The last few days

Thursday I did a great turbo session prescribed by my coach.

Warm-up: single-leg riding, 10 sets of 1 min with each leg (total of 20 min)

Main set: 6 intervals of 10 min each, starting with 7 min @ 60% and 3 min @ 85% effort, then with each interval, shorten the 60% by 30 sec and add 30 sec to the 85% effort, until the last two 5 min @ 60%, 5 min @ 85%.

Cool-down: no-hands riding in 5 different positions for 2 minute each, and think about smooth pedalling without your hands, engaging glutes and core muscles.

A session that really gets the HR up and gets the speed into the legs - about time too. The turbo is turning out to be a very valuable training aid!

Friday - I missed the normal morning swim (couldnt get out of bed) but did go to the gym after work and punished myself for missing the swim with a 10k row. As I haven't been rowing for a while I wanted to set a bench mark for future rows. 10k = 41mins. Not bad if I do say so myself. This was followed by some upper body conditioning work of 10x3 sets of chin ups, 10x3 sets of tricep dips and finally 15x3 sets of push ups.

Saturday - This, in my plan, should be my long ride day but due to other commitments it would have been impossible to fit in a long 5hr ride so I had no option to swap around my Sat and Sun. Long run it was then. Again, due to prior commitments I didnt have time to do a run until 7pm (Saturday night and Im out running - a triathletes life!) but I did a great run of 22km all the way around Hampstead Heath and along other delightful roads of London. My longest run to date and a nice steady pace too. All this slow and steady stuff is really starting to pay off now.

Sunday - Should have been long ride day but due to Saturdays efforts I had serious stiff legs and felt pretty fatigued so, lazily, bailed on any session and just laid on the sofa all day.

Tuesday - Intervals

A great run session this morning. Up at 5am, out by 540am on the bike down to Millfields Park. The weather is getting warmer (still not warm but warmer) and mornings brighter, makes training MUCH more enjoyable and easy to endure. On to interval training now, we have moved on from just easy, steady, aerobic work and we are now working on more speed directed workouts AS WELL as the slow steady stuff.

I cycled out nice and easy, knowing I have a hard INTERVAL session coming, don't want to waste any energy on the commute otherwise Ill pay for it later on.

The session consisted of a 400m loop round some cones. We had to set a pace which we thought was a comfortable pace, nothing too slow, but something we could hold for a period of time. We then do one loop, rest, two loops, rest, three loops, rest, four loops, rest and finally 5 loops. Each individual interval getting longer (more loops), aim to stay at the pace we first set on the initial loop.

Normally, with inexperienced amateur athletes you will go out too hard initially and not be able to hold the pace for the remaining intervals.... me, not being inexperienced (yeh right) managed not only to hold my pace, but get faster with each interval, not slow intervals either, averaging about 4 mins/km, a fast pace for me and not something I could keep up beyond 4km..... at the moment anyway. The others who went faded as expected.

Overall a good session. Very beneficial. Not only does it work the 'fast twitch' muscles (the muscles which are used for faster, more explosive exercises, these muscles tire much quicker than the 'slow twitch' muscles) and starts to tone them up but it also allows you to learn about yourself, learn that you need to pace yourself depending on the distance. I plan on doing a Marathon in November, these types of workouts show me that pacing is everything otherwise by the end of that marathon I will fade away to a slow pace and I want to be finishing strong, stronger and faster than my initial pace.

I should be swimming tomorrow morning but I think I will re-jiggle my TP and sleep in. Gym tomorrow after work though for sure.

Losing my edge...

Well, I seem to be losing the battle with the blog. I haven't posted again in 2 weeks.

Its been a busy two weeks, plenty of swimming, biking and running, also I have been doing more conditioning work as its something I have been neglecting but know it will benefit me if I put in the time!

Run session tomorrow.

Im back with a bang...

As I said in my previous post, Ive been unable to post but now I'm back!

Yesterday I went to the run session, it was a horrible, cold, wet, dark morning and only me and the coach turned up, so a one-on-one session. Not bad. This week was circuits; using a lap of the park 1k) stopping at 3 different stations to work on different exercises.
The first lot of exercises

10 x step ups on the bench but backwards

10 x lunges then up into a calf raise

10 x burpees [sometimes known as a squat thrust]

Then run onto next station a third of the way round the park and into the next exercises;

30 seconds plank with legs raised on the bench

15 seconds sideways plank with arm and leg raised, done on both sides

In plank position touching alternative shoulder 10 x with each hand, then the same but touching hips.

Run onto next and final stop in the circuit where there is some pull up bars;

5 x pull ups

10 x knees up whilst hanging

10 x knees up to side whilst hanging

Then run back round to the start. We did this 4 times and I'm suffering today with aching abs and butt!

I was going to go on turbo tonight but don't feel up to it, Ill get up in the morning and turbo away and hit the gym after work too for some rowing.

Its been a while.

Well, its been a while since I posted... there are a few reasons for this but mainly its because my laptop has been playing up making it impossible to type!

