Trains, Travels

Second week of training stats and I topped the numbers from week one. Whether big numbers along are a good thing is another matter altogether. Still it was a solid week with some progress made, particularly towards race weight. I’m pretty happy with how things are going with the odd caveat of course, but mainly I’m glad to feel like I’m heading back to peak condition.

I suppose I should also use this post to mention it’s my birthday today. Thirty-four years old, unshaven, a mohican and not had a proper job in two years! To celebrate I’ll be off to the lake for a swim, followed by a testing threshold session on the A4 and finally a decent run in the afternoon. I’m even going to allow myself a little bit of carbs today! Nothing crazy mind you there’s a goal weight to aim for after all.

Apart from becoming an old(er) man the other excitement this week is an unexpected trip to Lanzarote. My friend Roger Canham e-mailed me offering a free bed at La Santa for the week. How could I resist? Any debate on whether to go or not was short lived and I’d soon booked some flights and started making plans. Should make for interesting stats next week.

The numbers

The good

All three sports saw an increase in volume last week admittedly only slight in the case of swimming. The important one is the 20km extra running this week. I’ll admit it proved tough to hit that volume with everything else going on, but I made it and my legs still work. There were one or two stand out sessions in the week too. The benefits of being lighter seem to be kicking in as I ran a harder aerobic session at my fastest pace in months.

Similarly in the water I’m starting to feel good again and I’m back up to my previous pace. Great because it gives me something to work from. Having rejoined my local Masters squad it was fun to do some hard sprint efforts with loads of rest for a change. Something I may incorporate a bit more of into my own training.

The bad

Bike volume is there and I can ride all day (on little to no food too), but at the moment it’s all very easy. There’s a notable reduction in effort over my training period in Lanzarote. It’s not that I’m unable to ride that hard, but rather I don’t consistently do so during a session.

Mostly I’m fine with that at this point in time. I’m choosing to keep ride feeding as low as possible and to keep riding relatively easy. The benefit has been I’m better able to do the hard work I need on the run right now. It would be nice to mix in a session or two that’s a bit tougher on the bike. Hopefully the impending first of many weekly threshold sessions will help there.

There’s also a little bit of tightness in my legs that worries me. It’s nothing too significant and I’ve felt this before, but the location coincides with the one time I’ve had shin splints. Any discomfort there always puts me a little more on edge than it should. Definitely getting time for another massage with The Tri Touch.

Thoughts

Overall happy with the week. A lot of long and relatively easy training, but that’s where I want to be. I’m getting stronger running which was the focus of the next few months after all. I’d like to work towards having a few more quality bike sessions in there with the running. Hopefully a trip to Lanza will help with that, there’s no easy riding over there.

The trip should also help me hit the next weeks running goal. Warm weather (which we’ve been enjoying here too) and some superb trails right out the door from La Santa should get me out on the road. Looking forward to the 10K loop up into the hills once again.

Finally a link to a great piece over on Endurance Corner. Gordo sums up the points he picked up from the top athletes at their recent camp. Lots of interesting thoughts and ideas to take on board. I often think of a comment made by Gordo about aiming for 5 hours of aerobic exercise per day as a pro. I’ve managed to average that, but haven’t hit it every day in a week. Another mini-goal!

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I touched on the issue of motivation in the form of a confession a couple of weeks back. Admitting to its absence through March and April. With motivation being important for success in endurance sports it was a tough time. The stark contrast between my motivated self (guilt for not throwing in an extra bike today when swimming is cancelled) and my apathetic self (not bothering to ride or go swimming) has been shocking. Aa a full time athlete not training effectively renders me unemployed!

Now that motivation has returned my apathetic state of a few weeks ago makes no sense. Where the prospect of riding familiar country lanes bored me, I look forward to getting out in the sun. Long rides are always a good time to ponder some of life’s questions and partly inspired by a tweet I’ve been thinking about my motivations. Why do I dedicate so much time, effort and pain (!) to endurance sports?

It took a lot of hours on the bike this week to approach an answer to this. My motivation has changed over the years to what I would consider a particularly positive state. Fundamentally I like to test myself. I want challenges in life that I can overcome. That’s always been the case whether it was a fixation on problem solving in my previous job or progressing my fitness to ever higher levels now.

Ironman isn’t the first thing to challenge me, but it seems to have taken hold. Before I started racing I spent a few years studying Japanese. I’ll admit I’ve always been a terrible linguist so it provided the challenge, but proved daunting. I think belief I can overcome the obstacles is essential to maintain motivation. With Japanese the drive died as I increasingly struggled to improve, but with Ironman I’m still striving to reach the next level.

In fact it’s that constant sense of progress that keeps me coming back and freshens things up. Each time I race whatever the outcome there are positives and negatives to take away. I may not have had the result I wanted, but I will have learnt something I can use in the future. It pulls me back in and maintains the belief that I can still do better.

Take Ironman Lanzarote a good result, but not the level of excellence I hoped for. I’ve reached a level of fitness where three weeks of hard training can bring me to good race shape, but have to accept that to really perform I can’t afford such rushed preparation or to be so lax on my diet. To achieve what I want I have to be exacting in my approach. I can be good, but if I want to be excellent it takes more.

As an aside I’ve also asked myself why my motivation vanished after Ironman New Zealand. I can remember being fired up just after the race and discussing what was needed to take the next step. Enthusiasm was there, but it died in a matter of days! I suspect that I once again became slightly daunted by the task at hand. Just like learning Japanese I was losing the belief I could achieve my goals. Rather than fight I chose to hide.

As I thought Lanza kicked me in the arse. A harsh reminder that if I want to excel I can’t cruise by. Work is needed and it won’t be easy. It took a couple of weeks, but I came to accept that and now I’m focussed on nothing but the task at hand.

