Finishing my (winter?) base training

This week I'm coming to the end of my base block of training. For nearly 3 months I've been building my training load by increasing volume and workout intensity bit by bit, with an easier week every 4 weeks to allow myself to recover. Most of that work has been aerobic, but more recently some faster paced stuff has been added. My fitness has been building nicely, I'm feeling strong, movement in the water feels good, running is going well (touch wood, cross fingers) and the biking seems to be going well with a higher functional threshold power output than last year.

I am tired. That's normal right now and a good sign, but I'm looking forward to some easy days and some more testing next week. And a lie in or two.

This week has been a bit nuts with a lot of work, blocks of my timetable taken up by various things and training getting squeezed out into early mornings as the sessions have been a bit longer. I swam a 5km session this week too which is the biggest single swim I've done, and swimming makes me sleepy. Up early and in the gym this morning I was already tired, and I had more than 4km to swim later in the morning with a bunch of 400m reps at threshold pace. It went rather well though. A good sign!

My right calf has been a little tight this week, so I skipped the box jumps to help everything recover a little for tomorrow's long run. I'm running 5 days a week so I need to be a bit careful.




Speaking of tomorrow's run, here's an example of fitting training in with working and family. I did a set of hill reps on the bike first thing in the morning and rode back past my house to pick up my bag on the way to work. I had planned to run in the afternoon and then ride home, but my last meeting was rather long so instead I ran home (with a little extra loop to make up the volume). Once home my day was done & I could eat with the family and put the kids to bed without having to go out again. But of course that left my bike in work and I needed to get into the gym early this morning. Drive? Nah. I rode another bike in this morning, gym, work, swim, work, cycle home, leaving some warm cycling kit in my office and a couple of quid. Why? Tomorrow I'll do my long run from home, over about 20km by the sea to work. I'll get rid of my wet kit, spend the cash in the vending machines and grab a snack, put on the warm cycling stuff and ride the other bike home. Job done!

Jack's got a laser tag birthday party in the afternoon, so I can give myself plenty of time to help with that. Then all I'll have left to do is a long, 5 hour(ish) ride on Sunday with a little bricked run off the bike. I hope it's not too wet and cold - the weather has turned again. Wish me luck.

Sunwise Waterloo

I went out on the bike the other day in perfect testing conditions for the Sunwise Waterloo glasses. It had been chucking it down all day, the roads were wet but the sun came out. It was super bright and low, into my face on the way out (sometimes in Wales we don't see the sun for a week or more so I'm not complaining), but then I was hidden in the shade on a wooded hill to knock out some threshold hill reps. Normally I'd struggle with a single pair of glasses but the Sunwise Waterloo's are great for this. So it was a shame I hadn't taken them as when I'd left the house it had been dark grey and chucking it down with rain. D'oh!

Fortunately I did the same workout a week later under similar conditions and took them that time!

They're a bit clever, in that they have polarised lenses, which cut out the glare from the sun on wet roads, and they're Chromafusion lenses, meaning that the darkness of the lens changes in response to the brightness of the light. Sun in your face? No problem. Shady woods? No problem. Dark clouds rolling in? Not to worry.

I've been very impressed, and I like the styling too. I've got the white pair - white seems to have become a colour of mine since starting racing again. The polarised lenses are great at cutting the glare from the sun reflecting from puddles in the road, but they've never hidden the water on the road (or ice, as I found out coming down the Black Mountain the other weekend) so they seem safe for cycling to me. I can see the puddles and avoid them. They're great for rock pooling too - you can see through the water to spot the crabs and gobies, although I tend to wear my orange Shipwrecks on the beach.

The grey lenses give a very natural tint, and as they adapt to the brightness of the day I usually forget I'm wearing them. They're my favourite for running on sunny days too as they sit well on my face. Light. I often walk back into the house still wearing them as they adapt to the light so quickly. The size and shape of the lenses mean that their coverage of my view is better than some of the other glasses I use. If I'm on the bike and glance down to my bike computer on the stem it's still within the Waterloo's lenses. The polarised lenses give a funny effect to LCD screens too, usually giving the display a little more contrast. Another interesting effect is that you can see into cars. Because the reflections from the glass are cut out you can see quite naturally into the cars around you. The advantage of this for me is in aiding my cyclist's telepathy: on the bike you have to second guess what drivers are going to do as many don't bother indicating (or looking) and being able to see the driver helps with this. And if a mate toots his horn I can look inside the car to see who the hell it is and wave or give a two fingered salute (depending on how well I know the occupants).

