Tom's training diary... weeks' 6, 7 & 8!

When I was in Whistler time was at a bit of a premium and with the average day consisting of 5am alarm, 6am swim, 7.30am breakfast, boarding from 8:30 to 4:00 then treadmill session from 5:30 to 6:30, dinner out at 7:30 and bed at 9:30 I didn't find the time to post my training diary. Anyway, I'm making up for it now so here's weeks 6, 7 and 8 all in one go!

Overall...
I'm really really pleased with how everything is going and feel that I am well ahead of this point last year. I'm swimming and running better than I ever have and with a little bit of bike focus over the next four week training block I should hit the 20 week to go point in the shape of my life. My only real concern at the moment is that I need to build all the way to July the 6th without blowing myself up in the process. The training stakes will be raised consistently week after week and with 24 to go I'll need to step up to the mark. I've also just noticed that I've pb'd my last ten races so must be doing something right!!

Swim...
With little focus on swimming over these three weeks I've managed to maintain quality and reasonable volume. I felt great swimming in Whistler every morning and this week's 15 50s were done faster than ever, averaging 38 seconds. The tumble turns have taken a back seat and seeing as H is now tumbling for entire 5k sets I need to get my arse in gear! I'm still working on the 'power-on' technique which should give me some much needed speed once sorted. After 8 weeks my average weekly swim volume is somewhat down on my target of 15k although I won't be too concerned about that until the final 20 week push.

Bike...
My cycling has had to take somewhat of a back seat over the last three weeks. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to ride in Whistler and would also have to hold back in week 8 leading up to the Brass Monkey I hit it hard in week 6, riding four times for a total of 175 miles. The next four weeks will have a significant bike focus so check back here soon ;)

Run...
The main focus this year is to build my run speed with the aim of going 3:25 in the Ironman marathon on July the 6th. Last year I very much adopted a maintenance schedule for this discipline and sacrificed run sessions for getting on the bike. It's now time to step up my game and I was therefore looking to go sub-80 for the first time over half marathon and sub 2:55 in the London marathon. Today was my chance to achieve the former and finishing in 80 minutes and two seconds I was pleased with the pb if a little annoyed to not dip under. With the last four weeks including five days at my mums, Christmas and ten days in Whistler it's great to be in the best run shape of my life. My Tuesday tempo runs are going very well and I'm starting to feel comfortable at 16kph. I could do with a little more speed but with only so many hours in a day and a target Ironman pace of 'only' 12.4kph it'll have to wait.

Week 6...


Week 7...


Week 8...

Tom's training diary... week 5 of 32...

Overall
A good recovery week at approximately 33% of normal volume and including two complete rest days. Still managed to train all three disciplines and include two quality run sessions. It can be really hard to drop the training volume just when you're getting into the groove but I expect to feel the benefits over the next few weeks of hard training.

Swim
Tried to swim on Friday in Suffolk but the pool was full to the brim of super-slow breaststrokers with no concept of lane etiquette. Gave up after a couple of stop-start 400s. Did manage to slot in a quick 4k on the way back to Leeds by stopping off at Loughborough University Pool however. Felt OK but pretty sluggish... I don't do rest very well ;)

Bike
Nothing much top report except for a really enjoyable two hour ride to Ilkley and back with H on Christmas day

Run
Two good sessions - a pb at the Chevin Chase (see this weeks blog entry) and a tough ten miles on tired legs on Saturday in Suffolk. My running seems to be going pretty well although I definitely need to inject some speed if I'm going to go sub-80 at the Brass Monkey.

Lifestyle
A really mixed bag - Sleep has been great and I far exceeded the 56 hour goal, it's also been an extremely relaxing and stress-free week. On the flip side I've eaten chocolate for England which has caused me to feel pretty sick and tomorrow morning's 'weigh-in' could be pretty interesting as I've not stood on the scales since boxing day (72.1kg)... fingers crossed ;)

Workout of the week
Simple but to the point and so important - Saturday morning's 10 mile marathon pace run. With much of my normal focus and drive left up North for the Christmas period it would have been easy to eat sweets and watch telly all day. At times like this however it's all the more important to just get out there and do something and if you're looking for a time efficient workout then a tough 70 minute run is hard to beat. In a week where training time is at a premium quality is vital and sessions like this can't be beaten.

Tom's training diary... week 4 of 32...

Overall
A great final week of my initial four week block. Over this training period the goal was to get back in the rhythm of training twice a day with plenty of volume in all three disciplines. Key to surviving this stage was also to minimise the number of sessions of significant intensity. With 76 hours achieved, feeling strong with no illness or injury it’s definitely a case of so far so good. I do feel pretty fatigued now but this coming week is scheduled for some serious recovery time and volume will probably drop to five or so hours with two runs, two bikes, a swim and two complete rest days.

