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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 yesterday 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.

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.

2012, here we go

Oh no! Christmas and New Year celebrations are over, we've got to go back to work and wait a whole year to do it all again! Time to plan a holiday I think.

So 2011 was a tough year, but a lot happened. Illness and death are as hard as it gets, but from those people and experiences we've learnt and grown. I keep adjusting how I think and act, linking back to those we lost. I hope I'm better for it.

Rhi and I handed in the first draft of our textbook in 2011, which is due to go to the typesetters this week. I'm looking forward to seeing what the illustrator makes of our scribbles. Already I've been asked to develop another textbook project with the same publishers.

Work has been nuts again (I've been saying that since I started in Swansea), and to be honest, by the end of the year I think I was burning out. I hope I find a better pace when I go back. I need to get some support to help me use my skills and abilities effectively and to allow me to crack on with the things that are fun (and that students will love and find helpful if I ever get them finished). We've all got to pace ourselves if we're going to be working until we're 70-something! If I didn't have the training and racing I'd go mad (or become ill) for sure.

Racing was pretty good. My fitness and ability improved over the previous year and good results happened as a result, even though my running was crap. I'm not driven entirely by results - going fast in a triathlon for 2 hours is just plain fun for me - but good results really help and push me on. They're a reward, a sign that all the work I'm putting in is working, that my biology experiment is succeeding. My running is becoming more robust again now after a long period of hard and sustained work so maybe I'll get some running races in this year and perform a little better. That might be the key to top triathlon placings in 2012.

Christmas this year was my most devious yet. Father Christmas also did a great job and the kids had a great Christmas. Jack has been plugged into his Nintendo 3DS since he opened it and I'm waiting for him to finish Mario 3D so I can get stuck into it! I managed to hunt out, buy, get delivered, build, hide, wrap and pull out a Cannondale mountain bike for Kim without her knowing. I wanted to surprise her with something that I was sure would make her smile and get her excited, and I don't think she's had her own bike since she was little. Kim's had an extremely hard year and Christmas was always going to be a little sad without her mum, so we switched things around a bit, changed the routine, and a new bike (hard tail, aluminium, disk brakes, v nice) made her very happy. The surprise was an important factor, and I was chuffed I pulled it off. She had no clue and that made Christmas Day brighter and exciting. It's scary being that devious!

Now we're back into January I've got back into racing planning. It I'm avoiding thinking about work. I'm off until Monday when I and the kids go back and we need some more family time. I think I've worked out what kit I'll race in this year, and I need to get my sponsors' logos from them so I can get them printed on some new kit. I've got a list of potential races written up, and my race bike's frame has gone back to Cannondale to have a crack looked at. It's time to get some entry forms sent off and some travel plans made.

Have fun in 2012!

December training

There's a lot of comment kicking around about our mild autumn and winter. I'm not sure if people are complaining, wishing there was snow for Christmas, or just doing the British thing of commenting on all aspects of the weather. I'm very happy with the mild weather. It went cold last week which brought out the big gloves for the bike but in the week before Christmas it's back to mild and damp, and I can live with that.

I did 4 hours on the bike today with the last 2 hours on the flat back into a 20mph headwind (I knew it was going to be there but it was still a suffertime) with a short bricked run afterwards. The legs are doing pretty well especially as this ride was a little early in the week to avoid Christmas Day, and a couple of tubes of GlucoTabs was all they needed to get home. Now I'm talking about the weather. Cyclists and runners are probably worse than most for this.

I'm midway through my second block of training and I can see and feel my fitness slowly developing. I can also feel the fatigue building, and this week got tough as I squeezed in a bunch of sessions without the usual easy days to get them done before Christmas Day. Christmas Day and Boxing Day will be easy days before the third week in this block. Load and recover, load and recover.

Back to normalish

The world is less wobby now. I was diagnosed with BPPV by many people, including the second year students as they had just had a week on the ear. That's benign paroxysmal positional vertigo to you. Clinicans love abbreviations.

I missed a couple of sessions because I couldn't move my head or walk unaided, but later the next day life was a bit better as long as I avoided certain head positions (looking up or down) and quick head movements. Working on a laptop was mostly ok, as you keep your head naturally still. Training in the following week got done, and the only real trouble was in the gym. I found that looking down at the deadlift bar and then lifting a heavy lift made me really dizzy, as did looking up at the pull up bar and then pulling. Once I'd sussed that out I stopped looking up or down and set my hands in place by feel.

I've just completed another week of training after that, and I've done a little tumble turning in the pool and a tiny amount of backstroke and that was ok. I can also lie on my back again to stretch, and that's really helpful. Moving me head quickly still gives me a weird sensation, so doing things like maneuvering the car into a parking spot has to be done steadily as you flip your head to look back and forward rapidly.

At this time of year missing a little training isn't a huge problem, and I didn't miss much. I just hope it doesn't recur again sometime important.