Sunday 1 February 2009

Day One...

Well, time truly waits for no man and within what seems like a millisecond of posting my goals for the 28 days of February here we are in number 18 of the first 24 hours and I've yet to ride my bike, stretch or even get close to two litres of water! But then these are all based on areas of my athletic life which I've excelled in neglecting over the last few years so that's hardly surprising...

However, with a little over six hours left of Sunday the 1st of Feb I'm not about to fall at the first hurdle. H and I are off out for dinner tonight to celebrate her impending birthday (34 tomorrow in case you're interested) and the fizzy water will no doubt be flowing, if I can get this written by 5.45 there will still be time for a 10 minute stretch and you'll notice the 'small-print' said 48 hours TOTAL ride time between now and the 28th so today's unplanned day of rest shouldn't cause too many problems.... phew ;)

So why the shaky start...? With regards the stretching and drinking it's just not part of my daily routine (yet) and will take a while to become automatic (28 days hopefully) so as long as I don't forget (which I won't), the worst case scenario is that I'll find myself ending each day by ticking those two things off my list and no doubt be up half the night getting rid of the 2000ml of water I've 'downed in one' (once a student always a student) just before 'lights out'. More concerning is my bike volume as it's not so easy to slot in a 60 mile ride when you've put it off all day/week, it's ten o'clock at night and have to be up for the pool at 5am! Today would have been a great start with 80 miles scheduled but a horrendous weather forecast meant that we pencilled in a double turbo day instead and then with an extremely uncharacteristic lack of commitment to the cause H and I canned both sessions for a day tidying the house and doing the food shopping, what the?... still we did manage a four hour ride yesterday with a serious hour of hill riding in the middle and the fact that it was off the back of a nine mile run with 12 x 1/3 mile reps in the morning, a hard Friday (swim intervals 6am and hour turbo 6pm) and Thursday (Two hour turbo 5.30am and 12 mile run 6pm) goes some way to easing my conscience... and as I said it's 48 hours TOTAL... hopefully though I won't be going for some kind of endurance cycling record with two days to go and zero hours on the clock ;)

I have to say, a large part of my motivation to finish writing this this right here and attempt to touch my toes for the first time in a while (at least, thanks to triathlon, I can still see them) is the fact that you guys have joined in the challenge. Thanks so much for posting your comments it's great to be part of a 'team' and hopefully we can all motivate each other and arrive at the 1st of March minus three weaknesses per person :)

So, with that I'll go and tick off my first two targets...

See you on Sunday,

Tom

p.s. a massive well done to all our friends how ran so well at today's Dewsbury 10k... our excuse of not doing it because we 'really had to get out on our bikes' looks rather lame now... sorry!

p.p.s. good luck to Ozzer down under

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I need luck just to get to Oz. I sat on the plane for six hours which went nowhere. Then the flight got cancelled. Got to go back tonight and hope that it gets through yet more snow that's forecast. Keep up the good training and hopefully I will have some news from Geelong if I ever get there.
Oboy

Khara Mills said...

I've been thinking about my 3 goals for Feb all of last week, so I'm clearly struggling to come up with them! Problem is I've been getting the old injury niggles back the last couple of weeks, so I must not set myself typical training goals in case I need to pull back. I'm motivated enough to train (and to rest properly), so I guess that's not the 'problem' any way. The penny dropped last night though and I finally have them. In the next 28 days I will:

1. Attend 4 LBT Wed am swim sessions - having been moved up a group before having a chance to get to grips with these sessions, I have to swim the whole session at threshold pace just to make the turn around times, with almost no rest, so I have to memorise the whole set as well as make sure my positive swimming head is well and truly in place from the first stroke. I will turn my confidence switch up to maximum every Tuesday night and GET THESE SESSIONS DONE. Having achieved them I will SMILE at the end like this :-D
2. Spend 10 mins in the morning and 10 mins in the evening stretching every day (I did do it yesterday), including the dreaded kneeling whilst practically doing the splits one, both times!
3. Include at least 1 strength session in my training programme each week, to include my glute activation work and at least 1 core, 1 lower and 1 upper body exercise. This will be done following my 3rd swim of the week at the gym.

It 'officially' takes 28 days to form a habit, so I'm looking forward to these becoming part of my long term training routine, as of yesterday...

Keep it up Mr T!
Khara

Debra said...

Shame on you Mr Williams, all your run club mates could have done with your support whilst freezing their bits off in Dewsbury but thought you were freezing your own bits off out on your bike, and all the while you were toasting in bed! Glad to hear you are both human though and well deserved I'm sure.

My three goals for the month:
1) persist with new pilates class and get used to very different instructor/class to previous gym, my core strength needs building/maintaining
2) reduce caffeine to 1 per day
3) maintain 52-56 hours sleep per week that managed in January

Hopefully if I can achieve the above, particularly 1 and 3 I can remain injury free and achieve my ultimate goal that it's all in pursuit of:

expect a call on 26th April!!

Anonymous said...

My goals this month are to get back to run club on a tuesday night and to get out on my bike and to get back in the pool, all of the above i have done little of for quite some time.

I really do not know why i have lost the motivation for the above but i have. Over the weekend Debra and I were sorting through some old running mags and i found the mag that had the article about us all doing the 'Dam marathon. I just thought wowe where has that all gone? all the get up and go, get out there and do it.

Anyway it kicked me up the ass and made me realise time is a passing and the tri season is not too far away!!!
SO Sunday morning whilst you and H had a relaxing time,.... ha, ha. I got the bike out and went for a tentative small bike ride..... and came off!!! hit some black ice, and over i went!! The bike and i are fine even though i feel as though i have a nice bruise comeing on my thigh!!!

So my 42nd year is going to be quite simple really, get back into the grove .... i hear a madona song comeing!!.. and kick start my fitness with the aim of doing some more tri's and getting myself fit again., but still enjoy my rugby on a saturday afternoon.

The three big inspirations in my life are You, H, and Debra, Debra is doing so well with her training for London, we even had to turn Debra's parents away for a meal on Sunday 'cos her dad was feeling rough, turns out he had propper flu.... not Mans flu like Debras mum thought!!!
Cheers again.
Andy