Momentum...

Finally... our five week adventure of marriage, wedding, honeymoon, Christmas, New Year and ten day training camp has come and gone and here I am back home and super motivated to get back into 5am starts, evening runs with the lads and long cold rides in the Dales. Last week was the first of 20 in the run up to Lanzarote and with all the burger chomping and ice cream scoffing of Miami weighing heavy it was time to get serious...

Flying out to Lanza as part of the rapidly developing Team Southerns project I was keen to kick my training back into gear with good volume across all three disciplines. For the first time ever Hels and I had signed up to an organised training camp and would be staying at Club La Santa under the guidance of Elite coach Robin Brew. Not knowing the exact training itinerary prior to departure made goal setting somewhat difficult but in the back of my mind I had 50k of swimming, 500 miles of cycling and 75 miles of running as a tough but attainable goal...

On arrival we found that the sun wouldn't be raising its weary head until around 7.15 and would be tucked up for the night by just after six o'clock each day so 'tacking' early or late sessions either side of the organised training might be difficult... this did prove to be the case but on the positive side it meant we'd be fed and watered by 7.30 every night and with no point in setting the alarm any earlier than 6.45 we might even manage the holy grail of 72 hours sleep in nine nights (eight hours per night)...

To cut an extremely long story extremely short here are the week's stats...






As you can see I managed three out of the four targets and had I not thought the swim would be the easiest to bag (prior to the camp) I might have dipped my toes on the first day. By the last few days my previous thoughts of 'I'll just chuck in a couple of 10k days if needed' had changed to 'if I can just drag myself out of bed for 4 x 400s my O.C.D. will be satisfied with a full marathon in the pool'... who needs 5k per day... 4.22 is so much nicer ;)

Anyway, as I keep saying, it's all about the bike really so 500 miles on the Lanzarote hills was priority number one and a final day ride round the northern loop of the Ironman course taking in both Haria and Mirador del Rio saw my first ever ten consecutive days of riding and a job well done. We'd taken our race bikes out to test our handling capabilities over this seasons A-race bike course and although challenging the ups weren't that steep and the downs not that technical so it's definitely all systems go for the Stealth on May 23rd... Other than volume and the odd hill effort I didn't really test myself too much on the bike, rather using the lovely weather to spend time in the saddle, now we're back in the lovely English winter the shorter and more intense turbo intervals will no doubt become par for the course.

Running went pretty well over the ten days, although the five or six hours ('plus' sometimes... I think the Wednesday was around 9.5) of daily training meant my legs weren't game for much speed work in this discipline either. However a very comfortable 8 sub seven minute miles off a 2k swim and 110 mile ride (Ironman course) on the Wednesday (today's picture was taken immediately after that session) felt great and hopefully an easier week this week will help them get close to six minute miling at this Sunday's Brass Monkey Half marathon where 79 minutes has been my goal since going 80 minutes and one second last year!!

As far as swimming was concerned H and I knocked out a steady 2k most mornings (usually something like 10 x 200 off four minutes) before working on technique with Robin in the afternoon. The only really challenging pool session was a 3.8k timed effort midweek where I was pleased to finish in 62.55 (long course, no wetsuit, no drafting) having blown up with about 800 to go... hopefully the addition of five months training, a wetsuit, salt water and a decent draft should see me closer to 55 minutes on the day. We did also manage a lap (1.9k) of the swim course in Puerto Del Carmen but with the buoys placed somewhat randomly it's main use was to remind me how rubbish I can be at sighting!

As for the fourth discipline... sleep... an average of 8.7 hours per night was almost certainly key to surviving the camp.... I say surviving because by the end I really was about as cooked as I've ever been, but in a very good way... I think. I've not counted the total training hours but I'm guessing they'd be in the region of 50-60 or the equivalent of around 35 per seven day week... I did manage close to that volume once last year but ended up pushing myself over the edge, this time less work and more sleep has it seems made all the difference.

So, here we are.... 19 weeks to go and I feel fitter than ever before yet also with a lot more to give in terms of training intensity. The only area I'm a little behind in is weight (currently 70.8 kilos compared to 66kgs 19 weeks out in '08) but I always find that difficult to manage over the off-season and then the Christmas and New Year period and would expect to shed close to a kilo per week over the next six to eight weeks... Lanzarote being as hilly a course as it is I would really love to race at around 63 but body weight has always been pretty far down my list of priorities so we'll just have to see what happens...

Other than that, it's just great to be back :)

See you in seven

T

p.s. Hopefully having kicked 2009 off with a new half marathon pb... two seconds? how hard can it be?