Two posts in a week?

Really? Two posts in a week? Can it be true? I don't know yet, I've only just started typing.

I'm writing this on a Sunday morning when I really should be out training. The reason? Because I simply can't be arsed to train! It's a motivation problem I suffer from a lot and is one of the reasons my last post existed, because if you're committed to meeting people then you HAVE to get out there and meet them. Right?

I noticed that even on the mag feature in the last post I'd talked about how I'd trained with running clubs around the country. Mostly that was for the same reason (and the showers of course), but having a club to go to on a regular night keeps you going there and the enthusiastic athletes will drag your ass out there training. So many people I see/read/hear HAVE to go out training, their sport is like a drug to them, if they can't get their regular fix of exercise they're a nightmare. Me? Not so much. I could quite easily become a beer swilling couch potato, but for whatever reason I don't.

So enough of the blah blah blah, it's time to write something that makes me look a bit better, to make Ironman Florida seem a little bit less daunting than my current fitness and attitude suggests it should.

I set a goal at the beginning of the year to put more training in on a monthly basis than I did in 2010. Then I got ill and got injured, it fell at the first hurdle. Even now, at the beginning of June I'm still 20hrs behind my 2010 total....... BUT! 2010 was my Hawaii year, a race that went OK at best. I should really be looking at how I compare to 2009, the year I qualified for Kona, the year I did 9:40 at Ironman Florida to finish 8th in my Age Group (and still only raced 'ok'). Compared to 2009 I'm actually well ahead.

Sure the first three injury and illness riddled (for me) months were lower than 2009's totals, but only just. April and May however seem to have been a revelation as the two 43hr training months dwarf the 30hr months I posted in 2009 and even beat my 2010 totals. A lot of this is just down to longer (group) sessions, not more sessions, so hopefully it'll be building up a good base. I'm still having far too many days off, I'm still too lazy when I train alone and there is still nothing that even slightly resembles 'structure', but what's new there. I sometimes wonder what people think when they see my training totals. I can imagine some people look at it and think it's rediculous, it's almost 1.5hrs a day which is 2hrs a day if you lake out my non-training days. Other people (Ironman people) must think it's pathetic. I remember hearing once that to aim for Hawaii you need to be prepared to train 20hrs a week, that's double and more the training I'm putting in. A quick Google search pulled up this LITTLE GEM by Russ Cox.

The training he was putting in simply scares me. It was huge in volume, focus and structure where as mine was ......... mine was just whatever! Yeah sure he finished 30mins ahead of me, but (there are always plenty) reading his race report his race went a lot better than mine although he too struggled and had a far from perfect race, even with more than double my weekly training. If you've got any Ironman plans take a browse around his website, I plan to now that I've found it, there seems to be lots of good stuff on there although I scared to click on the 'Sub 10hr training' in case I start feeling as though I'm not worthy. So from now my focus is on my 2009 totals which is nice because my biggest month (October) was only 50hrs compared to the 67 & 55hrs I posted in August & September 2010.

I'm curious about what other people train. Sit down, look through your training log and work it out. I wouldn't be suprised if a lot of you Olympic Distance Triathletes out there are actually putting in more hours than I do. You're certainly ALL more structured :-D

Train Strong Folks.