I’ve been keeping myself quite busy over the last few weeks. First of all I’m back on training after I recovered from North Shore Marathon, but more - we’ve planned a trip for 3 weeks in a row. I must say, it is little challenging to manage training schedule while traveling, but I think I’m getting better at it ;).
Over the last couple of months I’ve been focusing on getting into habit of increased training duration and distance. I’ve build program that is going to carry me through marathons and Taupo Challenge in few months. I wouldn’t be me if I did not collect data from that period. Below you can find few charts documenting progress together with some info about Training Peaks software.
Back in January, this was my ultimate goal for this year - finish an olympic distance triathlon. It seemed so distant and difficult and now it's all done! Surprisingly I got a perfect weather, sunny but not too hot, which is not that often in London. It started to rain few hours after I finished, but at that point I didn't matter anymore. After Mumbles swim I was little scared, yet I've set up a goal to finish below 2:30. I crossed the finish line at 2:27 and it made me happy for the whole week!
Ever since I've messed up the swim at Mumbles Triathlon (yes, it will haunt me for some time), I decided to dedicate more time of my training to swimming. It is still far from being great, but I feel much stronger after the last month of workout. On top of that I've managed to complete few swimming goals last week. I feel ready for London Triathlon!
It was not that big of a surprise for me, but it is confirmed now - I suck at swimming. Ok, perhaps it's slight exaggeration, but the truth is that I don't feel as confident in the water as I would like to. There are many reasons for that, main being to volume of swimming I've done in my life, with 99.99% of lifetime distance happening during the last few months. And that is absolutely ok. But how to find motivation and strength to get better? One way is to realise, that being bad at something is a part of the process.
I've survived my first triathlon! While I still wait for photos from the event, let me just share one that clearly describes how awful my swim was.
I was very disappointed with the break I had to take because of the accident, but let’s leave that behind us already. I’ve been training out like crazy over past two weeks, I’m planning to cycle almost 300 km in the next two days. That will be a great test for my new bike ;).
Fuck. This is not how I planned this Sunday. We finally had few nice sunny days here in London and I just couldn't agree to make use of this nice weather. I started my day with a walk with Mac, ate high carb breakfast and went swimming. Later I ate tasty tuna steak and went for long cycle. My day ended with my hand in cast, broken nose and trashed bike. But step by step...
Time flies quite fast, it’s been already three months since I've started my Triathlon preparation. Over this three months I've probably swum and run more than in my entire life, I've experimented with few different meal plans, lost weight, gained muscles, spent countless hours at local Virgin Active gym, got few punctures and bought things I'd never thought I will own. And the best thing is that this journey has just begun!
My plan of turning into fish is working well :D. But seriously, I’ve been swimming more than usually last week, I’ve found new pool and got new ways to cook healthy. But once again Sunday turned out to be too short, so the summary post is delayed.
You know if you’re busy when you have no time to write week summary on Sunday :D. Last week went damn fast and I don’t even know how it happened. I’ve learned few things about recovery after my first ever run and I’ve been trying to put few advices from Triathlon Show into practice.
The lazy time is finally over. Jokes aside, I wanted to have a calm week before the storm. I've been still going to the gym almost everyday, but haven’t done much swimming or running and on top of that I only got my bike back on Wednesday. But I finally know what I’m standing on in terms of Virgin Active London Triathlon and I've set up next four weeks of training.
I've finished my 4 weeks long running program, not missing a single workout (hell yeah!). It seemed difficult at start, but I don’t even know when these last 4 week have passed. On the other hand, I broke my bike on Thursday and I still don’t have it. I hate public transportation, busy trains and waste of time just sitting and waiting for my station. But hopefully today I will be able to resume my home - work - home cycling.
Those first months of any activity, when you feel stronger and stronger almost on hourly basis are most rewarding thing for beginners. What’s hard is to notice real progress week to week after that initial burst. You just go with your program, adding that small distance or extra weight, but it’s usually difficult to spot the difference. But today I’m truly powerful!
I don’t know if what I’m doing is the most optimal workout routine. Wait, I know it’s probably not optimal routine, but I’ve decided to stick with it for a while. Running, swimming and weight training puts me at around 10 sessions per week. On top of that, almost 200 km on my bike. More than enough for me.