Training Review - Week 4 - Jan 19 to 25

Monday's swim session was going really well. Much too well compared to the target times we were meant to be doing, I was between 8-10secs per 100m too fast. Until rep 9 of 10 when I went in to my first turn and came out with such a massive hamstring cramp that I would have bet money on an underwater ninja stabbing as I came out of the turn. I tried to stretch it out so I could at least do the last couple of reps and get more of my distance for the week. I didn't manage a single stroke before the pool ninja got me again. I had to quit and 

Once I got home I did a bit of stretching and rollering to try and ease it off but it didn't help much.

Tuesday I obviously learned from last week that I can't cut or drop sessions early in the week. Only my hamstring was bugging me all day and it was too icy and snowy  and cold outside so I binned my plan to run pretty much the minute I got up in the morning. By the time I got home I had worked myself back up to at least getting on to the treadmill for 30 minutes to get some numbers on the board.

Wednesday was a standard trip to the gym and an hour on the bike. Managed to spin out 20 miles this time without having to give up on reading my book to chase the second half.

Then from there the week went rapidly downhill. I couldn't muster any willpower to go out and try and run on the ice on Thursday and I only lasted 20 minutes on the treadmill, bailing out as soon as my lace came undone. Then Friday was worse. Did a double film day but then had a major headache when I got home. That then developed into a migraine so I completely missed doing anything what should have been a long day. Saturday was little better, I got out in the morning for a short slow run, but not enough and too slow.

Sunday I went out for my long ride with the Kintore group. I had expected the roads to be too icy to ride on but it turned out to be pretty clear. At about 45 miles we had a split in the group and whilst the serious group went on to 60, a group of 4 of us cut back on a more direct route. For more direct you can also read flat out team time-trialling for a 5-mile stretch, followed by a further 5 miles of dragging every last ounce out to try and survive to the end. 

in the evening I did core and light weights, badly.

Despite having flagged last week that I can't afford to just coast through the week and then cram in a massive weekend to try and stay on top of my plan, I have instead coasted through the week and crammed in a massive Sunday to barely get back to my plan. From being ahead of everything except the bike, I am now behind on everything except the bike. At least I got a few of the extra sessions in.

Target totals - Swim 1.4 miles. Bike 60 miles. Run 15 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Monday - Swim with TPT 1,525m in 49 mins.
Stretching session.

Tuesday - Treadmill 3.5 miles in 30 mins.

Wednesday - Gym bike 20 miles in 60mins.

Thursday - Treadmill 2.4 miles in 20 mins.

Friday - Rest Day

Saturday - Run Dyce 3.8 miles in 38 mins.

Sunday - Bike 55.1 miles in 3hrs 26mins.
Core session.
Light weights session.

Actuals - Swim 0.9 miles (1,525m). Bike 75.1 miles. Run 9.7 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 1 short stretching sessions.  mins of yoga.

Cumulative (Cumulative target)
S 4.8 (5.0) , B  226.6 (214.3), R 50.1 (53.6). 

Training Plan - Week 5 - Jan 26 to Feb 1

Last week in January so pretty much the same plan as previous weeks. One day of Feb gets me slightly smaller run and bike targets. Slightly behind targets now after a couple of dodgy weeks. No plans to change though. The S-curve I have planned for the year means the targets start to ease more from now onwards.

I may try to squeeze in a second swim somewhere but I don't know if there is a sensible place to fit it without giving up something bigger. 

I am a fraction behind on swim and run miles but both by amounts that I can make up in a single week still. I am not planning to make them all back this week but I might try and nibble back a little bit. 

Monday - Swim with TPT

Tuesday - Run reps
Stretching session

Wednesday - Gym bike
Weights and core sessions

Thursday - Easy run
Stretching session

Friday - Rest Day

Saturday - Long run.

Sunday - Long ride

Target totals - Swim 1.4 miles. Bike 58.6 miles. Run 14.9 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Training Review - Week 3 - Jan 12 to 18

Monday was another tough session in the pool. Not quite as hard as last week but certainly still close to the edge of what I can handle.

