Well last night’s lake swim will be one of the last of the season I guess. Too dark too soon.  The swim itself went ok, only 1000m before I decided to call it a night. I did notice my wetsuit rubbing on my neck though, which it has not done before. Maybe it was trying to make me faster by dragging me by the scruff of my neck?

image

I’ve got three weekends of racing ahead before my tri season ends. Once the races are over I’ll ease off a bit while trying to keep things ticking over. Maybe a late in the year 10km before a short break. After the break the training will resume in preparation for next year’s big races….

Here is an interesting article (Ref BMJ 2012;345:e4737) from the British Medical Journal which discusses the need, or lack thereof, for sports drinks during exercise and endurance activities.

The long and the short if it, according to the article, is that the necessity for sports drinks has been overemphasised by the sports drinks industry. It appears, from the article, that there is not much really relevant research into the relationship between hydration, sports drinks, performance and general health. The conclusions one can actually draw from the research also hinge on the subjects within the tests – real endurance athletes and their sports versus “everyday-Joes” doing 15-30minutes of exercise in the gym.

I guess my take on it is drink some water for activities lasting less than an hour and drink some sort of drink containing some calories and electrolytes when you exercise for more than an hour. It seems to work for me – for rides longer than two hours I tend to consume 200-400kCal per hour depending on what and when I’ve eaten and what training I have planned for after the cycle. Then there are the race-like training sessions where I try and dial in my hydration and nutrition to match race day prep.

Anyway – read the article (and associated comments) and decide what you think. Let me know your thoughts on this. I’m going to try and find some other articles discussing this and if I find any that I think are useful I will post a follow-up.

BMJ 2012;345:e4737

Here are two interesting articles I stumbled across. The first contains some pro racers’ tips for nutrition during races. The second is an interesting article from Joe Friel about fatigue and the relationship to CTL/ATL.

http://www.triradar.com/training-advice/ironman-nutrition-pro-secrets/

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2011/06/question-why-am-i-so-tired.html

Hope you find them interesting and/or useful.

Well I thought I ought to sort out my laptop to connect to my CompuTrainer for the upcoming winter indoor training which ought to take place. As it turns out, I ran into a few issues as my laptop has been rebuilt since I last used the CompuTrainer connected to my laptop. I’ve been using the CompuTrainer handlebar control for varying the power rather than courses or 3D videos.

Anyway the bits of software I’ve installed are:

CompuTrainer 3D

http://www.computrainer.com/html/improvements_to_3d_v3.htm

Download the latest version (v3.0 2010/08/05) and install. Make sure to install into C:\ and not C:\program files.

Coaching Software CS

http://www.computrainer.com/html/coaching_software_support.htm

Download and install into C:\ aswell. This is now free.

Topo GPS

http://www.computrainer.com/html/TopoUSAsupport.htm

Download and install. I also needed to download the “other” topogps.exe from

http://www.racermate.net/forum/download/file.php?id=157

which was included in the forum post at

http://www.racermate.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3516

Without this update I was unable to view/edit 3DC files, as described in the forum post. The error in the application’s fatal.log file was:

Error in X:\_f\lib\velib2\willcourse.cpp at line 113:
nlegs error

This is a great piece of software which allows one to convert .gpx files into .3dc files which can be “ridden” using the CompuTrainer 3D software.

 

I am considering getting the updated RacerMate One software which has recently been released. I do wonder how useful it wil be though. Hopefully DC Rainmaker will do an indepth review of the software in the near future.

So, I was looking over my past events last night and noticed something that I had forgotten. I noticed that I had less than one month between my first ever triathlon and my first half-Ironman race. WOW. That was pretty gutsy for me. I look back now and am not sure I would recommend such behaviour. It does however, make me think about just what is possible when one puts their mind to something.Maybe that Ironman race next year isn’t so bad afterall.

