TRAINING UPDATE JAN 2010

Just a quick training update. It’s been ages since I’ve last had so much fun training. My life is a joy again! I am getting adequate sleep, I’m eating GOOD food, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my family and I’m just LOOOOVING my training. It is all about balance and as soon as I start to neglect any one of the above aspects, then all the others slowly start to feel like an effort too. I am literally having the time of my life.

The cycling is going well and I am focussing on a bit of strength work doing a few hill sessions per month. I also try to do intervals weekly, but not taking my heart to high. Weekends I don’t miss the 4hour plus rides and I will keep it between 4 -5hours until June/July this year. This is enough time in the saddle for this time in my training and I will have a great base come winter.

With the swimming I am not even looking at a clock in the pool. I am going very slow on purpose focussing on my stroke. I will plod along at 40 – 60 laps a session until August/September after which I will start to focus a bit more on speed/intervals/etc. I love swimming in the lane on the side where the streams are the strongest. This gives me great a feel for the water, first fighting the stream (concentrating on an effective catch) and then coming back with long fluent strokes (almost like motor pacing on a bike). When I end off with a few laps in the middle lane I just can’t believe how great it feels.

My running speed is picking up weekly and I am very surprised by this. I am religiously keeping my heart at 70% on all my runs and my speed has dropped by 40seconds per km over the last 3,5 weeks! I am only doing hill/power runs and long/slow runs at the moment and I am easily clocking 4:40-4:45min per km. I would have been happy with 5min runs when I start with a bit of speed/Time trial work at around May this year. It looks as if I am going to be around 4:30min slow runs by that time and that would be just perfect! I am enjoying my running for the first time in a very very long time.

I missed training with the Weasel today and it wasn’t nice going out alone. I hope he recovers quickly so that we can burn some rubber together again!

Till next time, be strong!

TriJackal