lots of news

Even though it was a quiet week for me, it was entertaining enough with the news from Le Tour, the crashes, the sprints and winding up all the Cav-hating troups here and there.
What is more, 4 guys ran sub 8 hours iron distance races in the past 8 days. And Chrissie wellington broke her own record yet another time.
This blog is not going to top those news.
Ever.
Even less in the grey Auckland winter. It's only the last two weeks that the weather got really wintry and the roads are becoming less and less friendly. In the past 4 weeks I went through 6 tubes and 2 tyres (one of them I rode onto for 200m going down a hill at 50km/h). One still has to tick the boxes, so it has been kind of hard.
ACCIDENTS:

I've decided to do hill reps on the windtrainer. Out of three times I was on the road I got two accidents, none of which was serious, but still a bit scary. The first one was a car vs. bike, but as I was going up hill I dodged a right turning car and hit it very slowly. The second one is a puncture at speed, where I stayed upright thanks to my great bike handling skills (and a bit of luck again)

HOURS:
The days are getting like 30 seconds longer each day, which sucks, because it doesn't make any difference if you're going for a 1.45 or a 2 hour run. But all in all I've found the rythm of how to organize my training weeks.

TIREDENESS
For the first time in over two years I had a "hit the wall" week, a combination of stress and fatigue was all too much. I didn't miss a single session, but I was looking forward to Saturday afternoon and a big siesta. I am told that there are points during the IM training where more training is the best way forward. I will try that avenue and seee.

On my TdF I am still quite on track for Cadel Evans. Gessink seemed a bit tired the last two stages. And hopefully Hushov will get back to fight for points instead of trying to keep the YJ.

Enough for today,

happy training to you all

Thoughts on speed, and an extraordinary evening

You all may do the same and leave the mind wonder while doing those long runs or rides or swims. One of the thoughts that came to me (apart from the supermarket list, stuff about my friends in Argentina and what I would wear for Friday at work) was that there’s a point where speed becomes a by product. I’ll explain, as we keep training and getting fitter and then increasing volumes we all have small or big gains in terms of speed and race results. We may even think we can stop ageing, but that’s not true.


After some time, we all hit a point where the gains get smaller and smaller, and that when we realize that we can’t beat ageing and we can’t beat genetics. However, we can certainly keep improving and that’s when the focus changes to technique. By just reading many of our blogs it’s easy to see a trend that many times end up with us doing small changes to hour swim, run or pedal stroke or cadence and get to another level in each discipline. Stretching seems to be a big one, and then coache’s advise on swimming and running are just behind. I am not sure how it works on the bike, though.

I guess what I wanted to say is that the main focus many times is not going harder faster, but doing it in a way that has not other result than going faster, and then going harder AND faster. Funny, hum?

The second part of this blog is about last nite. There’s this race called stroke and stride, it’s been held in Mission Bay, Auckland for some 20 years now. There’s plenty of stories and many world champions had raced there. It’s a swim-run event and is fast and furious, but it also a good introduction to multisport. Last evening was the first race of this season, and while the girls were out, there was a pod of orca whales swimming with them. This was not a stunt by a wetsuit manufacturer, it was real black big mammals swimming 100metres from shore.

The organizers had to delay the men’s start until the rowers and surf lifesavers moved the whales out. It was cool to watch and I guess it could have played in some of the men starting the race 5min later. The photo is thanks to Sarah, who saw her husband venture into the sea of killer whales. I was supposed to start but I couldn’t fit my long run any earlier, so that’s why I was in the sidelines. Only in New Zealand, he he he