While I was out driving last week I was catching up on episodes of Zen & the art of Triathlon (one of the many podcasts that find themself on my ipod) when I heard a chat about just how much Kona Qualifiers can train. I know I'm pretty lucky and seem to get away with a lot less training than others, which is a good job considering how often I simply can't be bothered. I can't remember the exact conversation but I heard 20hrs a week mentioned and it stuck in my head. Over the weekend I decided to dig out my training log from last year and see just how close to that 20hrs a week I came when I was training for IM Florida. Hmmm, not very close at all it seems.
The Ironman fell in the 45th week of 2009, so I looked at weeks 1-44 using Monday to Sunday as my week. The results were interesting/scary/worrying, I'm not sure which.
I seriously doubted that I'd ever hit the magical 20hr figure and I was right, what was quite shocking was that I only crossed the 15hr barrier once (yep ONCE!!!) and out of 44 weeks I only broke into double figures 12 times. I know that because of the way my job is and the hours I work I quite often end up doing no training on a Monday or a Tuesday but it was still a shock to the system to find that on 38 out of 44 weeks I trained for 5 days or less. The plan for 2010 is to change those figures for the better - slightly, especially if I'm to stand any chance of putting together a decent race at Kona in October.
If you haven't seen my pictures taken by the magical cameras of Peter Stephens then where have you been? Click on his name for the full interactive experience :-)
So to the last weeks training :-
Monday - Knowing that this was going to be a full week at work I took advantage of the spare time a mere 12hr day gave me and jumped on the turbo trainer for 45mins. Yet another Spinervals session, but at some time in the past I've lost 'Week 7' so picked another at random.
Tuesday - A shocking day at work followed by no training.
Wednesday - Knowing that training on Thursday was likely to be a non-starter I forced myself out of the door with the pup for a short run. Only 4.5miles, but I needed to do something.
Thursday - No chance!!
Friday - The weekend starts here. It's a long day and it starts with a 1am alarm call, but that means I'm finished by late afternoon and can persuede my body that all is well. I took Rosie pup out for a steady 7 miler trying to hold my HR below 140bpm and then headed off to my squad swim session.
Saturday - I'd advertised my Saturday training and invited clubmates to come join me. I really didn't expect to see anybody but it makes me accountable and I have to do the promised sessions 'just in case'. The 10am bike ride soon got cancelled though when I woke up to a good layering of snow on the floor, it was replaced by a 90min turbo trainer session during which my bike computer decided that it didn't want to play any more and promptly died on me. By lunchtime the snow had all but gone and my afternoon run over Braunton Burrows was still on. Ireally didn't fancy it, but my spirits were lifted when I got there and one of my clubmates was there waiting for me. Yay!!! Nice one Trev :-)
Sunday - This was the killer. Rosie pup woke me up at 4:30. so after being up and about for a couple of hours I decided to take her for a run. We repeated Fridays run but rather than keep 140bpm or below I raised the bar to 150bpm, still easily achievable. Not today though!!! By the time I got to the turnaround I was shot to bits, I just had to back off and I felt pretty much that way for the rest of the run. The pace was reasonable, but I was shocking.
Then it was off to the pool for a Tri Club swim session. Here was the total opposite, I was simply cruising up and down the pool and swimming pretty decent consistent times. I even did a 4x100m IM in 6:18 without really pushing myself.
After the swim was a Track Session and it was still only 10:30am. The plan was a pyramid session 400m, 800m, 1200m, 1600m, 1200m, 800m, 400m but by the time I got to the 1600 my legs were in pieces and it simply didn't happen. I managed to work my way through the rest of the session but my times were well off. Then for the rest of the day I just mooched about the house like a lazy thing.
Just shy of 8hrs for the week. I'll take that, especially considering the 65hrs at work. Well shy of the previously mentioned 20hrs per week though. It's early days though :-)
1 comment:
Hmmm... I would say train as little as possible to get the results you need. Hawaii will be much hillier than Florida, so just focus on that and enjoy yourself! :)
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