February 2011 Stats - Positives

Swim: 9.63 km, 2.3km/hr - Much further much faster overall. This is very good.
Bike: 129.76km, 19.2km/hr, 1217m el - Big drop off in distance but casual speed increased.
Run: 40.17km, 8.4km/hr, 493m el - Further than Jan but not so far as Dec but generally faster. Need to do more climbing.
Other: Walking 12km.
Strength: At least 2 hours - but not enough.

I love stats time.

Spoke too soon

After a weekend of hauling furniture up stairs and scraping adhesive off the kitchen ceiling I have pulled a muscle in my neck and am off line again for a time. Hopefully not long. I don't think I can survive losing this much sleep.

Rest and achieve

Blog - first official rest day. By that, I mean the first day I can put my hand on heart, say I've done 3 good days training now I get a day off.

Ok so I ruined it with a 3.5 hour drive but at at least I'm making up for it by going to bed at 8.30. What follows for my reward is glorious adaptation.

I set out to try to achieve my 6.5km run target for this week and manage 10km instead.

I found it a real bonus to wear my watch to run as my Garmin, tucked away go my bag or a pocket is such a faff to look at. At least as I time my run I know roughly how far I have been. The first 10minutes to the lane. 37 minutes to the tiny hamlet of Blinknoll must be 5km but I've messed about taking a picture so call it 4.5. 45 minutes to the canal and some muddy patches but my legs feel like they could go on for ever. It's an hour by the time I reach the end of the canal and I run up the last bit of trail to the road into Wootton Bassett.

I must be over 6.5km. I check with the Garmin and I'm so tantalisingly close to 10km (9.24) I decide I can definitely manage 0.5km more. I'm not doing that well as I've muddled minutes and decimals, expecting the distance to click over to 10km when it hits 9.6. Thankfully I realise my mistake and stop the Garmin at 10.12km outside the newsagents where I go to buy a tri mag to get me through the rest of Friday and the weekend without my bike, swim kit or a tv. I am over the moon. Apart from the usual aches and pains associated with me running for am hour I've had no muscle or joint pain and only the slight threat of a blister on the new insoles.

I'm not in the right socks. Most of all I really enjoyed this run. I made it a long one by not going too fast, not adding unplanned hills (largely because it got too boggy and I was enjoying myself too much to get wet feet) and taking care to move my running onto my toes... Or at least my midfoot. I feel like I have again waved goodbye to the person who used to say, "running doesn't get any easier, I just go further and faster". That was an easy run. Ok, it was longer than expected but I did some shopping in Bassett and even managed a shuffle home. I sincerely hope good times are here to stay.
Route.

Swim Test finally completed

It's taken a while but the swim test I had planned for last week has finally happened - that is, I have finally managed it.

I am starting to conclude that I can't swim 2km with a pool full of playing children. I shouldn't even attempt it and just wait for a day when I can get out of bed in time to make it to a lane swimming session.

The First 10 - For the first time ever I looked at my watch before 10 laps were done. It said 7 laps. How depressing.
The next 20 - I managed to get into a rhythm and get up to 33 laps before I looked at the watch. A few manic overtakes of the man doing verrrrr...yyyyy wide breastroke, slowly, in the fast lane. Don't even get me started on him swimming down the middle of the lane.
The next 30 - I was joined by the regulars. An older man who swims crawl faster than me and a young guy who swims breastroke about the same speed. Slow man finally moved over a lane and at one point I got between the two fast boys and tailed the toes of the crawling man in front. A fun speed boost but the breastroke man got fed up and went round me again. Another play joined the foray and I did a few hard fast lengths getting swept up in the dick fight malestrom. Looked at the watch at 66 laps.
The next 10 - had to have a burp-stop to alleviate the nausea. Dropped the dickfight and took to long, slow strokes. I dropped the focus on hand and arm position and instead adopted a more straight-on approach to my body position in the water, which seemed to make arm bend instead of straight on entry. It was more comfortable and felt more effective so I stuck with it through to 74 laps.
The last 10. Phleurrragh. Going as slow as possible to avoid being sick. Counting pairs of laps as 3 to go sounds so much less than 6.
The warm down - a lot of slow stretching sitting as still as possible.

