Saturday 30 July 2011

Theres More To Loch Lomond than The Maid Of The Loch

Seeing how as it was a glorious day, and I had a barbeque to attend on the shores of Loch Lomond, there was only one thing for it this morning - to get up and head out early to get a cheeky wee run in first!
I got myself up to Sallochy around about 11, and from there ran along the West Highland Way to Rowardennan - its a truely beautiful place to run. After a short chill out to take some photos, I was back on my feet & on my way back to Sallochy. Must admit though, wasn't digging those climbs today (plus some of the downhills were a bit sketchy as I was wearing my normal road running shoes rather than trail ones). Still, I did it & raised a good sweat in the process.
Back at the car, everyone else started turning up for the barbeque, but seeing how as we were lochside, the triathlete in me had to finish the session by donning my wetsuit and getting a swim in. The water was glorious & at that temperature, I didn't need the wetsuit, but it is fun to play about in the water with the extra bouyancy!

For anyone thats interested, the bay I was swimming in was just round to the north of the Sallochy carpark on the east shore, and you can walk out quite a fair way before it gets deep, though there are plenty of cans and bottles littering the loch bed unfortunately.

Friday 29 July 2011

Motivation

I have several reasons for doing this blog, but one is that I hope I can encourage others to take up a sport, exercise more or even just take their existing sport & set a more challenging goal for the year.
My enthusiasm for Triathlon is well know round the office as I talk about it to the risk of boring everyone, but sometimes it filtres out into other people. Earlier in the year one of my Friday lunchtime swim group signed up for a charity sea swim, so I became the person to come to for advice, on open water swimming and technique (so I've been taking what I've learned from the coaches and Robert from Discover Swimming and passing it on). Then on Tuesday, she comes into my telling me I should stop talking about triathlon so much, as the seed has been planted and she's starting to think about entering a novice race next year.
VICTORY!!!!!

Thursday 28 July 2011

Round the Pond 28/07/11

Shock horror - an actual blog about my training session!

Following on from recent speed work, once more this block is round the pond, doing 500m laps (lap + a bit to be precise). Today we were doing a pyramid session, 1 lap on 2:30, 2 laps on 5:00, 3 laps on 7:30, minutes rest, then 3, 2, 1, try not to vomit.
I ran fairly consistently today, and rather fast. Myself and another guy led out throughout, pacing ourselves off each other, so I ran around about 2:00 (so I got a 30 second rest before restarting), 4:02, 6:00, 6:10, 4:05, 1:54. Since I don't have a fancy GPS watch yet, I'm going on remembering what the coach was shouting out as I tried to get oxygen back into my lungs.
The 2nd set of 2 laps was painful, I had to coax myself over the line with the lie that I could maybe sit the last one out, but dragged my sorry arse back out for one last lap. This time though, after having fresh air on our heels throughout (except when Sean to shoot past us because he was missing out laps due to his taper, so I caught onto his heels to drag myself round for that 6 minute mark), someone decided that he was going to run a fast lap for the last one, and as neither of us front runners were going to be taken by him, we picked up the pace to finish off with a stonking 1:54 (or there abouts). At that point, I *did* briefly consider vomiting, but instead chose hanging over double and gasping until the nausea went away.

I'm still getting people at the training sessions impressed with how my speed has upped big time, but to be fair, they did see me over winter when I was significantly slower and with rather poor cardio. It is very nice to hear though, and to see how much better I'm holding up against people who crushed me for speed in February (and in some cases I've started going faster than them). Very heartening.

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Footwear

For anyone that trains regularly in running, my thoughts here should be well know. For those that think they can't run, maybe this is the first step to getting their without hurting. If you do run regularly but haven't considered these things, maybe you should.

Until recent years, I never really gave much thought to what I put on my feet, if they were comfy & I liked the look of them, I wore them and that was that. Unfortunately I dislocated my left ankle 3 years ago, and as the doctors never saw fit to send me for physio, I never went looking for any, I still have a weakness in it. This means I have to be more careful about what footwear I choose. What I look for now is good support - a flat board shoe like Airwalks are horrific if I try and wear them all day and by the evening I'll be reaching for the ice. For day to day shoes now I tend to wear my Haglöfs Crag, the support I get from their heat moulded insoles is exceptional. I heartily recommend them.
The other thing is I pronate. Previously I used to get shin splints when running, but once I got gait analysis and fitted, decent running shoes, this particular problem disappeared.