Tuesday I was exhausted after work and the wind and cold were enough to stop me going out for my run. I did eventually drag myself onto the treadmill just so I had done something and to make the rest of the week possible without having to put in a massive run somewhere. 

Wednesday it suddenly clicked with me that I had forgotten to plan for racing on Saturday. This means that Tuesday's light jog on the treadmill is potentially going to give me a problem towards the end of the week. But I figured I would be fine because I had booked a later massage appointment than usual so I could spend about 90mins on the gym bike and get far enough ahead of my bike target that I could trade out a session next week if I had to. About 20mins into pedalling my masseuse called and asked if I could come earlier as she had a cancellation. I decided that might actually suit me better so I cut my bike session to just 45mins and went off to get prodded. 

Thursday I was feeling pretty terrible. I decided to skip my run in favour of doing some bike upgrades on my road bike and maintenance on my friend's mountain bike. I did get on the treadmill, but only at walking pace to finish off my 10,000 steps for the day. This does mean that unless I do something completely radical I am going to miss my run target this week. 

Friday was cinema night so I didn't have time to fit anything in. Was probably a good plan to rest up before racing on Saturday as well. I did do a little bit of stretching.

Saturday I went to Forres to run the North District Cross Country League race. That will get a report to itself, here. Then I got back to find that Sunday's long ride is cancelled. This is going to turn out to be a good thing though as it allows me to be more flexible about Sunday and I can at least adapt it to catch up on the missed run from this week and possibly still get all my bike miles by running to the gym rather than just getting even further ahead of my bike plan. 

Sunday I decided to try and make back a lot of my lost miles from earlier in the week. Probably wasn't particularly smart to try and put in a big double session the day after racing but I wanted to make up for some of the losses earlier in the week. I jogged to the gym and then sat on the exercise bike for just over 30 miles. 

The end of the week numbers don't look too bad but they are masking a major hole in the middle. Tuesday I did half a session, Wednesday I cut short, Thursday I skipped entirely. I can't afford to be taking those sort of losses early in the week and just make them up in big weekends. I also gave up all of the advantage I had built up on my bike miles, and more.


Target totals - Swim 1.4 miles. Bike 60 miles. Run 15 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Monday - Swim with TPT 2,350m in 53 mins.

Tuesday - Treadmill 2.4 miles in 24 mins.

Wednesday - Gym bike 14.4 miles in 45 mins.
Massage

Thursday - Rest day

Friday - Rest day

Saturday - NDXCL Forres - 5.9miles in 52 mins
Warm up - 1.4 miles in 14mins.

Sunday - Run to Gym 5.8 miles in 55 mins
Gym bike 30.6 miles in 1hr 46 mins.

Actuals - Swim 1.4 miles (2,350m). Bike 45.0 miles. Run 15.5 miles.  short core,  short light weights and 1 short stretching sessions.  mins of yoga.

Cumulative (Cumulative target)
S 3.8 (3.6) , B 151.5 (154.3), R 40.6 (38.6). 

Training Plan - Week 4 - Jan 19 to 25

Still in January so the targets this week are the same again. Not having a race this week should take the pressure off and make it easier to smooth things out through the week better than last week. I suspect the early half of the week might involve some payment for cramming too much into the weekend though. 

I have a Flexi day on Friday so I am going to take that opportunity to get in a longer run. I am hoping this week to be able to get ahead of the week and then Saturday I will be able to take a day off and do some DIY jobs instead. 


Monday - Swim with TPT

Tuesday - Run reps
Stretching session

Wednesday - Gym bike
Weights and core sessions

Thursday - Easy run
Stretching session

Friday - Flexi day
Interview.
Long run.

Saturday - Rest day 

Sunday - Long ride

Target totals - Swim 1.4 miles. Bike 60 miles. Run 15 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Race Review - NDXCL Forres

Here is my race report from 2013.

I can't really remember why I didn't race Forres in 2014. I dug into my 2014 blog and it seems that I was having some fairly major anxiety problems that week so I wasn't able to do a run at all and was in no state to go and try to race. 

