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Training Diary
August 31, 2006
- Weigh-in: 86.8kg.5 miles bike chores around town. 6k run in 33:34 (to US army marching cadences). Right on the edge of upchuck. Weigh-in: 88kg. All day surfing. Got some very specific aches! 1km in the Hunstpill with E. Some great stroke times and more importantly, OVERDISTANCE for Cotswold. Feeling very calm and focused. Breakthrough workout in the pool this morning: 150m / 6 lengths nonstop for the first time, mostly 100s other than that. Total 20 lengths, I rather like these short morning sessions. That's a distance PB and it puts a whole lump of confidence in me for the 750m lake swim part of the September tri. 20 mles on the bike - strong hill attacks. Back on the eph, 24mg stacks 3x daily starting this, er, evening. Maintenance phase over, reducing phase begins. 89.2Kg, 17.8%bf. A couple of hours learning to surf! 20 lengths good, 75s and one 100. 20 miles ride hard and fast for a coffee and a comic book. 6k fast and fun running to US Army running cadences - you know, those "I wanna be your drill instructor" chants. Open-water swim at Teignmouth. Serious rip today, well outside my comfort zone and quite tense. Doubled my distance, damn you Elvis for pushing me :) About 300m of competent crawl once I found my breathing and fixed a goggle malf. 56 miles on Meatloaf. Gentle mile-eating ride around the Somerset Levels. Short swim today, just 20 minutes in the morning including the first 100m set with a sense of rhythm and no sucking-for-air gaspy badness after. Neat. Memo to self: it takes a couple of hundred metres to get into swim mode. Remember to warm up in future and not to expect too much while warming up. Then bike to and from work, 20 miles, windy. Rotten 20-length swim again. Night swims aren't working, so I'll give it a break tomorrow and then hit two mornings in a row. Rode the inaugural Exmouth Exodus last night - a 101-mile bike ride from Bristol to Exmouth. We finished in 7:06, average speed 14.2mph, which is a nice rolling pace for that sort of distance. We left across the Clifton Suspension Bridge at 10:00 in parade formation. Out of Bristol I immediately got a flat, my second of the day. Bah, a friend gave me puncture cooties! Hooray for spares and insty-patches. Off into the night we rolled, snaking around until we reached the first climb. It was great: hard, but measured and controlled: the first big climb where I've really felt that I was managing my work rather than just trying to get up it. Total sweat-fest. Thick mist at the top, then the descent of Cheddar Gorge. Fan-bloody-tastic, six miles of gradually-steepening switchy road with looming cliffs on either side. Took it totally hell-for-leather, all lights (and my groovy wheel lights) blazing, flicking the bike around like a motorcycle. Ended with a grin like a fox eating shit off a wire brush Very Happy On across the Levels to the midway tea stop, by which time we were feeling a bit grey. Tea and snacks helped and we set off for the next climb at 04:30 after a bit of navigation fun ("no, *that* left!"). This one wasn't so good: I'd spent my energy a bit too freely early on and was reduced to cursing in the granny gear. Up on top there was a plateau that took forever to cross - I don't get on with totally flat roads - before another fun switchy descent through dawn woods. About now my knees were starting to pack in, your standard joint overuse worries. The next bit was a blur as I was falling asleep - literally, jolted awake once by the bike trying to fall over! Scary stuff. Last climb: up onto Woodbury and everyone was slower. At the top of Woodbury, we could see the sea, and that gave everyone new legs. The last eight miles were grimly silent before arriving, I dropped off the back of our bunch and had to mentally fight the knees on the way to the end. We got to the seafront and the arrivée cafe just after 07:00, ordered tea, fell asleep at our tables, and then ate American-sized mega-breakfasts while the sun burned off the dawn grey into a beautiful morning. Good ride. Harder than the Dunwich Dynamo. More satisfying as a ride, less as a bit of street theatre. Knees will need strapping and anti-inflammatories, all of which I've done many times before. And my wheel-lights stayed together! So that makes two centuries this year, a personal record. Very happy. 2 miles on the bike. 20 lengths swim (500m) - rotten, fatigued. Must get to bed. Shaping weights, 12kg x10s. That cephalic vein looks to be a regular visitor. 20 mile commute, hard and headwindy. Vey short swim - 20 minutes, no more than a dozen lengths. Though some felt really good, long and elegant even, I was totally unfocused so cut it short. I need to concentrate too much to do swims tired. KIT TEST: The new Swedish goggles rock.
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