I did a “sortof” triathlon in training yesterday. Did a 1600m swim set, a 15mile bike ride and a 2mile run. Transistions were pretty slow (ok, a trip to buy groceries between the swim and bike) however. The 15 mile loop may become a time-trial course of sorts for me over the coming months. It’s got some decent stretches for TT aero-bar position and has a short-sharp hill at about 10miles. I look forward to reducing the time to complete the loop 🙂

Well I did some simple statistics pulling from WKO+ for the past three seasons. I based a season from December through to end November of the following year.

date from       01/12/2010    01/12/2009   01/12/2008
date to         30/11/2011    30/11/2010   30/11/2009
run duration    45h47:02       82h01:12    65h07:36
run distance    527.126km      957.505km   727.656km
bike duration   15h28:04       115h46:42   158h04:18
bike distance   260.632km      2409.497km  4337.618km
swim duration   6h04:00        30h26:00    36h58:00
swim distance   18.45km        94.031km    104.613km

(Yes, I realise we’ve not quite got to 30/11/2011 yet… so will update the 2011 season once it completes)

The figures include treadmill and Computrainer sessions along with training sessions and races.

I hope that I manage to do more training over the 2012 season – probably slightly down on the 2009/2010 season due to less free time these days. Maybe I should set some training targets for the 2012 season?

The bike average speed varies somewhat due to extensive use of the Computrainer in the 2009 season – due to the ERG training I was doing at a relatively higher wheel speed than on the road the average speeds are inflated.  So the times are probably more useful to compare than pure distances.

 

 

 

Well it has been a while since my last blog post. Figured I had better write a quick few lines to let you know I’m still alive!

Firstly, here is a link to a great article by Joe Friel about recovery. Definitely worth a read: http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2010/09/how-to-recover.html

Since my last serious post I have completed a few races – Ironman Swiss 70.3, London Triathlon, and the National Club Relays. All good fun. Managed to PB in Swiss 70.3 and London Triathlon so am pleased with my recent performances.

My training leading up to the Windsor Half-Marathon and the New York Marathon is progressing well. Touch wood my legs are holding out with the increased running volume. This weekend I have the HSBC Standard Distance Triathlon at Dorney Lake. My main goal is sub-2h30 – with the secondary goal of beating my work colleagues who are doing a relay team race.

My swimming is holding steady and doesn’t appear to be improving significantly. I have increased my swim session duration, but have unfortunately reduced my swim frequency. Over the winter I hope to maintain my swimming and hopefully get a bit faster.

My cycling is going well – my last few weekly 10mile time-trials have definitely improved my 30minute (CP30) power output.  Over the winter I am looking at trying to not loose too much power while I rest up.

I will hopefully write up some brief race reports over the coming days.

Hi,

Well a quick update on the training front. Over the past few weeks I have ramped up the training after my lay-off from the Sinusitis. I can tell I have lost a serious amount of fitness and will battle to get to any decent level of fitness for my Swiss 70.3 race in 59 days time. I have done some good sessions in the gym and some medium paced outside runs. I was getting  a good rise in my TSS score. I say was because I appear to have picked up a sniffle and a scratchy throat.

I will ease off training for the next couple of days to try and shake this cold before it develops into anything serious. If I don’t shake it soon I fear that my Swiss 70.3 race may need to be called off. This year is not turning out well from a health and fitness point of view…

Well today is a glorious sunny day. Great weather this morning after last night’s freaky thunderstorm and torrential rain. Great weather for an outdoor swim… but that’s not on the plan for today. Today calls for a hour cycle followed by a short transition run. Looking forward to that after work. The only minor concern is the residual fatigue from Sunday’s cycle. I’m surprised that the legs are still a little tired – I guess the ride was tougher than I thought. My guess is that due to the number of stops and mini-rest breaks my aerobic system had time to recover from the efforts but the leg muscles didn’t recover. So by the end of the ride my CV system was not fatigued but my legs were. Interesting to consider the difference.

Yesterday’s swim went well even though the arms were still a bit achy from Saturday’s long swim. With the taper beginning these muscle aches will pass fairly quickly now which is great! During the taper I intend to keep an eye on my CTL to ensure that it does not fall too much. My CTL has not been rising for a while, but rather keeping steady, so hopefully the taper won’t let it drop too much. Joe Friel, the guru, has a great blog entry Strong and Weak Form which discusses the art of taping to come into form while keeping an eye on CTL. I hope that my coach’s plan does not taper to fast causing my CTL to drop dramatically… if I start getting concerned I will discuss this with my coach and perhaps increase intensity/volume slightly to keep the CTL decreasing “optimally”. Yes, another plug for the great WKO+ software – it really is this great!

Nineteen days till race day… EEEEK!