I am in a much better place these days so I had no problems at all this year. 

I got in a decent warm up before the race and checked out some of the bits of the new course. The snow wasn't too bad and was all firm enough to run on. The sections in the trees had thawed out enough to be boggy in places. 

The first lap I was feeling quite good. Not really flying but I was moving along comfortably enough and managing to stay in amongst a similar group to my previous 2 races from this season. One of my team-mates was in the same group and we were working well together, keeping pressure on the group. As we came towards the end of lap one we started overtaking some traffic from the previous race. At one bottleneck I moved in behind the backmarker and gave my team-mate the space to move through, and something went really wrong. I have no idea what it was. I didn't hurt anything or get injured. I just suddenly couldn't go at that pace. I was comfortable enough to carry on running, although it quickly deteriorated to a jog. 

The group I had been with quickly made a gap and kept going away as I dropped nearly 2 minutes in the next mile. I was feeling fine about it, joking away with the marshalls and still ticking along. And the same for mile 5. Then there was the last little climb and I saw a guy in front of me walking up it. He still had about 20 seconds on me according to the watch, but I knew he was struggling and that was enough of an incentive for me to try and push on. 

Whatever had been wrong in miles 4 and 5 had gone away and I quite quickly got back up to a proper running pace. I managed to pass him easily enough on the downhill section and the last mile was actually my fastest of the whole race, by quite a bit.

Despite the bad couple of miles in the middle I am happy enough with the race. It wasn't what I wanted, or how I expected to run, but it wasn't completely terrible and certainly shows I am in a better place than this time last year. 

Training Review - Week 2 - Jan 5 to 11

Monday's swim session was the hardest I have had to work for a while. It wasn't a particularly long session, but it was built around varying kick speed. Kicking at a pace inconsistent with the rest of my stroke is hard work.

Tuesday was going to be a reps session and I did go to the park with that intention. The surface was a little bit slippery so I decided instead to turn it into a more steady run and a bit of a fartlek. According to Garmin I did manage a bit of pace variation but not as much as I had hoped. I did manage one serious effort though and had the pace during that segment up to a decent 5:27/mile. 

Wednesday I was exhausted after work but I went to the gym to tick over on the bike. Mainly to avoid having to go all 60 of my planned miles on Sunday. The first 5 minutes I ticked along comfortably and then I started to feel much better and wound up the pace a little. And then I gradually wound it up a lot. Eventually I spun it up to the point where I clocked over 20 miles for my hour. Pretty chuffed with that.

Thursday I tried to do a variation on my basic loop around Dyce but I hadn't allowed for how dark some of the sections would be in the evenings. Also the flat laces on my new trainers keep coming undone and that was getting a bit frustrating.

Friday I had to pick up my car from its MOT and went to see 'Into the Woods'. Review here.

Saturday I got up in the morning and looked out the window and decided trying to do my remaining running miles in the wind and snow was a stupid idea. But I went anyway. It was windy and I did get a bit of snow near the end but I did manage to get 10km. 

Sunday was cold and icy but the group ride was still on. I decided to go to that rather than just sit on the gym bike for 40 miles. I was just about managing to hang on for the first 30 miles or so until we got to the Learney. We split up and the slower climbers (me) went first so that there wouldn't be anyone waiting at the exposed top of the hill in the cold wind. Then I started to struggle. Fortunately from 36 miles it was downhill and flat so I was still moving along pretty well, just not quite at the pace of the rest of the group. 

In the afternoon I went to see Taken 3. Review here.

All in a heavy week, but a good one. 

Target totals - Swim 1.4 miles. Bike 60 miles. Run 15 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Monday - Swim with TPT 2,300m in 56 mins.

Tuesday - Run Park reps 4.7 miles in 38 mins. 

Wednesday - Gym bike 20 miles in 60mins.

Thursday - Dyce home loop plus 4.6 miles in 44 mins. 

Friday - Rest Day

Saturday - Run miles 6.3 miles in 53 mins.

