Trains, Travels

It’s close enough to the end of the year to review my training. Whatever I do tomorrow will make little difference either way. Not surprisingly being a full time athlete has led to a big year of training. More than I’ve ever managed in the past. The results have been PBs, two trips to the age group podium in Ironman events, qualifying for Kona twice and racing well there too. Not bad really!

Not bad numbers for training either! As you’d expect plenty of time spent training, resulting in a far bigger training load for the year than before. That’s what it took to get those results. A lot of work to go a couple of minutes faster in Busselton!

Periodisation

Numbers only tell so much I’m more interested in the pattern of training and racing.

My performance management chart for the last year. As ever, check the Power 411 over on Training Peaks if you’re unfamiliar with this. What I’m interested in here is my Chronic Training Load (CTL) or fitness as it’s sometimes called. Roughly speaking when you see that blue line rising I’m building fitness. When it falls I’m losing fitness. As my training plans stressed me you see the increase in that fitness. Then come tapers or recovery periods around races the fitness drops. All perfectly normal.

With Epic Camp just around the corner you can see the first big spike to my CTL from this year’s. It’ll be interesting to see what a two week camp does to me in terms of this chart. Judging by CTL values Epic Camp 2009 brought me to my highest level of fitness of the year. I couldn’t maintain it and had to recover after camp, but was then building from a higher base. A little mini training camp in Geelong with Toby provided another decent boost.

Ironman Australia was a bit of a disastrous start to my racing calendar. I messed up the taper and run in apart from anything else. You can see after Geelong I never really managed to progress my training much further. Things were fairly erratic and the final taper period lost a lot of what I’d built.

From Australia to Lanzarote where I put in a few bigs weeks in the run up to the race. Training was great and I approached the fitness levels I’d achieved in Oz. This time a nasty saddle sore derailed my plans and Lanza was my second disaster of the year. I’ll admit I was left seriously doubting my choices at this point in time!

If one thing came from my poor race in Lanzarote it was quick recovery that soon had me training again. I set to work building up for Roth and Ironman UK. Time was limited and there was a blip in the build up to Roth where I was very slightly injured. Mercifully brief, but not in the original plan.

Not that it mattered too much, Roth went very well. I raced on a minimal taper and with my training setup for the power data. The plan was to take Roth easy and hit Ironman UK hard. I didn’t race that easily. The diet and weight loss I achieved after Lanza paid dividends with my running. Also worth mentioning is I started running daily and trail racing every week. The combination was a new Ironman marathon PB.

The three weeks to Ironman UK were a nightmare. My calves were so tight I didn’t get to run until the week before the race! That leaves you with plenty of uncertainty as to how things will go. I’d aimed to follow a plan of active recovery that I completely failed to stick to! Somehow it came together on race day and I raced to third in my age group and the Kona slot I’d been after for so long.

I’ve added trend lines to roughly indicate how my fitness changed over the year. Something I suspected with the busy race schedule was that I was slowly losing fitness between each race. A combination of tapers and recovery left me with insufficient time to reach the levels I’ve managed in Oz and Lanzarote. Certainly the general trend from Lanzarote through to Kona is a gradual drop off. It’s after Kona it starts to rebuild and is pleasingly on the increase as the year ends.

The Kona build was full on! The hardest I’d trained since Epic Camp or Lanzarote. Motivation was high and I was putting in the time and effort. The aim was to try and get back to a decent level of fitness after some weeks off following Ironman UK. A trip to the Pyrenees provided a decent boost to fitness. Once I recovered from it I was able to put in a last solid week in Kona. My taper involved more work than originally imagined, but the result was a great race.

Coming out of Kona I was far more fatigued than expected. The next couple of weeks I travelled, ate what I liked and ballooned up in size! Once I was in Busselton I settled into training and got a few good weeks in. Not at the fitness levels I’d managed for any of my previous races, but I’d done all I could.

Demonstrating that CTL levels aren’t everything I had a sharp taper to the race and knocked out a PB! Okay after a year of hard training it was only by two or three minutes, but the day was much tougher than 2008. More importantly was the better placement and the Kona slot. All set up to go again!

This time I put the active recovery in place and got out on the bike straight away (having an ice cream parlour 30km away helped). Everything was kept as easy intensities, but the fitness loss for the recovery period was greatly reduced. More importantly my legs felt better quickly.

From there I moved over to New Zealand and after a few lethargic days settled into a new routine. Pleasingly this leaves me with a strong upturn in fitness and ending 2009 fitter than I ended 2008. A great place to be finishing things. I’m at a strong point to start 2010 and progress further.

All that description of a graph basically covers the year. I should revisit this topic at some point and look back at what I said at the end of 2008. How much I lived up to aims and expectations. I’m happy with the way things have progressed. Some great racing in the second half of the year, more than made up for the poor start. After over one thousand hours I’m also feeling like I’m in great shape to really start training. However that’s a topic for another post.

