Kevin's Training Blog of 2019

This is the first real turn in my plan for the year. The run miles cut from this week and the focus properly turns towards faster running. That should mean some commuting on the train, and fitting more of my runs in to lunchtimes and evenings instead of as purely aerobic commutes.  I also start into a few 4-day weeks as I use up my carried over holidays from last year. I have to use them up before the end of March so I am taking Friday's off for the next 5 weeks. I have done this a few times in the past but it has been a few years since it was helpful. Last year it obviously did nothing for me, 2017 it was too far in advance of Bratislava to be useful, 2016 the weather was pretty terrible.  I have also added a quick conversion of my run speed target. Since I have my garmin set up to time per km (makes 40 min 10k or 20 min 5k nice and easy) it was getting difficult to work out in my head during runs if I was going fast enough to meet my pace target. Also Dexter is visitin...

Monday I thought I was clear of the cold so I took my commutes as easy spins on my winter road bike. The weather is almost spring-like and it was the first time that both rides were effectively in daylight.  Tuesday I had to take the car to work.  I then lost track of the week and thought it was Wednesday when I got home and went out for my fast run. While it was a pretty good run, and well within my fast run target for this week, it did aggravate my hip and convince me that my lungs need another day to get clear of the cold so I skipped my planned swim session.  I did a short core session in the evening though, just to move the numbers and the backlog a little. Wednesday was another day of commuting in the car.  That was primarily so that I could go to the hospital in the afternoon for an updated set of x-rays on my ankle. It appears that removing the screws has improved my mobility but has been insufficient to weaken or break the bone bridge that grew alon...

This is my last week of planned long run miles. From next week I cut the targets so that I can aim for fewer but faster run sessions.  However this week I also have a mess of commutes as I have to take the car in to work twice. At least one of those is so I can go to the hospital and get a check-in and some x-rays on my ankle to confirm progress.  I am not going to chase the missing sessions from last week. As the targets drop in the near future the run number will almost certainly come back to me. I am still in my swimming target window and high on bike miles. It would be good to pick up some of the other sessions but I don't want to just binge them all in to one week so I will try and take them gradually over the next month. I have kept my run target pace at 7:40 since I missed so much running last week and didn't even attempt a fast session. Targ ets -  Swim 3.0 miles,  Bike 36.0 miles,  Run 17.0 miles. Stretching session x1, Core session x1, Weights...

Monday I took a pair of easy commutes. The return leg I suspect was wind-assisted as it has been taking me 38-40 minutes the last few weeks and even the string of green lights didn't account for getting home inside 30 minutes.  The club swim set in the evening was brutal. Especially after the aerobic endurance set I did on the Sunday.  Tuesday I woke up to find my arthritic hip was as stiff as it ever gets and I had to abandon my planned run to work. I did manage to stretch it out and hide the pain under a couple of ibuprofen while I jogged to the train instead. On the way I got overtaken and easily dropped by a jogger at least 20 years older than me, and he didn't even look like he was working that hard.  In the evening I realised I had a bit of a sniffle, but I went swimming anyway. After two heavy swim days I wasn't surprised that the fast pace wasn't available for reps. I did the planned session of 20 x 50m, but instead of getting through 23 reps before droppin...

Inverurie Duathlon is this weekend. I might go and race it once I see what the weather is going to be like. Currently the BBC is saying calm and dry but cool. Given the lumpy course it is not going to work well with my pace target for this week's fast run. If the weather is dry I might take the TT bike.  The rest of the week is a slightly rearranged set of commutes to try and separate the long runs. While I have shown that I can run consecutive days, if I want anything more than just aerobic endurance from them I need some recovery time in between.  I am going to take the physio session off the list as I haven't been doing them and haven't been tracking them. I don't think they are adding anything now. I can do the full set of exercises without any trouble and while I do get some ankle pain during larger exercise, I don't feel like they are getting any work from the physio sessions.   Targ ets -  Swim 3.0 miles,  Bike 36.0 miles,  Run 17.0 miles. ...

Monday I took the mountain bike to work through the snow. In the evening was my triathlon club AGM before swimming. It was a mostly technical session and I had to skip some sections as even 6 years on the plate and screws in my shoulder still give me problems during isolation drills.  Tuesday I rolled the mountain bike in to work and in the afternoon I ran home. I put the heart monitor on just out of interest. My steady aerobic run is ticking along nicely in the 150's and feeling comfortable.  I went to swim in the evening with a plan to do a speed endurance set. I did a set of 200m reps starting on 3:45. 15 seconds less recovery than I would normally take. The sum of those reps gets me to about 17:15 for a 1km. At first glance this seems worse than a fortnight ago when my set of 50m reps totalled out to about 16 minutes, but given the huge reduction in rests and lower effort levels this was actually a step forward.  Before bed I squeezed in a core session to try ...