This year Ironman Hawaii is the task. Having qualified so early I was able to focus myself down on this race and the result I want there. I’m not sure if I’ve clearly stated any goals, but I’m looking at the podium and thinking that’s where I want to be. The times and placings I achieved in 2009 are simply markers to beat. Hopefully by quite some margin. The challenge is to go back to Kona and show I can do much more.

It doesn’t end there of course. I’m already thinking about next year and what to achieve then. It’s going to be tougher as I’ll not be migrating this winter and will probably be working for a while too. All of it to fund a campaign aiming to race Ironman Austria and comfortably break nine hours. It’s been a goal I’ve declared on this blog for years and 2011 is when I think I can do it. If I do it’ll be back to Kona of course.

Long term goals are one thing, but it can be tough sustaining the necessary motivation over a year. Not racing as much this year and already qualifying for Kona has made this more challenging. Lat year there was no time to stop, I had to keep plugging away and hoping something would come of it. When several months stretch in front of you it’s relatively easy to draw up a plan, but harder to stick to it.

Whilst I’ll admit I tend to write up overly ambitious training plans I think the important thing is all the key sessions are achievable. It comes back to the need for challenge, but for that challenge to be surmountable. Too much failure leads to a spiral of disappointment and soon you’re giving up.

Realism is essential and I feel that sometimes this is lacking in athlete’s programs. I look to build my fitness week on week. Progressing my training goals as my performance rises. I know that in week one I could schedule myself 150km of running, but if I’ve not run for a while it isn’t happening. Much better to aim for an achievable target and work from there. Of course you do need to test your limits from time to time, but be measured in how you do it.

Routine is another essential. I’ve always stuck to a basic week which keeps things structurally the same. It makes it easier to plan and manage my time and once I’m settled in it makes it much easier to execute the plan. After a few weeks I’m so used to the schedule that doubt doesn’t even enter my mind. I just get on with it taking each day as it comes, always trying to perform my best, but recognising it won’t happen every time and they’ll be other chances.

And when I’m out actually doing the training the thing that motivates me is thinking about my goals. If I really need a boost I like to imagine upcoming races and how I’ll need to be at my best, going this fast or working that hard. This usually helps me dig a bit deeper and go a bit harder. Last night’s run benefited from visualising running myself onto the podium at ITU Long Distance Worlds.

Just considering how hard my competitors will be working and how fit they already are is enough to make me want to work harder. I can’t afford to slack off when I have such ambitious goals. There’s no room when every second per kilometre I can outrun my opponents counts. Knowing what’s needed no longer intimidates me instead I’m inspired to do all I can to get there.

It’s great to have my motivation back and to genuinely want to work towards my goals. There’s so much more outside my own racing too with coaching, an up coming plan for a tri club and various other projects. Every one of them needs me to keep this motivation up.

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Did I say I wouldn’t post weekly analysis of my training this time round? I lied.

Kind of. I’d guess that for most people who read this blog what I do in training is of interest. I don’t want to get bogged down in numbers or end up writing long posts about every detail. Just something relatively short and to the point, top level stats, the good and the bad and some thoughts.

Why? Well apart from helping ensure I regularly put content up on this blog it helps keep me accountable. If I go off the rails (in triathlete terms) then my weekly report is going to look poor. The last thing I want is to post about a week of lounging in the sun eating cake!

Sometimes I read blogs from competitors, people I know or names I recognise from races. I see the training they’re doing and it makes me nervous. I need to ensure I can beat that! It’s a good nervous that makes me work harder and get faster. Maybe I’ll provide that motivation here, but I’d rather that than competitors thinking I’ll be a walk over.

The numbers

The good

The big thing this week was I settled into a routine. More than anything else regularly getting up at 5:30 and getting on with training was an important step towards achieving my goals. Ten days of earlier starts have gone and I’m still fine with it. The most important part is getting to bed early enough which is toughest on Friday’s when I have Master’s till 21:00.

I was pleased to get back into running so quickly and to find it both enjoyable and easy to do so. There was a lot less physical and mental stress there than I imagined. I have a terrible habit of building running into a herculean task in my mind. Then I get out there, run and am surprised it’s not so bad.

Swimming is pleasingly steady I don’t feel I’ve lost much ground though there’s work to do. I have some ideas for sets in open water too which should make swimming at the lake more interesting and challenging. Cycling has been mostly easy or steady as I want to focus on building run training at the moment.

The bad

Despite keeping my routine I failed to train well over the weekend. A mix of factors including fatigue from what had been a busy week, a later night on Friday, some knee problems and a slight dip in motivation. Saturday was a light day thanks to my ITB/Knee giving me problems which an easy run confirmed I’d be best to rest. A bit of work with a foam roller seems to have done the trick though.

I didn’t managed to catch up on rest for Sunday and after a morning on the dock at the lake just couldn’t get myself going. In the end I accepted it and decided with so many hours already done in the first week back, better to rest up ready for the coming week. An unplanned zero day, but I’m promising myself not to let that happen again for a while. It did make me consider the volume/structure of my plan as I need to ensure I can complete it and am motivated to do so.

Thoughts

Only a couple of gripes for my first week properly training again and I’m happy with that. I was a little over-ambitious in my plans for the first week, but got through a lot of work despite this. I’m generally pleased with where my fitness is right now I’d say I’m already in a good position to work from. More importantly I’m feeling more motivated and enjoying the process of training again.

For the coming week I’m not aiming to change much other than to ensure I hit my weekend goals this time. If I can do that I’ll also manage to increase my training volume/distance for the week. The important thing is to progress my running towards the 100 mile goal for July. With a proper long run at the weekend and a couple of extra sessions I’ll easily take the next step there.

A bit more is probably the key philosophy for this week.

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