Swim
Biggest week yet with 16k. Felt good all week particularly in the drafting 300s with H where my last two were sub-4.30. I’m still confident about the potential benefits of the power-on stroke. Tumble turns are getting there… slowly ;)

Bike
Smallest week so far, largely due to the poor weather keeping me on the turbo and time constraints on Sunday limiting me to three hours. Feeling good though, ahead of this time last year with no serious bike focus until weeks 9-12.

Run
Biggest week so far, legs felt extremely fatigued by the Saturday hill session. Still feel I’m ahead of last year and will focus on the run over the next four weeks with the Brass Monkey on January the 20th being my first serious goal of the season.

Lifestyle
Made good strides with my weight this week, dropping from 73.1kg to 71.6 (around a 3kg drop over the four weeks). Still a way to go to reach my sub-66 target by March 15th but I’m certainly on target. Being light is extremely beneficial for endurance performance but power and health must not be compromised… this is an extremely fine line and difficult to manage effectively. Once the final 20 weeks starts it’s not ideal to be in an energy deficit, particularly with the related increase in training volume & intensity. Sleep was ok at 53 hours although 3 short of target. Food was good although the nutritional challenge comes this week!!

Workout of the week
The Tuesday tempo treadmill was pretty good and I’m starting to feel relaxed running at 16kph (6 min miles). As a performance measure I’ll be taking HR over the last five minutes, this week I averaged 170 and maxed at 171. Each week I’ll add a minute of 17 at the end with the hope to get to ten minutes at 17 with a sub 170 HR. If you’d like to repeat this session it’s 10-20 min warm-up followed by 10 minutes at 1kph slower than marathon pace, 10 minutes at marathon pace, 10 minutes at half marathon pace and ten minutes at 10k pace. Each week add a minute of 5k pace on the end (and remove a minute of the slowest pace) so that after ten weeks the session finishes with ten minutes at 5k pace. This is a great tempo session which should really improve your running economy at pace with fatiguing your legs to seriously.

Tom's training diary... week 3 of 32...

The aim of these first four weeks is to get back in to the habit, and get my body used to the demands of, training around 20 hours a week. After three weeks it's going pretty well with week three as follows...

Overall
With last Sunday being so hard and also such a long day what with getting up to watch the fight at 4 and then staying up way past my bedtime for the Virgin Active Road Runners Christmas Party I decided to ditch my Monday morning swim in favour of a much needed lie-in. As I've talked about in today's blog entry sleep is so so important in training and having been nearly 9 hours short of my weekly target last week it was time to make amends. At 17:20 my overall hours were slightly down but still good with plenty of work in all my key areas.

Swim
Having adopted a new swim technique since last Sunday's TTC swim camp and also taking a swim rest on Monday I fancied a crack at my 400pb (5:51). I am now swimming what is called 'power-on' swimming which demands a much higher cadence than traditional front-quadrant / catch-up style (I'll no doubt go in to the details as to why in a future blog entry) and so was pleased with 5:57 seeing as I've only been back in the pool for a couple of weeks and had completely revamped my swim tech only two days before. Volume was down at 9k but as usual my swim just gradually improves..

Bike
Another good week with some decent volume. Although I'm not quite getting the miles I'd like in this is largely due to the Baltic weather keeping me on the turbo. I did get out on Friday with BenG which demonstrated quite well how hard I'll need to work to go sub-5 hours for the 112 miles in Germany. Ben and I were pretty close in terms of bike performance this year with me beating him by 5 seconds in one 10 mile TT and him beating me by 10 in the other! This week it was all I could do to suck on to his wheel... partly me not quite on the ball and partly Ben riding very strongly. As usual I imagine my speed will drag it's heels and turn up just in time around May/June.

Run
I've put the least intensity into this area of my training so as to minimise the chances of injury through the sudden increase in volume. Nothing has been hard yet and week 4 will be no different. Weeks 5-8 I'll chuck in some harder work with the aim of hitting my first real target of this training block (sub 80 minutes at the Brass Monkey - end of week 8). I must remember not to focus too much on this however as my 'A' race is not till 5 months later.

Lifestyle
After last week's dismal effort on the sleep front I decided to prioritise it this week and came in at a rather impressive 56.5 hours! I can really feel the difference from last week and am determined to average 8 hours a night again in week 4. I've also committed to at least one proper stretch session a week so H and I spent about 90 minutes at Virgin this afternoon going through pretty much every PNF move we know. I particularly suffer from tight hip flexors which although fortunately don't seem to lead to injuries I think they pull my legs down a bit low when swimming and stop me getting my hips forward when running. A couple of weeks effort on them will hopefully help in both those areas.