Why I'm writing this now is I've been wearing a pair of shoes that pinch a little round the ball of the heel - if I wear them occasionally for a day, they're fine, but after a few days, I can fell the ankle weaken, and then I remember that I've been given plenty of exercises to help strengthen my ankles, and that I should stop slacking and get on with them.

Sunday 24 July 2011

What A Difference A Day Makes

And The Need for a Break.

I do have a bad habit of not responding quickly enough when I'm getting too tired, so I don't get good quality rest days in in time, particularly when its not just training related fatigue. Being my first season of triathlon (with its 2 races I'm calling last year my prologue), I've got a lot to learn about how my body copes with sustained training, as its something I've never really done before. When I've had a 'health kicks' in the past, they've tended to be very short lived or just involve one or two short sessions in a week, maybe a swim on a Monday and a game of 5's on a Wednesday, enough to make do and to give me enough fitness not to be panting if I had to run for the bus. So with my desire to go long and to get faster on the short distance races, I've got to start paying more attention to what my body is telling me.

For a rookie, I've had a relatively well stacked race season so far I reckon; a sprint duathlon, then a middle distance tri, short recovery break, then into 3 sprint tris and a 10k with a fortnight between each of them. After Tighnabruach, I had a couple of days off, then cracked straight back on wanting to get some big cycles in, so the following two weekends got a 90k & 70k cycle in (which are again long for my current level) and a few extra swims sessions on top of my normal training. Take that and add the stress of the busiest time of the year at work, multiplied by the lowest morale I've seen in the office and add in a looming audit next week, and its really no surprise I was feeling knackered. So following some good advice (if you're feeling rubbish, don't train, you'll just make it worse) I ditched my plans to cycle back from work on the Saturday (the one Saturday of the year I have to be in, so its not too bad) and instead took the car, so that when I got home I could lie on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, before heading round to a mates to moan about all the stress from our respective workplaces.

Today I woke up a different person again, and after a long lie in (I got out of bed at 9:30!), slowly got myself out to Bellahouston park to play about with aero set up on the bike - the outcome of which is that I'm going to need a lot of help setting up a comfortable position that also gives me full power.

But I wasn't really out there for the bike, it was for a run through some parks in the sunshine that I was after, just the joy of movement and the glory of the world around me, one of those days you are just glad to be here. My legs felt great, so a run from Bellahouston to Pollock was extended out to Queen's park then on again to King's park before heading back to the car. By no means was it a non-stop effort - the weather was far too nice and the temptation to great to take some chances to just chill out on the grass for a while after I turned round at King's Park - but that's alright, as today was all about whatever helped further soothe away my worries. And it worked.

So two things I'd like you to take from this dear reader, take a break when you need it and make sure you take it the beauty of your surroundings, particularly when its as glorious as it was today.

Reasons to be running

Sunshine, trees, fresh air and a big grin on my face. Is that enough?

Thursday 21 July 2011

Splish, Splash

Third day swimming in a row, back up to Loch Lomond for a wee zip round the triangle, then beach & back (I'll have to put a map up later for anyone that hasn't done the swim), and you know what? It felt really good. Certain aspects of my stroke are starting to come into place plus I'm feeling much stronger. Think I have to work on my shoulders a bit, stretching & strengthening the muscles, as my right in particular can be a bit niggly - feels like the rotator cuff is getting a bit sore if I overuse it, or sleep on my side, and the joint can feel a wee bit clicky at times. As long as I'm sensible though, its OK.
So basically, all the coaching is paying off, I'm getting short periods of an almost effortless, powerful stroke, so I know what I'm looking for and I've got plenty of time over the winter to work on it - I've got a long way to go on it, but when I feel those moments of power, I know I can do it.

If you've ever doubted you can swim, get yourself some lessons, get going regularly and get yourself fitter.

This is my challenge:
http://www.challenge-roth.com/en/
Whats yours?

