One thousand miles in May...

So... here we go... the London marathon is rapidly disappearing in to the distance and we really are beginning the final push towards Frankfurt. Nine weeks from now the race will be over (hopefully) and all we'll be able to do is sit and wait for our Hawaiian fate to be decided at the Ironman Germany awards ceremony on the Monday lunchtime... unless of course either of us have performed well enough to secure and automatic slot and therefore avoid the nervous wait that is the 'roll-down'. The way it works is that there are three world championship slots in H's category and 16 in mine. In order to gain automatic qualification therefore H needs to finish in the top three female 30-34 and I would need to finish in the top 16 male 30-34. Sounds easy... until you remember that Frankfurt is the European Ironman championships and probably has the highest standard of Ironman athlete outside of Hawaii. In 2007 these positions would have required 10:19 and 9:18 from H and I respectively and both of which are probably a little ahead of where we'll be this July. However, if an athlete has either already qualified or elects not to take their slot it automatically rolls down to the next person... and this is where we come in ;) Although I do believe that we both have the potential to secure automatic qualification it's probably more realistic for 2009... nine weeks tomorrow then we are likely to be on the edge of our proverbial seats!

With relatively little time to go the majority of our training is done... but the most important sessions are only just beginning. We both have a great base fitness, built up over the last six months of high volume training but with an Ironman race in early July it's all about the month of May. In order to help with the motivation over the next few weeks therefore, Ben G (who's doing Switzerland on the 1th of July) and I have set ourselves the grand target of covering a total of 1000 training miles (swim, bike and run) between the 1st and 1st of May.

So far...

1st - 1.5 mile swim, 50 mile bike
2nd - 3 mile swim
3rd - 45 mile bike, 14 imle run
4th - 106 mile bike, 2 mile run

Total so far - 221.5 miles and over 20% there in only four days :)

I would like to hit 1000 miles on the bike alone but it's not all about volume and with some serious intensity sessions included (pool triangle starts next week) that may be difficult.

The next three weeks are scheduled to be the hardest of the whole programme, and also therefore the hardest of our entire athletic life... if we can be sitting on the plane to Vancouver on the 31st of May in something resembling one piece we'll have just five weeks to cross the t's and dot the i's...

watch this space,

T ;)