April 2007 -

Well, another month and another 5 weeks closer to D-Day!

This phase of the training saw me upping the mileage again and introducing a brick type session 2 times per week (oh boy......what a good idea that was!!!!). The first brick i did was a 20mile bike followed by a 4 mile stumble! I felt as though my legs just didn't belong and it kind of got me thinking just what exactly i had let myself in for. Anyway, i persevered and can report that it does infact get much easier over time and infact, towards the end of my 6 week phase, i was feeling pretty comfortable running straight off the bike (exaclty how long i can last, still feeling comfortable is a bit of a mistery right now.) I would recommend these bricks to anyone doing 1/2 or full ironman, as i have found they have helped me get some real strength to both my biking and running. Do be careful to space them out though and dont mix them with VO2 intervals sessions. I felt very tired towards the end of the 3rd week and was suffering from mild overtraining syndrome. That said, this could also have something to do with the fact that to mark the beginning of my 'no-drinking until after ironman' phase, the boys took me on a massive weekend session to bournemouth!!! It took me nearly a week off to recover and taught me a very valuable lesson in training for ironman................ Ironman is all about consistant miles and quality recovery, after all it is a marathon, not a sprint....................well actually its a marathon after a bloody long ride and swim!!!

March 2007 -

What a month! Really busy at work, having to split my weeks between Haworth (west yorks) and home. On the whole though training is going well. Been splitting my training into 5-6 weeks phases, with this phase focusing on developing my VO2 capacity, so lots of long intervals (5-8mins), working near max in the last few mins!!! Im also trying to work on my strength/endurance, so im back in the gym 2-3 times doing circuits (bit of a shock to the system), but starting to feel the benefit. Distance wise im up to 13miles on the run, 40miles on the bike and swimming 3km. Im managing to do 3 runs, 3 bikes and 2 swims (with a bit of juggling) and these are based on 1 long session, 1 interval session and then 1 paced session.
Competed for the first time in 18months - Clumber Park Duathlon. I planned to race it hard, so could get a feel for what was missing at the moment. Was hard, but i expected that, on the first run, i felt i was in a 100m race!, was defo lacking speed compared to the other, but seen as i haven't worked on that yet, no surprises. On the bike, again i just felt good and strong, but there was still not a much 'there' as i want, felt like the edge was missing a little and also i started to cramp in my calf's, so had to easy back on the hills which was a little annoying! Still got a good time and was ahead of what i expected. The final run (as expected) took 3km to settle into, but i felt as though i was defiantly running stronger, the further i went (very encouraging given that i have 26miles to run after the bike in 5 months time!)

All in all, a very positive phase, im slightly in front of where i expected to be at this stage. The next 6 week phase starts 26th march and is based on threshold work (should be fun!). Still undecided as to whether im going to race a Bala yet, would like to, but im not sure i can afford the time off to rest afterwards.