Friday 10 June 2011

PB Updates!

Always a positive topic to write about. Post triathlon season the focus had been on running in preparation for the Gold Coast Marathon. I’ve now downgraded that to the half (at least in my head I have – must email the race organiser!!) more on the reasons for that later.


Meanwhile I’ve had a couple of short sharp races / time trials to see where my running has got to and was please to put down a couple of new PB’s.


Firstly the iconic Tan Lap in Melbourne, 3.82k and a lung bursting effort got me round in 14.55 (previous best 15.08). I understand that Craig Mottram’s best lap around here is 10.08 which is pretty bloody amazing! (2.39min/km!)


http://connect.garmin.com/activity/88091507


I then also did the Williamstown 10k run on the Sunday of the same week, I’ve got close to 40 mins before but never been under and I figured that I was in decent shape so should give it a go. I had done a hard bike / run brick the previous day but felt pretty good, went through 5k in about 19.30 (thanks greatly to the pacing services of Kev!) and managed to hang on for a 39.39, a nice little mental barrier broken.

Target 599!!
25 weeks to go until IMWA and training has now really started to get into full swing. Given that I have set myself a pretty tough target of sub 10 hours I was conscious that following the same sort of training plan for this year is likely to result in the same sort of result so decided to mix things up a bit and try something new.


The new thing has been to join up with Sean Foster at Fluid Movements and start doing some training wit his squad. As well as being keen to get some fresh perspectives on training for an Ironman I also wanted to continue to expand my network of people willing to join me on the tough (i.e. stupid) training days.

Run
I’ve been with them for a few weeks now and it has been going well so far. I joined just at the start of a run block which I came into in good shape due to the marathon training so I’ve been maintaining a pretty high volume (70-80k per week). When I initially spoke with Sean he was more than happy to help towards the marathon training but it was his view that would be detrimental to my goals in Busselton so after giving it some thought I decided to drop to the half at the Gold Coast. That will mean my recovery will be much faster an enable me to continue working towards Busso through July.


Bike
My biking has been pretty limited in recent times so getting a bit of consistency back into that over the last couple of weeks has been good although its pretty daunting realising how far I have to go. I punched out a pretty good 20min TT (average watts 312) but don’t feel like I have any endurance in my cycling legs at the moment.


Swim
Whilst I don’t think there are huge time savings to be made in the swim I think there are significant energy savings I can make on race day and so I have also been swimming with the Fluid Movements squad at South Yarra Sports. I’ve been to 4 sessions so far and it has been pretty brutal. The volume and intensity is much higher than I have trained at before and at the end of each session to date it has been a struggle to lift myself out of the pool!! The timing of the sessions works quite well for me in terms of work so the plan is to get myself there 3 days a week, get the sessions done and hopefully see some big improvements.


I guess technically I can add another pb to the list as well, although really by default, after 3.3k of butterfly and freestyle drills the other day we then did a 200m TT, I was already cooked but dragged myself through to a 3.05 which I was pretty happy with in the circumstances, but sure I could improve if fresher!


Anyway, looking forward to my first trip up to Kinglake of the year tomorrow (will be interesting to see how much more recovery there has been since the 2009 Bushfires), must stop typing now, my arms are still hurting from swimming.....