Workout of the week
Another bike session this week... with the weather being so bad it can be hard (and often dangerous) to get out on your bike, this is where the turbo comes in. Our Tacx Flow's have revolutionised our training but the more people we talk to the more it seems that they struggle to spend time on this great training tool. This Wednesday H and I did a two hour session... most people would cringe at the thought of spending so long on a turbo but structured properly the time can really fly. A 'ramp' is where you gradually increase your effort in a series of steps and in this session we broke the two hours down in to ten individual ramps of gradually decreasing duration... ramp one was 5x6 minute steps (30 mins), ramp two was 5x5 minutes (25 mins) then 5x4 minutes, 5x3, 5x2 and 5x1 minute before finishing off with 4x1, 3x1, 2x1 and 1x1 minutes. The longest section without change was therefore only six minutes and each ramp started at an rpe of about 4/10 and finished at about 8/10 effort. The time flew by and before we knew it we had banked a couple of quality training hours.

Weight
I made good progress at the beginning of the week but steadied a bit toward the end. Now tipping the scales at 73.1 kilos a total loss of 1.7 kgs in the three weeks and just over 7 from my race weight target.

Tom's training diary - week 2 of 32...

The aim of weeks 1-4 is simply to get back in the habit of training twice a day with decent volume in all three disciplines and as few hard sessions as possible.

I've decided to break down my training diary report in to the following sections...

Overall
21 hours, all quality and with structure and purpose. Fitted it round work well and am feeling the benefits already. I reckon I'm about 6-8 weeks ahead of this time last year... it's important not to blow yourself in training though so please remind me to pace myself... I need to peak in 30 weeks not three!!

Swim
Good week with a total of 16.5k making my weekly volume the same as Michael Phelps' daily volume... that's 660 lengths by the way! Worked well on the tumble turns and had some excellent video feedback from Jack Maitland at the TTC workshop on Sunday afternoon. No times or benchmark swims just yet, will work on new technique points in week three and probably do something timed in week 4.

Bike
Also a good week, getting out both weekend days. Saturday was one of the most painful training experiences I've had as H and I got soaked by ice-cold sleet from start to finish... my finger tips are still painful over 24 hours later! Sunday was painful in a different way (see below under workout of the week). A good turbo session on Wednesday meant I was in the saddle for just under ten hours this week :) Nice to be back on the bike :)

Run
Nothing hard as yet although took the Wednesday tempo treadmill up a notch. It was significantly easier than last week though which is great. Ran 12 on Thursday with H and TB, again felt pretty good holding 8:15 miles at an rpe of about 5/10. As with the bike I'm just slowly upping the mileage.

Lifestyle
Been better with water intake this week and although I'm not hitting my target of 2 litres per day plus training requirements I'm on the way. My weight continues to drop with my 5-day average standing at 73.4 this week compared to 74.2 last (target 66 by March). Been eating well with no sweets, chocolates or junk food and no artificial additives, preservatives or flavourings where possible. On the downside I only managed 47.25 hours sleep (6.8 per day) compared to my target of 56... staying up for the Amir Khan fight then getting up for the Ricky Hatton fight didn't help!

Workout of the week
I've long believed that in order to improve effectively at anything you do you must surround yourself with people who are where you want to be and for Ironman Germany I'm trying to do that for my swim, bike and run training. This morning then I went out for a very hilly four hour ride with my friend Carl Saint who is a far far better cyclist than me with pb's of 19:11 for ten miles and 1:43 for 50... that's an average of 31 and 29 mph respectively!! I pretty much spent the entire ride glued to Carl's back wheel with my lungs exploding but there's no way I could train so hard or learn so much without someone like that to aspire to. Too often people shy away from associating with others who they see as 'better' than them... unfortunately that means they are seldom exposed to the inspiration and example of what is possible with a little hard work.

Tom's training diary - week 1 of 32...

As if posting on the blog wasn't making Sunday evening's late enough I've decided to post my training diary from now until Germany...

This week's been pretty good and as the first of a 12 week base prior to the main 20 week block it's all about getting back in the rhythm of getting up at 5am four days a week, training twice most days and getting some serious hours in over the weekend. The swim sessions have been OK but by the end of each session my arms were struggling to keep up! Although I had planned to hit 15k, 45 minutes spent working on tumble turns with Ian Wilson (5th in the Olympics over 1500 freestyle) was worth the 2.5 sacrifice. I've not done anything hard on the bike with the mon turbo at an rpe of 3/10, wed about 6/10 and the Sunday morning intervals at about 7/10. The 60 mile ride with H was great but with my road bike still not up and running my Stealth got dirtier than it would have liked! It's been great to get back in to running after a couple of weeks off, Monday was easy (4 miles in 30 minutes), the Tuesday treadmill was supposed to be easy but my lay-off made me pay and my heart maxed out at over 183bpm!! Note: this was after 10 minutes at 15kph which is slower than my half marathon pb pace where I averaged under 160!!! Give me a month and I'll be back on track.

On the lifestyle front I managed 51.5 hours of sleep which is only 4.5 down on my target so nearly there, it's tough when the clock is set to go off at 5am! Weight wise I've dropped from 75 to 74.2 kilos so still a long way to go but again positive movement ;)

All in all a good week, great to be back training,

T.