Sunday - Bike 50.5 in 3hrs 6mins
Stretching session

Actuals - Swim 1.4 miles (2,300m). Bike 70.5 miles. Run 15.6 miles.  short core,  short light weights and 1 short stretching sessions.  mins of yoga.

Cumulative (Cumulative Target)
S 2.4 (2.2), B 106.5 (94.3), R 24.9 (23.6). 

Training Plan - Week 3 - Jan 12 to 18 - Revised

Still in January so the targets this week are still the same. 

They were tough last week but I am just about coping with them so far. Definitely tiring and working at the edges of my range but one rest day a week does seem to be just about enough if I am careful with my effort levels on the longer sessions. 

I have booked a massage for Wednesday but I managed to get a later appointment so I should be able to get my full bike session in before going. 

OK, so apparently I wasn't paying attention to my calendar when I wrote this week's plan. I am meant to be racing in Forres on Saturday so here is the quickly revised version.


Monday - Swim with TPT

Tuesday - Run reps
Stretching session

Wednesday - Gym bike
Massage

Thursday - Long run
Stretching session

Friday - Rest day

Saturday - Short run session
Yoga session
Weights session
North District Cross Country League - Forres

Sunday - Long ride

Target totals - Swim 1.4 miles. Bike 60 miles. Run 15 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Training Plan - Week 2 - Jan 5 to 11

First full week of 2015 so we are into real training numbers now. It is a fairly standard first week, following a pretty similar pattern to the 2014 Q4 sessions that I was doing. 


Monday - Swim with TPT

Tuesday - Run reps
Stretching session

Wednesday - Gym bike

Thursday - Long run
Stretching session

Friday - Rest day

Saturday - Short run session
Yoga session
Weights session

Sunday - Long ride

Target totals - Swim 1.4 miles. Bike 60 miles. Run 15 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Training Review - Week 1 - Jan 1 to 4

Only half a week to start this year. Very easy first day with Dexter and a jog to first foot my granny. 

Friday I got up and went for another run with Dexter. I was meant to be doing reps but between the ice and the dog I decided it was safer just to get some basic miles in. Dexter was being a pain and dragging behind so the pace was terrible. By the time I got back my back and hip were aching so I did 20 mins of yoga. 

Saturday I decided to kick off my swimming year and to get ahead of my targets for week 1. I went to the pool and just coasted through a 1-mile steady swim. In the evening I did both my weights and core sessions. 

Sunday some of the sunday ride group decided to go out for about 40 miles but I wimped out of riding on the icy roads and went to the gym to sit on the exercise bike instead. Nearly two hours was very dull but did get me my bike miles for the week. 

So all in all it has been a good start to 2015. Ahead of all my targets. But that is easy to do in half a week which is all holidays. Let us see how it goes from next week.  


Target totals - Swim > 0.8 miles. Bike > 35 miles. Run > 9 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Thursday - Run 5.0 miles in 44 mins.

Friday - Run 4.3 miles in 41 mins.
20 mins Yoga

Saturday - Swim at Bucksburn. 1600m in 31mins.
Short weights session.
Core session.

Sunday - Gym bike 36 miles in 1hr 55mins


Actuals - Swim 1.0 miles (1,600m). Bike 36.0 miles. Run 9.3 miles. 1 short core,  1 short light weights and  short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

Training Plan - Week 1 - Jan 1 to 4

A nice easy start to the year as it is only a four day week, and all four of those are holidays. No plans to swim but the weather may yet have a say in that. I can always fall back to the pool if it is too dodgy to get out on the bike, or go at the weekend to kick start my year.

Also I have Dexter so running plenty should be easy. 

I have set the targets for the first week according to what my new s-curved targets require but with it being a half week they don't really apply. 

Thursday - Long run

Friday - Run reps

Saturday - Rest day

Sunday - Long ride

Target totals - Swim > 0.8 miles. Bike > 35 miles. Run > 9 miles. 1 short core, 1 short light weights and 2 short stretching sessions. 20 mins of yoga.