It’s a beautiful, sunny Christmas Eve in Wellington. A combination that doesn’t work for me. Christmas is cold, dark, and possibly white. A time of staying indoors or wearing layer upon layer if you dare go out. Actually you can keep the traditional Christmas. I like being able to spend Christmas Eve on my bike climbing as many hills as I can with a quick stop for coffee. Beats sitting on the turbo!

You can read a little about the last week over on my blog for Triathlete Europe. I’d planned to do more training than I have, but things are basically on track. I’m riding well and enjoying the new scenery. Plenty of exploring over the past few days with a couple of solid six hour rides. Pleased with how those have gone my cycle fitness is much higher than this time last year.

And that’s it for now. I was going to break the past week’s silence with a review of the year. Proper posts will follow with a look at training past, present and future. Then some pre-Epic Camp thoughts and once I’m in camp we’ll see how I manage to post. Quality will drop (further) if I’m to maintain quantity of posting.

Merry Christmas! Good luck to those having to train in the weather back home!

Leading in to Ironman Western Australia I came close to writing about next season. Instead I decided to save it till this season was actually over. Now that time has come I’m stuck! My first attempt was five days ago. I’ve had a number of false starts since. I’m writing once more determined that something goes up today one way or another.

Since my race report I’ve had a fairly busy week. Posting more reports across the web on tri247 and Triathlete Europe. That was hard work! I think it drained my capacity to blog for a few days. Too many words in too short a time. Of course I was relaxing and indulging in all the sugary foods I normally deny myself. Then I trained too.

Active recovery has cropped up around every race this year. Never getting past conversation or attempts to put a plan together. Oddly the plan is less appealing once the race is done. It’s all too easy to sit around, relax and do the things you don’t normally do. Riding hurts too. At least at first, but the legs warm up and it gets better. Day on day the task becomes easier to bear and by the end of the week I was enjoying cycling.

One week after the Ironman and the result is my legs feel great. A little bit more fragile than usual, but up to training. Just have to take it easy at first, not push too hard. It’s the intensity that hurts now, avoid that and I’m fine.

Saturday was my first break from activity. A full day of travel to New Zealand necessitated it. I’ve ended up taking three days off – two to travel and one to, well, laziness. I think lack of sleep finally caught up with me. Especially when it was compounded with a sleepless night flight to Wellington. Much of Sunday was spent dozing and then Monday despite a great night I was nodding off after breakfast.

Today it’s back on the bike, back in the pool and back in my runners. The new season begins one week after the old. Time to rack up some serious mileage in the quest for ever better performances.

Next year I’m halving my race schedule. None of this six Ironmans nonsense. There will be three major races which I’ll aim to be in peak condition for. Firstly Ironman New Zealand in March, then Ironman Lanzarote in May and finally the Ironman World Championship in October. I can say that last one for certain thanks to getting my slot early! A pleasure after I cut things so fine this year.

I’ve nothing to prove by racing more. I know I can race a lot, but want to see if I can race better. Looking at my training this year it’s clear that routine racing made it hard to build fitness. Essentially I peaked around Ironman Lanzarote and from then on delayed the decline between events.

Fewer events gives me an opportunity to genuinely develop fitness between them. The large gap of four months between Lanza and Kona is especially good. Enough time for some recovery and then a very decent build period. Next year I want a better performance in Kona. This year was great, I want to do more.

Not having to worry about qualifying means I go into races with much less pressure. Or rather different pressure. As Steven has said I should race expecting to be on the age group podium. I’m starting to believe him! What pressure there is centres on performing my best. I intend to turn up to these races with a top three in my age group in mind.

That said I want to race a little less conservatively. Both races are opportunities to try things out or to really test my limits. If I blow I miss out on the podium goal, but I’m still going to Kona. I could potentially learn something that will benefit me there. I’d take a better performance in Hawaii at the cost of poorer results elsewhere! Hopefully I’ll not have to.

Plans are still tentative for the most part. I do have a good outline of the year. The next couple of months are preparation for Ironman New Zealand. I’m planning two block of training. Big mileage in the first, including two weeks on Epic Camp. It’ll ensure the work’s quality despite the volume. After a bit of recovery a second block with more emphasis on intensity. That should bring me into Taupo ready to race well.

After Taupo I have a few weeks in Wellington before I return home. A bit of recovery and I’ll get back into things ready for Lanzarote. Plans are coming together for another big build on the island. This time I will be much more aware of saddle sores and similar issues! I want to break 10 hours there’s unfinished business.

Lanzarote out the way there’s a luxurious four months to prepare for Kona. I can’t really say more on that. My plan goes no further than train to be in my best shape ever. Whether I should race something on route I don’t know? If I’m honest I’m not even sure where I’ll be for some of that.

There’s exciting stuff coming up for me next year. They’ll be some training camps I’m involved with and other tri related work. I’ll be needing to top up the coffers to keep things going! I’ve mentioned before that I hope to transition to a more sustainable version of this lifestyle. Subsistence living to maximise training will be the route. Should be fun!