Thursday 12 December 2013

Dec 2nd to 8th - a new beginning

I'd ended up with the previous week turning into a recovery week, which it seems was fortuitous as it marked the end of the beginning and the opening of a new chapter in my tri career.  So what is this big change, well quite simply I have taken away the uncertainty of planning my training and handed this over to a coach. So let me welcome on board Laura Grady.  I would also add that she is an excellent massage therapist.

It's very easy to get trapped into the routine of just doing more and more without any consideration for the quality of what you are doing, I guess after a couple of chats with Laura that this was the way things had been going.  So what was week one under a coach like.  Pretty good actually, some quality sessions and even a rest day; in Laura's own words, " you only take a day off every four weeks, that's rubbish".

Monday night was track time, 4x400, 4x200 and 6x100, slightly reduced rest on the 400's made this a slightly tougher session.  I was also finding that I was running the 400's about 10 secs to quick but fininshing within myself so definitely getting quicker.

Part of the coaching process involves setting base times from which to work, so on Tuesday morning it was a 1000m time trial in the pool.  An easy warm up and some drills, then into 40 lengths as hard as you can go. Final time was 18:59 which is a T Pace of 1:54 per 100.  It was definitely an eye opener pushing that hard in the pool.  Wednesday was a 60 minute turbo session, nothing to testing, easy w/u then 4x5 minute race pace efforts and a couple of minutes recovery, finishing nice and relaxed.

Thursday was another time trial in the pool, this time a 400m flat out effort after a warm up and some fast 50's.  This was a hard 16 lengths but a pleasing 7:12 and 1:48/100 pace.  This is just a couple of second shy of my best in a race so really pleased.  Circuits in the evening were a whole new world of pain that made it feel like I had gone back to week one of the circuits.  The warm up and shuttle runs were fine, but everything after that was a nightmare of screaming muscle pain.  It wasn't a great night at all.

Friday was a day off training and also off work as I loaded my 205 Gti race car onto the trailer for the last time to take to Spoox Motorsport who were buying it back off me.  A bit of a sad day and the end of an era, but can say that I did enjoy my years in motorsport.  Saturday Jasper and I went running around Hartshill Hayes, a nice steady pace and really enjoyable morning in the woods.  The last session of the week was an easy 100 minute bike ride exploring some of the roads I used to train on many years ago.  The only issue came when I rode through Atherstone and lost the back wheel on a greasy corner and planted myself on the deck.

Totals for the week: 6h58
Swim 1h - 3800m
Bike 2h42 - 65km
Run 2h02 - 16.1km


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