2015 Targets

Introduction

This is going to be slightly more complex than previous years as I have decided to make my targets smarter and to slightly s-curve my training. In previous years I have just set total mileage targets for the year and not really thought about how I get to them. 

Taking swimming as the example, I know that I will swim more in summer when I can go to Knockburn. So by setting a straight line target I generally fall behind my target during Q1, then jump ahead while I add the extra summer miles, then gradually drift back towards the line at year end. In the meantime the bike does almost the opposite as I do heavy miles and long rides in winter and then swap to shorter rides or lose whole weekends to races in summer.  But I know this is going to happen so why do I not just get a bit smarter at setting targets in the first place? So this year I have, unfortunately that is going to make them more difficult to explain. So hold on and hopefully this won't put you to sleep too early. 

Also there is still some uncertainty over my job, and that in turn leads to uncertainty over my gym access, as well as potentially impacting my available time for training and even my ability to go to Knockburn during summer at all. In some of the Q1 planning I have taken account of still having gym access. Later in the year I have assumed I will be able to find solutions if necessary. This may lead to some fairly radical changes to the plan at some point. 

Overall

No plans for a long event this year. I am still tempted by another Half Ironman at some point, but if I do one this year it will be because it fits around everything else rather than because I aimed at it.

So mainly I am still targeting Standard and Sprint triathlon races and I am thinking about a swim-run event at Loch Lomond in July. 

Swimming

I am starting to feel like a "real" swimmer these days, and as long as I don't read blog posts from anyone who actually is a real swimmer I can pretend they aren't doing double what I do, in the same time for their average swim session. 

So in the last few years I have increased from 39 miles in 2010 to 44 in 2011 and 52 in 2012. Then I took a more substantial step to 85 in 2013 when I was training for Aberfeldy Half and then the Scottish 5k champs. 2014 I took that up to 86.2 miles. 

So my plan for 2015 is to get up to 92.6 miles. 

The slightly smarter part is to S-curve it for summer though. Up to the end of April I have just planned for 1.4 miles per week. That is slightly more than just doing normal TPT Monday night sessions, so either I have to pick up the pace of those enough to be able to squeeze in an extra 150m of warm up, or I will need to get a few extra swims in somewhere. 

From May to August I have switched up to 2.4 miles a week. So this means at least a trip to Knockburn or an extra pool session every week for those 4 months. Some of that will be picked up by races. Then from September 1st I drop back down to the 1.4 miles per week.

I am also getting much better at tumble turns. Not as consistent as I could be so they still need some work, but definitely improving. I do need to still tidy them up, and get much more comfortable with attempting them in the shallow end. 

I can still go faster though so there will be some speed targets in the racing section. 

Biking

The bike is still my weakest event but it is improving. 

372 miles in 2010 and 254 in 2011 barely count at all. I was basically doing a bit of cycling for races and not much more. Then I realised that my running fitness wasn't just immediately transferable onto the bike. Also after my breakdown I was having serious problems with running but they weren't appearing on the bike so I got a bit more into doing some proper cycle training and jumped up to 1,562 in 2012 and then 2,078 in 2013. In 2014 despite cutting my race distance and reducing my cycling targets I have made almost no difference to my eventual total miles and I logged 2,130. I seem to have found a sensible volume to do at about the 2,000 mile mark. 

Again I am going to be slightly smarter about it this time and S-curve it, but in the opposite direction to the swimming. I am going to log miles in the off-season and then reduce them during race season. In January I am going to aim at 60 miles / week, dropping to 50 miles / week in Feb and March. Then once I am in to race season I am going to cut that all the way to 35 miles / week until September as I lose a midweek cycle in favour of my Knockburn trips. Towards the end of the year I plan to ramp up again through 45 and 55. 

The total on the plan comes out at 2,268 miles for the year. If I do manage to keep my current work schedule and gym access then this number should be comfortable, if not then it is likely to get sacrificed. 

Not having a mountain bike actually ups my numbers quite a bit. 15-20 miles on the mountain bike is a long hard day out, but on the exercise bike is an easy hour and on the road bike is just a warm up. If I do replace my mountain bike and get back to mountain biking I will change the targets accordingly.