My Bathroom Smells of Neoprene

And do you know what that means? That I'm getting out and using my wetsuit regularly, and that's just great. As an ever improving swimmer, one thing that has always held me back has been how uncomfortable I sometimes feel in the water - getting splashed in the face while rotating to breathe or coming into contact with someone in the water would panic me a little & I'd lose my rythmn, so I'd drop into breaststroke for a bit to settle down until I was ready to get back into the crawl. The growing crowd at the open water swim sessions has helped a lot there (alongside my improving technique of course!) as more and more I get to swim with people around me, catching feet, getting feet tagged, bumping into sides, etc, and yesterday none of these things caused me to panic & have to reset. And that is why this morning the smell of neoprene is the smell of success.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Wetsuit

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Challenge Colm, Day 1

So today I bit the bullet and signed myself up for Challenge Roth. For those of you not into triathlon (or who I've yet to chew the ear off of) its a long distance triathlon (Ironman distance), which means a 3.8k open water swim, then jumping on my bike for a 180k cycle through the German countryside, topped off with a cheeky wee marathon at the end. And I'm massively excited. And I'm going to drive people at work insane the more I go on about it. Tough. 8th of July 2012 is the day I find out what I'm really made of. Its going to be one hell of a journey. Stop in & join me on bits of the way if you want.

The purpose of this blog? Hopefully to write a semi regular blog on training progression so that I can see how I'm doing, but also to record how I'm thinking and feeling, to track the change throughout the next year. I cannot underestimate the challenge I've set myself - just over a year ago, I dragged myself round the GE Strathclyde Park Sprint Triathlon (.75k/20k/5k) in over two hours, after 5 weeks of unfocused training. And I loved it. Follow that up with another slow but enjoyable effort in Kelso, and then my big brother threw down the guantlet and got me to sign up for Lisboa Middle Distance (1.9k/90k/21.1k). After going out and buying the loveliest piece of carbon fibre I could afford for a bike, I knew that there was no way I could self train for Lisboa, I had nowhere near the discipline or knowledge to come close, so with a couple of nerves (as I didn't know if I was going to find myself surrounded by superfit athletes who would scorn my puny skills, plus the enormity of the task considering my puny skills at the time) I sought out Glasgow Triathlon Club and found myself a great bunch of coaches and triathletes who encouraged & helped me from that puny start to where I brought myself round the course in Lisboa with a smile on my face (for the most part)! I couldn't've done it without them, but then I couldn't've done it without the internal drive to improve, push and challenge myself. This same drive, that once I'd finished a middle distance race (a distance that I once thought you'd have to be insane to tackle) pushed me to consider where to go next, to continue the improvement and become an triathlete. This years race diary filled up with sprints, a chance to feel the buzz of the race day, and they are great days, but no other race has brought the satisfaction & sense of achievement that Lisboa brought. And as I heard people talking about Ironman, I knew I wanted to try it. Planning to go out to a race with club mates just makes it less daunting and sound more fun!
Once I've completed Challenge Roth, I can review the different distances and look where I want to try to change things to bring new personal bests, but the next year is target Roth. I know that if I put in the graft I can complete this, and that still surprises me, considering how far I've come (and it probably surprises a lot of the guys that have known me longer!!!)
Seriously, anyone reading this should know that big changes can be made to your life to improve yourself. Its not always easy, but in the right environment, the sky is your limit. I look back to my first club session, where I nervously edged in, comfortable with breaststroke (if someewhat inefficient), but a freestyle that left me gasping at the side of the pool after 25m. Today we did a fairly intense interval session, lots of fast 100 and 50m reps. There were a couple of times where I had to coax myself to do 'just one more rep', and indeed at one point, as I finished a 100m, I was all for sitting one out, but as I reached the lane wall & surfaced and heard the coach's encouragement, I manned up and went again, shedding some of the fatigue from my mind so I could focus on holding my stroke better. And without putting in any less effort, it felt easier, and I nailed each rep, and in reasonably consistent time I think. And you see, I was the slowest in the lane, but thats utterly irrelevant, as we all have to work at our pace, and improve at our pace, so if you look at someone training hard & well, don't think "I wish I was as good as them", rather think "I must work as hard as them".

Ha! This wasn't suppost to turn into a preach, but hey, when the words flow, the words flow, and I never want to stem it.

This is my challenge:
http://www.challenge-roth.com/en/
Whats yours?