This is a top quality pair of glasses that I really like the look of, that work really well, are polarised and adjust to the brightness of the day. And you can pick them up on the internet for under £60.

OK, don't forget that Sunwise are sponsoring me and my racing in 2012, but I've been using and recommending their glasses for years (check back through my Flickr photos and you'll spot them).

Links

Sunwise Waterloo on the Sunwise website

New sponsor: Swansea Health Solutions

If you've been reading this blog or following me on Twitter for any time you'll probably know about he-who-looks-after-my-legs. When I started running again I had a few problems and biomechanical issues as my mileage got a bit thick, and he was key to working out what was going on, working on my legs and pushing me towards a strength and conditioning program, and in keeping my running mileage increasing through the year. The end result of that was a 2:46 for my first marathon. I think its fair to say that I wouldn't have managed to get the training done that I needed to develop my fitness to that level without his help. Gareth is the guy that keeps me going.

Since then Gareth has worked with me very regularly, and with triathlon things got more complicated. He looks after my upper back, my shoulders, my lower back, my hips, my legs and my feet. My calves are an area of constant work. When I'm healthy I see him for massage, mostly for calf work, probably mostly because I hate him working on my quadriceps. Ouch! The day after a deep tissue massage running feels easy and loose again. You don't realise how tight you get sometimes.

When I injure myself Gareth helps me heal and recover as quickly as possible. He works on the damage, he advises me on what else to do, and he's someone to talk to about training loads, injury and recovery. He's also been very helpful in developing my post-race recovery routine that gets me back to normal training as quickly as possible, minimises soreness and gets me ready for the next race. On those occasions when I've hurt myself and have not been able to get to see him, my recovery has taken longer.

Gareth also points me towards what needs to be stretched, and links up parts of my body to problem areas that I, as an anatomist, don't make the connections too. Having to lie on a firm foam roller in my living room of an evening is all his fault. He knows his stuff, and he's about to finish his osteopathy training so his knowledge and experience is fresh.

Gareth is about to set up a new business in Gowerton, in Swansea. He's preparing a new clinic, happily just around the corner from my house! His new Swansea Health Solutions practice will provide a single location for sports massage, soft tissue therapy, physiotherapy, osteopathy, acupuncture, and so on. And with me looking for sponsors to help me fund my 2012 triathlon racing season we've agreed to extend our relationship and add a professional element to it. So Swansea Health Solutions will sponsor me for my 2012 racing season. Thanks Gareth!

I've been recommending Gareth to students and friends ever since I met him, and I'm continuing to do this. I'll have his logo on my website, and on my racing kit, and I'll include updates in my blog through 2012. He has a bunch of photos of his new clinic before and during construction, which I'm hoping to share from my blog.

You will be able to find the Swansea Health Solutions Pain Relief Centre here:

View Larger Map

I've labelled Station Road, but the clinic will be on the corner of Station Road and Gorwydd Road. You'll see it.

If you want to contact Gareth you can email him at gareth@swanseahealthsolutions.co.uk. His new website has a placeholder at the moment, but there's more contact information there:

www.swanseahealthsolutions.co.uk

Coming soon:

Cardiff Tri Male Athlete of the Year

I forgot to mention that I was voted Male Athlete of the Year for 2011 by members of the club. Thanks everybody that voted, and thanks even more to those that voted for me!

I couldn't make it to the Christmas dinner unfortunately, but it was a very lovely thing to be told of at the end of a hard year.

Race yourself. Virtually.

I noticed some nice new motivational winter training videos and bits up on Garmin Connect the other day (here's the cycling video) and it reminded me to use the virtual partner function for this morning's ride as I ride solo & fancied comparing myself to this stage of training last year. I've built up a collection of rides that I can use for this. Woah! Racing yourself is tough!

