Saturday 29 August 2009

Putting the hours in (everywhere)........


....... that should read 'almost' everywhere. I certainly don't seem to have seen a great deal of my bed lately.

First things first..... Shelly's ace camera work at Hayle Sprint last week picked up this little gem.

We'll start at work because that's the bain of everybodys life, that one necessary evil that keeps the wolves from your door. This week it's been a straight 5 days (no weekends thankfully) with start times between 2 & 4am and every day lasting 13hrs or more. That's pretty standard for most weeks, although I do occasionally have Thursdays off. My commute is only 15mins each way which is nice and I'll get up an hour before I have to be at work so that leaves me with a max of 9.5hrs to train, eat, sleep and the like. You won't find a lot of weekday social activity going on here. That all leads me to the weekend where I have to fit in the bulk of my training, althoughI'm generally walking around like a zombie suffering from the weeks lack of sleep. This isn't helped by our 'wonderful' (???) dog Rosie who likes to run around playing, whining and generally doing anything she can to make sure you're up by 6am only to promptly curl up in a ball and go to sleep (as she is now) once she's succeeded in her task.


So, enough of the excuses, what's been going on? I've been training of course (sort of).

It's 10 weeks until Ironman Florida and I really need to crack some big mileage out.. Thankfully the swim isn't a problem, I'll get round that in an hour whether I train once a month of 4 times a week, so trips to the pool are kept at a minimum. The running seems to be going well and that will get a testing next weekend at Wolverhampton Marathon ...... I'm trying to work out if I can get away with using my Brooks T6's (see my last post) which currently can do no wrong.
As always the bike is the issue based on the fact that it's my weakest discipline, my least liked discipline and the discipline which takes up the most time, which I don't have a lot of. So my weekends need to become 'bike time', including next weekend before the Marathon.


Monday - I had a day off. The first day at work always wipes me out.
Tuesday - The guilt from not training on Monday forced me into the shed for a 1hr turbo session.
Wednesday - I put the T6's on for their Tarka Trail debut. 7.4miles feeling real tired and controlling the HR but still at 6:15 min/mile pace. Not quite my fastest, but I wasn't going full tilt. It's a sign of what proper race shoes can do.
Thursday - I skived from training with the excuse that my legs were pretty beat up after 7miles of almost zero cushioning.
Friday - I so nearly did nothing in a state of total exhaustion but at the last minute I decided to run the 13+ miles to my squad swim session. The run was good (6:40's), the swim was awful!! and by the time I got back home I'd been awake for 22hrs - time to sleep.
Saturday - No lying around in bed, I'd got an 8am meet up with some club mates for a bike ride. The plan had been to leave at 6am and get some in before meeting them, that didn't happen though so I had to force and extra 90mins out after leaving them instead (82miles). That was followed by a bit of footy on the TV, a bit of chillin on the sofa and a birthday BBQ in the evening (Happy 50th Steve) for which by some miracle the nice weather held.
Today?? - Well the pup kindly woke me at 6am as normal so now I'm typing this out before going training. There's a 1-1.5hr bike ride lined up for starters, then I'm off to the run track with my clubmates for a bit of a beasting. Hopefully that'll be followed by another bike ride, although my legs may well have other ideas. Then it's an afternoon sat infront of the TV watching the football and following the online updates from Ironman Canada to see how Erin is getting on. Good Luck girl.

That'll do for now. Are you bored yet? I can't stay here and chat I've got training to do.........

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

WOOHOO.....see you next weekend