Another good one!

Still progressing. Twenty-four out of twenty-five days!! That's a record for me. I did a very nice run for lunch.. struggled to warm up and then did 4 reps at 6 minutes hard and 3 minutes easy. Ended up with an odd 9 km, but it was useful. ;) I then went swimming again last night. I'm sure by May I should be pretty damned fit!

Today's just a very long spin on the turbo (1:45) - gag. Let's see how that plays out.

Have a good day all and be healthy!

Swim Fitness / Virtual Cycling

It was a good day indeed. After the snow cleared, it was a bit to wet to ride. I decided to take one of coach Troy's free session number 4 on the turbo and stretched it to an hour (http://spinervals.com/). It really was cold in my garage for the first few minutes, but I still made some good puddles.

I finally got to Cannon's for a proper swim set. I'm using Steve Tarpinian's The Triathlete's Guide to Swim Training. I highly recommend this book as it's got a lot of good fundamentals and triathlon specific training in it. I'm currently working with the long distance 16-week programme that fits perfectly with my build for Florida.

I started early, so I should be able to get out for a run this morning. Woohoo!! I also have a swim planned for tonight.

So I've been thinking about how to set up virtual spinning/turbo'ing on Second Life and am getting there. I just need to rent some land and get some additional software to allow voice input. I should have something workable very soon! If anyone is interested, please leave a note.

Snow? In England?

It snowed last night. It's unbelievable as it must have come down between 12-6 last night. It was so beautiful out there this morning. The trees were coated with snow, the road was covered - everything was white. ;) There's only a telltale amount out there right now, but I'm hoping for more.

So in the training front, things changed a bit. I'm very flexible in my approach, but I do eventually get the job done. I ran a very easy 7km run for lunch. It was a simple out and back towards Radlett.

Whilst running I was listening to a Podcast by Simply Stu (http://www.simplystu.com/) and heard some interesting things in regards to going slow for your base training. This was very interesting stuff and suggest that all you out there listen to the valuable words in this podcast. I've always said that the guys that always go out and blast it out on the roads and pool day in, day out are just wasting valuable time. It's this time of year that is so important for building that base and working on that heart muscle.

I also was listening to the second part of that podcast discussing Core Performance (http://www.coreperformance.com/index.php). There's some good stuff available on this site. The programmes look very useful. I signed up for the 1 week introductory offer and did the first session last night. Each element of the workout has a companion Quicktime video that shows you how to do the workout. The session that I did was a very good workout that wasn't too hard and lasted for about an hour. If you want to re-balance those muscles and get the best out of your body, this may be a very good method for getting there.

So today will be a bike swim day. Let's see if I stick to it. I'm really thinking that I quickly need some help with the old swimming next month. I might be on the lookout for some coaching. ;) Have a good one everybody!

Brick Day

On what used to be my recovery day (Mondays)I'm actually doing my brick sessions now. I do them in my garage which is great! Before living in this house, I hadn't had a garage for years!!! Anyway, the session was simple and consisted of a 45 minute turbo followed by a 15 minutes on the road. Man it is getting cold out there! Brrrrrr.... This has been the 3rd or 4th week in a row where I'm doing proper bricks now. I'm going to start increasing distance and tempo over the next couple of weeks. I'm hoping that this will alleviate the race shock of transitioning from a really hard bike to a run come race time.

Today's line-up is a lunchtime swim and a track session with the Striders. This will mean a hard training day for me. Nice!

Garmin 305

Before I forget and I usually do about these things - I got a Garmin 305 for Christmas and will be commenting on this for the next few months. So far I am much impressed. I'd like to keep a running listing and commentary on these kinds of products, so anyone is welcome to provide input. ;)

Garmin 305

Before I forget and I usually do about these things - I got a Garmin 305 for Christmas and will be commenting on this for the next few months. So far I much impressed. I'd like to keep a running listing and commentary on these kinds of products, so anyone is welcome to provide input. ;)

Biking or Turbo that is the question!

So I got up late today to ride and had to do the uusual weekend things. I sort of feel like I almost back-pedaled on my plan for the year as to the train every day thing... but I couldn't let that happen. I ended up doing a hard one hour turbo session by sitting through Coach Troy's Big Gear Strength - Workout 11.0 (http://spinervals.com/). This is a very good one for building up those quads. I recommend this for any of you budding hill climbers!