Tuesday 11 March 2014

(a bit more than a) Weekly Reflection 03/03 - 10/03

This week's post is slightly longer than a week as we had a public holiday on Monday 10th and I couldn't be bothered turning on the laptop to do any work nor any blogging.

My peak was during the week of 24th Feb - 9th March so my training last week was slightly less - some might even call it an early taper - 3 weeks before the race instead of 2.

I once again skipped Monday morning swim due to lack of sleep from Sunday night and tackled double Tuesday sessions with a run in the morning and then the windtrainer after work. Thursday was combo at Elwood and memories of last year flooded back about how cold it was to train near the beach at that time of the year. The water was fun to swim through once you could get into the rhythm of the waves and sighting could be an issue if you lift your head up to sight at the wrong moments. After the 1km+ we then got onto the trainer for some strength work. Similar to last year, we had Sam Hume during our training sessions just to give a small insight to what he does in training and what has worked (and not worked).

I got myself out of bed to do the long endurance swim at MSAC on Friday morning but noticed that my back was playing up and I had to stop at the ends of the pool to stretch out my back. I also suffer from bad period pains so that could be something to do with it. The pain did not subside during work on Friday nor did it go away on Saturday morning. Instead of spending hours on the bike, I decided to rest and re-schedule my training around it. So instead of doing a long ride on Saturday, I decided that as Monday is a public holiday, I will do it then. I ran my 22km on Saturday afternoon and did the race recon swim at Frankston on Sunday morning.

The swim was great and I felt confident about being in open water. You do have to swim quite a distance away from the shore first before turning at the buoys.

I had a goal of swimming 1:15 for 3.8km thinking that I may improve it over the 12 months (goal of 1:20 last year) but comparing the times, I am not sure if 1:15 is really attainable but I am not too worried, it's only 5 min difference.


During my long ride yesterday - I copped another flat (OH HEAVENS!!). This time, it looked like a snake bite flat similar to a pinch flat. I am really annoyed as I thought that changing the tyres would solve it. I guess I must ensure that my tyres are pumped at the right pressure and try not to ride over too many aggressive bumps. A planned 150km became a planned 120km which ended up being 100km as I didn't feel like riding too much further after changing a flat.  

Favourite session of the week: Sunday morning swim (over most of the swim course) was what I enjoyed the most. The course is different from last year and if everything goes to plan, it would be a great swim course. Considering that I have ridden 180km during training and have done the event last year, have ran 42.2 during last year's event and have ran 75% of the run course, the swim was the last thing I needed to tick off the list as we only had a 1.5km swim last year due to weather.

Least favourite session of the week: Long ride - actually, I enjoyed being out on the road early in the morning and riding in TT position. It was the need to change a tube (again) which gave me the sh!ts. I also had an Xlab inflator which has been pretty useless as the only way to pump up the tyre was to untwist the canister slightly which is not as good as adding pressure onto the valve. I have now changed my inflator to my old one which I liked and could control better. I have officially ran out of tubes.

Advice of the week: if you don't have any tinted goggles - go get some! You will need it for Ironman Melbourne. Swimming towards the shore after the 2nd turning buoy - could not see a thing!

Thing I’m looking forward to next week: I am looking forward to spending some time with the family in Geelong and supporting the short course guys at Portarlington.

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