I'm not going to review all my training over the last 2 weeks or so but what I will say is that training has been going well and i'm feeling much fitter. Ill start to blog regularly now as I have access to a comp that works!

Tuesday Run session

A great run session on Tuesday. I rode over there as I didn't feel like the 5k run there and back with a hill session in the middle!

The main session was done on a longer hill near springfield park. We did some running drills to warm up the muscles and then did 5 reps on the hill, every rep concentrating on something different.

1st rep - Steady pace to record a base time
2nd rep - Concentrating on body position
3rd rep - Concentrating on cadence on the up hill and seeing how it affected us
4th rep - Running forwards then switching to running backwards after 20 strides
5th rep - Steady pace, concentrating on all of above

This was followed by a gentle jog back to Millfields park and a 5k ride home.

The weather looks like it is turning for the worse - shit

A decent week

Overall this week has been pretty successful, I only missed one session and nailed the others, so I'm pretty happy especially as the 2 weeks prior had been very poor.

Friday - This was the missed swim session but I did jump on the turbo after work. A 45 min workout at a steady pace. Also as a warm up, 1 min in each gear on the rear, which is quite a toughy considering on my turbo wheel I have an 11-21 cassette, coupled with the fact that the CycleOps fluid 2's resistance is much harder than the road, needless to say, it raised my HR a beat or 50.

Saturday - Yesterday I went with my coach to do some bike drills and a 10mile TT. This was done on a 1 mile stretch of road with a roundabout at each end. The road was reasonably quiet and safe and on every loop I shouted out my HR, so next time we have some benchmarks and can measure any progress. I did it in 29mins, average speed 31km/h, which, considering the time of year and the base work Ive been doing (and lack of speed work), I was reasonably happy with. Once my build work starts I would hope to average 33/34km/h if not more.

I bought some second hand Oval clip-on TT bars for my bike as I wanted a change from the ones I have... what a mistake, they are not comfortable and not long enough, Ill be putting the old ones back on and sticking with them I think!

Heading out for a run now then into the gym for some core and weights work.

Back to the water

Went for a swim yesterday, just over to the local pool for 45 mins to get back in the swing. The pool was rammed, very very busy and the swim wasn't very enjoyable - should have just stayed in bed for another hour!

CycleOps sent me out a resistance unit replacement, free of charge and they didn't even want the old one back - now thats what you call customer service. Unfortunately it didn't arrive until after 7 so didnt have time to use it (as planned), so today was a rest day.

Hopefully I will get out of bed in the morning and go to the swim session, I really need to get into it again.

Tuesday Run session

Back to the Tuesday run sessions, the club run session conducted by the same guy who coaches me. Its a 5k run there and a 5k run back plus the session so is a decent, challenging session. Sometimes, I may cycle there but as my bike is missing a tyre I couldn't even consider it.

I was up at 5am and out the door by 530am, a steady pace to cover the 5k in 30 mins and made it just by 6am. We (5 of us) head off to Springfield park area where there is a shortish hill which is perfect for repeats and drills.

We started off by doing drills of heel flicks, high knees, side stepping, lunges and reverse lunges, each time moving up the hill and on each repeat going further up it. Following this, we did a main set of reverse running up the hill followed by side stepping down, holding a steady pace up and not slowing when reaching the summit. Then we did 3 full hill repeats forward running looking to reach maximum power at the summit and gentle jog back down.

This was an hour in total followed by a warm down run back to Millfield Park. I then ran the 5k back, again at a steady pace covering the 5k in 30 mins.

As always I enjoyed this session and look forward to more hill work next week, even though the hills don't compare to those I conquered in the South of France.

On to something a bit different; my wife has started a blog (not training, triathlon or anything sweat inducing but very good) and I wanted to post it on here for my readers (do I even have any? doubt it) to see - Love, Lemons and Lenses

And, my Father-in-law has also begun a blog, something a bit more serious - Poleminous Speaks

Have a read of both

Shitty Sunday

I was hoping today was going to be productive day as far as training was concerned. I had planned, as said below in previous post, to go to Regents Park and work on some cycling drills and do a 40k TT. All was well, the weather was looking good and I headed out, until, I got a puncture, about 1.5km from my home along Holloway road. I have never had a puncture before and have limited inner tube removing/installing experience but I gave it a go anyway and ended up pinching the new inner tube and puncturing that too.... what a dillop.

I walked back and re-inspected the tyre and tube and found a big cut in the side of my tyre wall, I then repaired the two inner tubes and installed them correctly and re-inflated to see the inner tube bulging out of the big gash in my tyre.... great... I need a new tyre, I need a new stock of inner tubes, there goes another £50. I'm currently using Continental Gator Skins, up until now they have been a solid and impenetrable so I'm going to put my faith in them again.

So the ride was out, I thought I would try and fix my clicking turbo and hop on that... no chance, the clicking will not stop and is unbelievable annoying and I'm going to have to post it back to Wiggle for them to fix which means I will be turbo-less for god knows how long.

So in summary, today has been a humongous failure. On the bright side though the missus and I are going to see Cirque du Soleil tonight which should be pretty amazing.

Here's hoping my training will get better soon!