back to 50% of that or less. Although appetite curbs down, it does not so at the same rate as the decrease in exercise.So I made sure I got plenty of veggies in the fridge and chose all snacks carefuly. I even bought light yougurt (which I hate because it's runny).

 

It has worked allright with the exeption of a fish and chips evening that we couldn't avoid.

 

One week out from the big day I am happy to see my shape is "race shape" and I don't look as starved as distance runners do. I have a good balance of bony and chunky areas. According to Nat my butt is too big, but can't do anything about it now.

 

And the good thing is that I cannot change much in the next 7 days.

 

Training wise I had a dissapointing Thrusday, as I was meant to do a 2000m TT swimming, which I was hoping it would go under certain barrier. And it didn't. I'm not sure if the fact that I didn't wear a wetsuit is much of an excuse, or that it was laps instead of out and back. What I was happy about, tho, is that I still managed to finish a respectable 15th.

 

 

Today is day off so it will be all about movies in the park.

 

Stay safe out there

The next 10 posts

I aim to have a final countdown. It is not that I am not interested in blogging, but IM training seems to take a fair bit of time of your leisure time.
So, here we are 10 days to race day and most of the last 9 months gone in swims, bikes and runs.
Anxiety is creeping up, two nights ago I and the firs Ironnighmare.
I was in transition and was going through this repetitive tasks and was never making it to the start line. Flashforward to the run and I was being passed by all this randon people while my objective of sub10 was going out. I woke up all sweaty.

Can they run sub 3:15:00?

Tapper week/s
Last week was the last hard week of training and this one and the next are a bit smaller in volume and more generous in the excertion front. What's on the menu?
MON: Swim 1 hr - Run 1.5hr Intervals (a 3:20min/km came out of the blue)
TUE: 2 Hr ride
WED: Swim 1 hr - Run 2hr
THU: ride 1.5 hr - Swim 1hr (2kmTT)
FRIDAY OFF!
SAT: Brick
SUN: Ride 3 hr (and maybe but maybe not) Swim race 4.2km

Stay tuned, more news tomorrow.

OK, finally. An update

It’s about 18 days to race day and it is all pretty much downhill from here. Overall I think it has been a good 8months plus of consistent training. I was browsing through my log and I managed to do in this period, more 100km plus rides than ever before. I also achieved the longest times ever on my bike (7:15:00) or running continuously (3:40:00). Not bad for a rookie.


From a volume perspective I think I ticked all the boxes.

From an intensity point of view it looks like I’ve taken it too easy on myself and I haven’t done many of these rides or runs at averages close to race pace. There are a few environmental factors to take into account (mostly shit weather and lots of hills) but it is still a worry. However it is something that today I cannot control (i.e. There’s no time machine that I can use to change the past) and I won’t lose any sleep due to it.

From a go out to the races point of view, I am so looking forward to March 3. This season has been pretty sparse on the racing front and I almost forgot how good it is to be out there trying to get from A to B as fast as one can. I have gone through the gear, the nutrition, the course and so on a few times in my mind already, but the next two weeks are to get even deeper into in and have every detail picture.

I also raced. 10 days ago there was the National Sprint championships, that I didn’t run but did an oly distance event instead. The Erin Baker Memorial Triathlon in Kinloch.

The swim
Was not good. I mucked around too much at the start and didn’t position myself in close enough to familiar faces or feet that would help me through. I spent a good amount of energy trying to catch those feet, but it didn’t quite work in the end. At 500m I was already a good 40secs down of whre I should be. And I’ve lost the train.

The bike
I was not going to let a crap swim ruin my day, so I hopped on the bike with the idea of keeping a good solid pace and be passed by the least number of people. The course goes up for 10km and then comes down. I was never to go over 85% of my heart rate, according to the coache’s instructions. To my surprise, I was passed by a bunch of 4 or 5 people, but I passed a similar amount of guys through the leg (probably worst swimmers than I that I never see?)

The run
I had free reign on my run, as long as I negative splitted it. It’s 4 laps of an undulating course with elevations in the order of 3 to 5 m overall. I did the first lap in 9:20, the second and third in 9:15 and the last one in 9:04. A good negative split that put me as #12 overall and a vote of confidence to my legs.

As I said at the beginning, I miss being out there racing, so let’s get all that good vibes ready for 3 March.



Stay tuned,