I'll get by with a little help from my friends!

Well it's fair to say that the killer week on paper certainly translated to a killer week in practice! There has been an abundance of long sessions that have been hard to fit around even the most basic functions of working, eating and sleeping! Logistically the week has required some thinking outside the square and getting to end of it with a tick in every box is definitely thanks to friends helping with gear drops, lifts home and providing the all important moral support to foster the self belief required just to get through it!



The week kicked off early doors on Monday morning with a 3hour 30 minute run before work. I opted to run up through the waitaks and then loop back down to finish at work (first gear drop and lift home for the week - thanks Hannah and Elaine!). I quickly realised that wasn't the smartest of moves to head out up through the waitaks at 4.45am - the absence of street lighting and uneven ground made for an interesting start so I was relieved when the sun began to rise! To add to the fun of running in the dark was my musical mix for the run - I had 'misplaced' my ipod the night before so Hannah came to the rescue with the loan of her ipod shuffle - my usual run mix comprises of techno beats and motivational tunes so it was a very different experience to run to the dulcid tones of Lionel Richie, Shania Twain and Blue!! I have to admit to hitting the fast forward button on a few occasions but the highlight for sure was 'once, twice, three times a lady' kicking in at the base of scenic drive!



Starting my week with a long run meant that my legs felt pretty jaded from the get go! It's hard when you start a week with a monster session not to let it affect your mind set and approach to subsequent sessions. It is all too easy to use your hard start to the week as an excuse for 'taking it a bit steadier' or perhaps not quite hitting the correct level of intensity specified on your programme. I therefore made sure that I took my fair share of sets to lead at swim squad and that I hit the specified power zones in my cycle sessions and also opted into alot of group sessions where I would be forced to keep pace with a group.



My cycling power targets this week where set in the very hard zone which left me pretty wiped out after my hard interval session on Tuesday night and a similar zoned cycle as part of Saturday tri squad training - managed to hit an all time high of 440 watts in the sprint sets. My long cycle this morning was the key cycle session for the week so I arranged to meet up and ride with Sacha who is training for the ITU long distance worlds at the end of October. The plan was to be on our bikes out East in Maratai 'ready to ride' at 0730....... the weather however had different ideas! As we made our way out to the meeting point there were a few frantic texts as we both hit the motorway and a wall of torrential rain and wind. There was a sharp turn around and rapid relocation to my living room where we set up our indoor cycle trainers side by side - not quite what we had envisaged for the day but yet again the winter weather won out! Between the two of us we devised what I can only describe now as a very sick and twisted pyramid effort session with zoned power targets which managed to halt our chit chat about 17 minutes into it - after several hours of torture we hopped off our bikes and backed up the cycle with a hill run in the driving rain - all in all a solid day - thanks Sacha!



My other solid session this week was a swim test set of 40 x 100m on descending interval send offs! I opted to do this in the 50m Olympic pool to limit the push off assistance I would get from frequent turns - regretted that decision at around rep 30 when I would have taken all the assistance I could get :-) Managed to hit the send offs and get done before the pool got busy with breast strokers! Yay!



So with just 2 weeks to go until I leave for Kona I am frantically making many lists full of everything and anything that falls out of my head at any given moment! My main focus this week has been stock piling all the nutriton I will need for the month I am out there and also on race day! I bascially need to take with me a months supply of all the protien bars, energy bars, energy gels, electrolyte powders, protein powders, recovery formulas, thermogenic formulas and supplements that I usually race and train on. It's important that I take these with me as my body is use to the products I use and trying something new in the month before the race and on race day is really not recommended! To give you an idea of how much nutrition I will need I've attached a picture of the supplies I sourced this week - this is half of what I will need!!



Righto! Once again the bed beckons so that I'm recharged for tomorrow morning and the start of a new week............

7 Week Count Down!

Well it's hard to believe that 3 weeks have passed since my last post and that I am now 7 weeks away from race day and just 3 weeks away from jetting off to Hawaii. Given the timeframe it was no surprise when heat acclimatisation training appeared on my programme - the aim of this is to increase my core body temperature by 1 degree during selected sessions.



As it is quite hard to do this in the pool the focus between now and when I leave will be during cycle and run sessions. Having had to do this before World Champs in Holland last year I have a fair idea of how many extra layers I need to wear during different sessions to achieve the increase in core temperature as this is dependent on the type, length and location of the session and also the time of the day. Indoor cycle sessions are easiest to target to achieve this increase with a couple of thermal polyprop tops and a beanie! Last year I discovered that the spare bedroom was a perfect area to heat acclimatise in - relatively small with long thermal curtains it doesn't take long for it to get steamy in there! Hannah managed to take a sneaky picture of my first heat acclimatisation session on my indoor cycle trainer (attached).


I've had a few key sessions thrown into the last 3 weeks - a 2 hour cycle time trial, 2 swim time trials and another more extended visit up the concrete monster.


The 2 hour cycle time trial was an outdoor course and I managed to get through this without any technical hitches i.e. no brake locked on my back wheel! It was a windy day so my power output was higher than I would have liked and it was also pretty lonely out on the course once the one hour mark was reached. There were 2 options for the time trial - 1 and 2 hours - and we all got set off together, although on the line up there were a fair few riders numbered for the 2 hour time trial many of them succumbed to the conditions and pulled out after an hour. This made it difficult to pace and led to a few rather 'dark' moments at the hour mark when riders numbered for the 2 hours who I had paced myself against at a pretty solid effort pulled out - bit of a sinking feeling when you realise that you are on your own for the next hour!

My visit up the concrete monster in this block was slightly extended as I had to do an extra loop at the top to get extra kilometres into my legs. I pushed out a solid 3 hour run on the course and was pleased to feel that my legs recovered quickly to push out a solid session the following day. I imagine that there will be one more visit to the monster before I leave :-)

Well my bed is calling me as the alarm clock is set for 0430 ready to take on what looks like on paper a killer week! Apologies for the silence over the last 3 weeks - I promise weekly updates for here on in!!

Cheerio!

Farewell to the easy week - sniff!

This week has been the easy week in my block with just 15 hours of training to push out. Although the sessions have been at an easier intensity and shorter in length there is a strange phenomenon associated with an easy week - sometimes it feels incerdibly hard! Perhaps it's the extra couple of hours sleep per night or the luxury of being able to be more selective about what days to put each session on but it can become a bit of a mental battle to get through the shortest and simplest of sessions!

I have got myself to the gym three times this week and focused my efforts on lower body weights and core strength - a good week to do this as the running volume has been low. I have been pushed a little more on the swim front this week with Tony moving me up 2 swim lanes on Saturday to swim with the faster fishes! I quickly realised that the swim session was going to be a lesson about pure survival - hanging on to the back of the lane to achieve faster send off times per set with shorter rest periods - pushing myself in this way should make me stronger from an endurance point of view for the swim at Kona.

I'm now gearing myself up for what will be the key big solid weeks of my build up. I learnt on Saturday that there will be no more easy weeks like this one between now and Kona - the easy week per block will be replaced with a steady week instead!

Next week is solid hard week with an Auckland based training camp at the weekend which features a long swim, bike, run session on Saturday and then two races on Sunday - the Auckland City Tri Club standard distance Duathlon (10km run, 40km cycle, 5km run) followed by a 2 hour cycle time trial on a V8 super car race track (hopefully without a V8 super car in sight!!).

Just about to set the alarm clock for 0340 Monday morning - bring on the hard weeks and farewell to the last of the easy weeks!