Time to set some goals....

Since I wrecked my feet two weeks ago I've not lifted a finger with regards training... not even run club! As of today that makes 13 days of consecutive laziness... the longest I've been for at least five years. A couple of days ago I managed shoes for the first time and with everything looking like it's pretty well fixed it's time to get back on the horse....

So.... here we go... at 5am tomorrow morning my alarm will sound the first day of 32 weeks of total dedication toward achieving my maximum athletic potential over 140.6 miles on July the 6th 2008. In 2006 I completed my first Ironman in 10 hours 34 minutes, this year I completed Ironman Switzerland in 9 hours and 56 minutes... in 2008 I will attempt to complete Ironman Germany in under 9 hours 30 minutes with the hope of qualifying for the world championships in Hawaii three months later. In order to achieve this I will need to raise the bar in every aspect of my training and lifestyle...

In 2007 I started training in January, for 2008 I start tomorrow... for 2007 I raced at 69 kilos, for '08 it will be 66... for 2007 I swam 12k per week, for '08 it'll be 15-20... for 2007 I biked 150 miles per week, for '08 it'll be closer to 200... for 2007 I ran 25-30 miles per week, for 2008 it will be 35-50...

The bottom line however is results, however hard or easy you train it is irrelevant if performance increases don't follow, for 2008 therefore I have set myself the following targets to keep me focused on the road to Kona...

• January 20th - Brass Monkey Half Marathon - sub1:20 (pb -1:20:53)
• February 3rd - Dewsbury 10k - sub37 - (pb - 37:30)
• March 15th - Ballbuster Duathlon - sub2:55 - (pb - 2:58)
• April 13th - London Marathon - sub2:55 - (pb - 2:58)
• June 15th - UK 70.3 - sub5:05 - (first time on course)
• July 6th - IRONMAN GERMANY - SUB9:30 !!!!!!

Along the way there are a few other goals which I'll dip in and out of...

• 400m pool swim - 5:30 (by June - current pb 5:51)
  
• Mile pool swim - sub24:00 (by June - current pb 24:44)
  
• Club 20k bike TT - sub30 (starts in May - pb30:44)
• (I'll also chuck in some more bike goals once I've entered a few events)
  

And finally, a few lifestyle goals...

• Drop weight to sub67 kilos by March 15th (currently 75)
• Average 56 hours sleep a week (toughest goal of all)
• Drink 2 litres of water per day (plus extra required for training)
• One stretch session per week
  

You'll notice that my performance goals are highly run focused through Jan-April. Last year I really focused on the bike and saw some massive improvements both in my bike splits and how well I ran off them. My running didn't seem to move however and even though I did pb over 10k and the marathon during 2008 I'll need to see some significant improvements if I'm going to take my Ironman run from 3:40 to 3:25... as both the Austria (3:53) and Switzerland (3:40) marathon courses were flat and fast the run course at Germany won't be doing me any favours. In comparison to the bike course where although I'm aiming to go sub 5 hours (22.5mph) it's a much faster course than I've done before.

Having trained for endurance events for around five years I'm hoping that I'll be able to withstand the increase in training volume. I should regularly hit 20 hours per week and toward the summer there are likely to be days where I need to fit in three sessions. It's all about surviving the training with the key being consistency over the whole period... 'to train as hard as you can CONSISTENTLY train'.

You will have noticed that today's photo is a video... to me the 'Ironwar', which was the Hawaii Ironman in 1989 that saw Dave Scott and Mark Allen go shoulder to shoulder pretty much the entire way, represents the absolute pinacle of endurance performance. This is part 5 of 6 from that year's Hawaii coverage.. the rest is all on YouTube... I'd recommend watching it all.

From next week I'll be including my training diary for those who are in to the stats and will go a little more in to the structure of the 32 weeks. The basic target of this week is to get back in the habit of two sessions a day, go along to a masters swim session at the new international pool and get out on my bike Saturday and Sunday... and get the weight moving downwardsc;)

That's about it for now, as usual I've set myself up for an uphill challenge to meet my sleep target for the week and will be 2 hours down on day one... oh well, no one's perfect ;)

train hard,

T.