It was a hard 2km swim. It was not the fastest nor the slowest. It was fairly accurate - I only gained one lap on the watch which I shouldn't have and I think this is because of my burp-stop or the foot cramp lap where I had to stop to hold onto the side for a bit.

Without being mean to myself, I think I can discount all previous 2km efforts before I bought the poolmate on the basis of my counting being RUBBISH. If I can't do this sub-50" now, there's no reason I should've ever managed it.

Positive

There's too much negativity in this blog to reflect how I feel today.

I have never before challenged my employer to shake themselves up and find me work. While it hasn't got me anywhere yet, it will. There's stuff in the planning and I feel good about myself because two different sets of people want to hire me. Meanwhile, what can be more perfect for a triathlete than a well-paid job where I can sit and do next to nothing all day? The boy needs help but that's my only necessary task.

This morning I rode to work on the race bike. I did one-footed riding which, combined with the newly fitted tri bars gets me used to the bike position and improves my pedalling efficiency. It's an easy work out but an effective one. Amusingly, for someone who's already late for work, it also makes me slower.

Riding on the tri bars highlighted the fact that they are skew since I adjusted them after my last ride. They're fixed now after a casual lunch break.

I feel like it's all ready to go. I do need to check it as it made my hips hurt after the Sherwood forest ride.

On Sunday night when we returned from Bassett I set about reading an old season planning diary. Not that old... Just 2years old from the year when I bought "the cyclist's training bible" and tried road racing. The break down of effort for the one discipline was useful and I definitely ended that season a stronger rider than I started it.

It has occurred to me that (now I've got my gear heart rate monitor out) I should apply this same tool to the decidedly more complex sport of triathlon. I could probably go out and buy the "triathlete's training bible" but I could somewhat guess the end for less money and at least come up with a plan that's a good-enough shade of better than nothing.

While hours of sitting about on the sofa planning numbers is not going to help me improve physically, it can contribute towards making me mentally more convinced in my training plan. Whether that is, "is it going to work?" or "am I going to follow it?", only time can tell but the two questions are probably less exclusive than I think. The author himself indicates that a bad plan is more effective than no plan. I'm not sure that includes one which can't physically be followed. One thing is for sure, there's not really a plan now. What exists is a series of targets - all written at Christmas when I was feeling quite good. They can not all be delivered every week, I have to pick them carefully.

So the swim plan will be separated into two sessions per week except for test weeks which are hard. The bike plan will get broken down by time, spinning effort and hillyness and the run will get broken down into distance increments followed by speed increases I feel I can manage.

Key is my tendency to over-training and if I can manage that by planning... I should see results - particularly if I manage tonight's over-enthusiasm by planning instead of getting home and dragging myself out for a run. Oh, y'know that sounds so tempting.

Otherwise I have to try to avoid getting distracted by things off the tri radar. Getting as much of the house finished before the tri season really gets going them getting it on the market so I don't have to think about it. Aside from housey chores I need to distract my non training hours with the glorious pursuit of reading tri magazines or checking out what my team mates are up to as they usually inspire me to try harder. This is an un-disguised excuse for reading facebook a lot. Doing laundry of course counts as tri training.

But back to the positives. I am up to 5.5km on the new feet. I've fulfilled all of my health resolutions - feet, jaw, other tests all clear.

Now I'm just wanting the sun to come out and for the gym and the pool to empty of all of last christmas's new years resolutions. I tell you what, they're a well resolved lot around here .

Fail

An attempt to do my target run this week was 1km short of planned.

OK so I wasn't tired, it was cold and I decided I'd better get back to work after lunch but still, I felt like giving up.

I have no idea what's wrong with me but I just have to have faith that I'll get there in the end.

Mannana.

Conflicted

For all I love being in Sheffield, I hate going back to my house in Wootton Bassett... And I hate going back because I love that little house.

When I'm in it I am cosy. I am home. I sit on the sofa with TSK. It's not big enough for us and all our shit. It's unfinished and unkempt and nobody can care but us... and we don't.

I hate coming here because I hate leaving it. I hate going back to the big prissy house in the middle of useless.

I love being back in Sheffield and I still hate certain people at Halcrow for throwing my life into this kind of chaos right now.

Ha. Right now.... 12 months have passed and I'm still dicking around with getting it on the market... And still trying to wangle a job which means I get to make money on living in it. Conflicted? Not me