Sunday, 19 April 2009

To post or not to post...

As H has already talked about in her post, things are pretty full on at the moment... with less than four weeks to the greatest physical challenge of my life I'm pushing harder than ever before and constantly teetering on the edge. Chatting to my mum earlier this evening she was worried that I was over doing things... unfortunately that's Ironman! If you're going to achieve amazing things you have to push yourself to your absolute limit... behind every Chris Hoy, Kelly Holmes or Matthew Pinsent lie years and years of living on (and sometimes falling off) the edge.

In the 20 week build-up to Lanza (not including race week) of which 16 are now in the bank I've so far averaged nearly 21 hours of training per week, an increase of nearly five weekly hours against 2007 and 2008. Although that may not sound that much (ok, perhaps it does) when you realise that includes easy weeks following training camps etc it represents a significant investment of both time and energy (physical and perhaps more importantly mental).

Although I freely admit that with a couple of weeks of the hard stuff left it feels like surviving the training could be a close call... I have survived very well so far and am happily injury and illness free, which although normal for me mustn't be taken for granted. One of the key strategies for surviving this increase in training volume has been a corresponding increase in sleep volume... it's perhaps been one of the greatest challenges of my Iron journey but as it stands I'm nearly 30 minutes a night ahead of this time last year, which at a quick educated guess means I must have spent around 55 more hours asleep in the build up to Lanza compared to Germany... and this leads me onto the title of today's post...

I keep finding myself seriously pushed for time as 9 o'clock approaches every Sunday night and I'm yet to publish, having not missed a single Sunday blog since day 1 however I'd rather post something than nothing...

So please accept my apologies for not writing something a little more interesting but, I'm off to bed...

Next week I might try doing it on Saturday ;)

Train smart,

Tom

p.s. Good luck to everyone doing the London Marathon next weekend, we'll be shouting as hard as we can :)

3 comments:

lord_lordy said...

Sleep - every year I have a goal with myself to increase my sleep - invaluable.
Well done on getting the post out. If you're at all like me blogging is like therapy and well worth the effort.
Good luck with the next 4 weeks ... err on the side of less now and protect all the great work you've done. I'll be supporting at the London marathon so perhaps see you there.

Anonymous said...

Tommo you have done the hard work now. Make sure you get the sleep and if tired miss sessions. Less is more now in my humble opinion - for what it's worth. The important thing is getting to that line trained and not over cooked so you're in a great place mentally with no stress. It's yours for the taking brother. Can't wait to watch you race.
Ozzer

Tom said...

Cheers guys,

Knowing you are both racing in October is motivating me to qualify even more, not only so that I can achieve my goals but so that I can see you achieve yours!

I think 2009 is going to be rather special ;)

See you in Lanza,

T