Almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about.
On Friday I did my very first interval run session. Using the Garmin 910 to set up a basic interval session I set off with a 10 minute easy warm up the into 5 x 1 minute hard efforts with 2 minute recoveries. I had been a little apprehensive of the session, especially first thing in the morning, but I needn't have been. It went really well, the pace was up and whilst hard I didn't struggle. This is now going to form part of my weekly training.
On Saturday I also did a little sprint work in the pool, a short session, but 400m comprising of 4x(4x25) hard efforts. Despite the kids in the pools best efforts to disrupt me it was a good little session. Who would have thought what was to come the following day.
Sunday started very early at 5:30 to walk Jasper a quick bowl of porridge, load the car and then off to Buxton for a sprint tri. The venue was the leisure centre at the Pavillion Gardens and a lovely setting for the event. Weather was blue skies and warm but thankfully the full heat of the day was not to impact the event.
Bike racked, it was off to the poolside for the briefing to find I was once again the first off in a lane of 4, so I was expecting to be passed again (especially looking at the guys in my lane). Whistle blown I was off, effort started steady but I pushed the pace. I was surprised to note that at the turn none of the other guys were actually catching me up, a surprise to say the least. What was an even bigger surprise was when I finished the last of the 16 lengths and hit the lap button to record my time..............7:10. yes, that is correct. I knew the pace was high as I was single side breathing, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect to swim that quickly, I haven't come close to that in training, so I was blown away and I wouldn't have believed it if the Garmin hadn't recorded all the lengths.
Transition went fine and out onto the bike (Principia) I was certainly happy, but this was shortlived as a left turn took us up hill and it was a slog, a fast decent to one of the many reservoirs in the Peaks was a short respite before the longest climb of the day and boy did it drag on. My cycling today definitely let me down as I think I was passed by everyone in my wave on the bike, but I kept grinding and despite wanting to stop a couple of times I wasn't giving in. One thing I must do is fit a 25 on the back, 23 is just to low. The turn at the Cat & Fiddle pub brought relief in the that it was downhill all the way back to transition but I kept the legs turning a big gear to try an make up to some time. Back into Buxton there was a set of lights you have to wait at and the organisers had marshals recording the amount of stopped time so it could be deducted. Now, i'm not sure what happened or why, but as I pushed off I must have missed clipped or something as the next thing that happened was I ended up on the floor smacking my head in the process. Fortunately no injuries other than to my pride were sustained and I remounted and set off feeling rather stupid.
Back into transition and trainers on, I went for the Newtons, the usually jelly legs were quickly gone and I set a slow but steady pace. There was a climb on both laps of the run, but a good down section that followed. After mile 2 I picked up the pace to the line and finished in a total time of 1:38:52.
This was a tough event but thoroughly enjoyable and I would certainly recommend it.
Totals for the week
Total training time - 7h40
Swim 8400m, 3h25
Bike 32km, 1h20
Run 14k, 1h16
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