I also want to do another time trial this year. But I want to find a really flat one. Asking around the horseshoe route at Drumoak is apparently the one I should be trying to aim at. 

Running

I should be running better than I have been. At the start of 2014 I added in some rep sessions and for a while I was making some decent progress back to feeling like a proper runner again. Then I got lazy and just started grinding out miles for the sake of it again. 

I need to be smarter here. This is meant to be my area of expertise. The annual numbers don't really vary much. They have always been somewhere around the 600-700 mark whether I have been training for 400m Hurdles or a marathon. In 2014 I did 631.2 miles. So I am going to set the target total at 688 miles, and I am going to S-curve it through the year, pretty much month-by-month.  

I am not sure how to tie a target to the pace. I thought about setting a target for number of reps sessions, or adding a pace s-curve over the miles, or something else. So I am not going to try and tie it down, but I am going to add the vague - do more fast sessions- as a target. 

Racing

Some of these are getting tough to write. I can't just keep listing off races where I have already raced well in good conditions and put a faster time on them. And since this is my last year as a Senior and triathlons continue to get more popular I am unlikely to make any huge improvements in places either. I am still going to do a lot of the same races and it would be good to go faster at most of them, but I am not going to tie myself into that this year. 

However, I can still nibble at my swim times in a reasonable way as pools are pretty standard conditions and the pace I am swimming at these days the drafting effect doesn't really seem to be as obvious because the other swimmers are either just too fast to draft, or just that tiny bit too slow and more of an obstacle than a help. But with the slower ones it isn't worth passing them to get a faster swim time but burning the extra energy that would be more useful on the bike. 

So I want to break 6 minutes for 400m. That is a big ask from my current 6:25 PB but that was done without tumble turns so I think it could be realistic by next summer. For 750m I wanted to break 13 minutes last year and I snuck in 12:55 and 12:56. I can take more off that though so I am going to set a target of 12:30 for this year. And to set a 1500m target the basic rule of thumb is double that and add a minute, so 26 minutes for 1500m. I also really fancy another 5k swim and if I can find one to get into I will look at breaking 1hr 35.

Already I have noted above that I want to do another cycling time trial. That will probably be another of the Deeside Evening League Races. I also want to do a Sportive and treat it as a proper long race rather than just tootle round having a chat. 

Running, I felt like I got that one a bit early last year and then got lazy about it, so this time I am just going to double it up so I can't just do one race and then be lazy. Instead of run a 5k in under 21:30, 10k in under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48, the new target is simply to run twice under 21:30, 10k in under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48. The times stay the same as they are still reasonable and I am another year older. 

I would also like to get back to doing a running championship. I am going to put this as an optional target though as I have no idea which one I could do.


Targets by the numbers

To make it easier for quarterly reviews here are the simplified versions of the above:

Swim 92.6 miles.
Bike 2,268 miles.
Run 688 miles.

Swim race 400m under 6 mins.
Swim race 750m under 12 mins 30.
Swim race 1500m under 26 mins.
Optional - Swim race 5k under 1 hour 35mins.

Bike race - Any time trial.
Bike race - Any sportive.

Run race - 5k under 21:30 or 10k under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48.
Run another race - 5k under 21:30 or 10k under 44 or Half Marathon under 1hr 48.
Optional - Run a championship race. 

Yet another new blog

So I am going with starting afresh again for 2015. 

Historical versions by year can be found at:

2011

2012

2013
2014

As far as training goes I am going to stick with mostly the same format as last year for now. So there will be: 

Annually - Jan 1 - Set targets, Dec 31 - Review against targets.

Quarterly - Review and revise targets.

Weekly - Training Plans on Monday morning for the coming week. Training Reviews on Monday morning for the preceding week.

In previous years I have looked at moving all my non-training posts to a separate blog and decided against it. However, I have now reached a point where I haven't written anything but training because it doesn't seem to have a place to fit now. 

So now the non-training stuff will have its own place, here.