Monday 29 March 2010

Training Week end 28/03/10

Another good week in the pool which was finished off with my first Gala for (lets call it for ease) 15 years, but ill come back to that.

I moved my training around a little this week missing the early Monday session and attending the evening set instead of doing a pull cord work out. This was done to allow myself a little more rest and also to try and cut back on a bit of dry land work as I was looking to increase the dry land work on the Tuesday night ()higher weights/reps) as I am now getting back into this element of training. The set ended up including a lot of broken distances with max 25m at various junctures - this allowed me to race Jo and Tom at these points to try and develop my ability to change pace while swimming longer distances - an element of swim skill that a lot of triathletes do not have but should really work on (get to the buoy first, pull away from someone who is drafting, get to the exit first etc)

Tuesday night ended up being a bit hit and miss in the end as the working day overran (the trials of being an agegrouper!)and I had to miss the cord work I would usually do. The weight session was however more involved (as planned) and with my ankle strength still increasing I was able to push on with some overhead squats and more leg exercises to complement my increasing bike time.

Wednesday was again a decent swim session although I was slightly concerned how short the relay teams may have been when I was asked if I was available Saturday night (The last swim Gala I had was a (Quite) few years ago for Dereham Otters and although I was confident I would be able to put in a half decent sprint I wasn't very keen on the block start/take over which could make or brake the race result.

I rested on Thursday and really felt the previous weeks work on the Friday set. We did a lot of mileage but the sets were broken into max and easy swim outs which did not have a specific time structure. I think that these were the most difficult for me as I am competitive and didn't want to be caught in the lane so probably went through the sets too quick (well quicker than the set was designed for) I discussed this with Pat and mulled over the reasons I may have felt worse in this 'easier' set and we are going to look to develop this further (maybe have minimum times to complete the longer easy sections so the overall distance swam is more continuous rather than lots of faster sets with more rest - watch this space).

I joined the Friday morning set 1/2 hour in because I knew I was racing later and also knew that I was out on the bike for a few hrs in the afternoon. As I was feeling as though I had a lot of Lactate build up, Pat put me in with the Masters set and rotated my strokes to make the best use of swimming the lactate out of my shoulders. We had some 50m sprint sets with focus on pace at different points during each 50m, so 50m with first 15m Max then 35m max, last 15m max then a 50m max. I managed a P:B at this stage of 30:00 dead so was looking for a sub 30 later on.

The bike set ended up being a lot harder than I had ideally wanted, the plan was to spin with Andy who is still in recovery (top aid lactate reduction), but Andy had invited Oli Milk out for a trip round the TT course at Norwich. I made the mistake of trying to keep with Oli on sections of the course until I decided that enough was enough and settled into my own easier pace for the back leg of the route.

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About Me

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As an ex-National League Basketball player I took up triathlon as a development from cross training. I won my first Sprint distance race and placed second in my first Olympic distance. Since then I have raced the UK Elite Superseries coming 24th in the National Elite Champs, raced Vegas 70.3 WChamps and helped Paratriathlete Iain Dawson to World, European and National Titles. In 2011 I obtained Pro authorisation from the BTF and am pushing my development by stepping up to top level competition in 2012. Aside from this I am a L1 Swim and Tri coach and Professional Lloyds Broker.