I was out on a ride with a couple of long climbs, the main climb going over the Black Mountain. I did this route last March, so found the original data from my Garmin from that ride, and turned it into a "Course". You can do that in the Garmin desktop software, or you can now do it in the online software at Garmin Connect (see the image below).

You can then stick the course on to your Garmin computer, select it from the "training" and "courses" menus, and it'll then show you a black line to flow as your route, a little graph of the hills and dips coming up, a bunch of data about how long the route is and how long until you reach your destination, and a page with 2 little cyclists on it. One little cyclist is the you of today and the other little cyclist is you (or your mate if you've been sent a file from a friend to race against) from last time. There's a note underneath of how far ahead or behind you are, which changes colour depending upon whether you're in front or chasing. Clever, eh?

It's an easy, visual way to compare yourself instantly and constantly to a previous performance, and gives you a motivator to keep pushing.

I've used it before but only with courses I'd planned out on Map My Ride with a constant speed to chase. It's very helpful if you want to plan a nice complicated route with lots of lanes, as you can be confident you won't get too lost following the black line breadcrumb trail, and it's easier and quicker than pulling your phone out of your pocket to help you navigate every time you hit a junction.

Using it with a previous ride is something else entirely though. I was really surprised at how close we were throughout the whole ride. We started off together, but I had a bit of a headwind and was unlucky with traffic lights (you can avoid this if you use the auto-stop when stopped function - I don't) and he got a gap on me. I caught him at some other lights, but he slowly built a gap on me of about 1km on the way out. I caught up with him when he stopped for a pee (you remember that this is all virtual right? I just remember what happened when I did this route last year) and got ahead of him briefly. He had a gap again of only about 300m by the bottom of the main climb and I chased him down. The gap went up briefly, then I brought it back again but he beat me to the top by just a couple of hundred meters. Wow, that was tough chase!

The virtual me stopped for another pee at the top (must have been a big cup of tea) and I stopped for a photo or two (the one at the top and the one below). Maybe I should have taken some more picturesque photos of the views, but it was cold and my phone wasn't playing nicely. The image I have in my head is of the red kite hunting beside the road as I climbed, at eye level in bright sunshine, holding position in the updraft and tweaking its tail and wings to slide from side to side.

It was about 4C when I set off but the top of the hill was frozen about 500m higher than my house. Chilly! Me and my virtual me (Mii?) set off down the hill at about the same time but my descent was a wee bit sketchier than his - proper thick patches of ice on the road, some gritted hairpin bends and a strong wind gusting my front wheel around. Hairy! My competitor got a good 400-500m on me through the first part of this proper mountain pass descent, but I picked it up after a long drop down to the plains north of the hill with a wind to my back helping me across to Fairfach. We were so close that when the battery in my speed sensor died and I stopped to check it I saw him whizz past me as a big clear arrow passing through my little black arrow on my Garmin!

I got ahead again and stayed ahead (I think) on the long, gentle climb up towards Maesybont, then dropping down south again back into the wind he caught and passed me. The pillock took the wrong turn though (ha - I remember that) and hat to turn around so I got ahead again. All the way back to Gorseinon there were only a few metres between us, and we were sat at the lights together (virtually) with just a few km to go, after almost 90km of riding. We were back and forth all the way home; he got through a roundabout quicker than me and I hat to wait, then I took him at the next set of lights, and we got home almost together. All of that had mentally helped keep my heart rate and power nice and high to the end. Competing against yourself? You're fit!

I went straight out on a little bricked run and left him behind with a virtual cup of coffee.

In the Garmin desktop software you can compare rides and runs too. Check out this pair of graphs from the ride last year and the same route today. Funny how average and maximum heart rates are so similar over 4 hours. The distance discrepancy is from the wrong turn I took last year. Following the red and blue lines on the elevation chart you'll see how close the two riders were, 10 months apart. I reckon I had it windier today. My heart rate in the second half of the ride looked a little lower today, and was a little higher on the way out, probably reflecting the difference in wind conditions.

It was a cracking ride and good fun with my virtual buddy. If you're a solo rider like me and have a Garmin thingy for your bike (or for running) than I really recommend that you have a crack at the Garmin virtual partner function. You can set it up at a set pace for a set duration or distance but that's a bit dull. Race yourself against old files!

Links

Garmin virtual partner blog entry.