Ironman Mark

It’s been a year of two halves.  January to May – training really hard for Ironman Lanzarote.  June to December with a chest infection, then with a torn calf, then with extra home duties because of Wifey’s broken foot. 

I did a brilliant Ironman.  I was really chuffed, swimming was great, bike was good and running was good.  I had an (almost) perfect race.

January to May was 41% of the year.  And in those five months, I did 65% of the year’s swimming, 68% of my biking and 42% of my running. 

Overall:

- Swim: 63:16

- Bike: 181:15

- Run: 166:44

- Total: 446:09

That compares to around 419 hours in 2008. 

The big difference is the split between the first five months and the last seven.  If I carried on like I did the first bit then I would have done well over 600 hours in the year. 

The saving grace of the last part is my running.  In November I did over 25 hours of running.  That’s more than 10 hours more than I did in my peak ironman training month in March.  Pretty good!

In weight term, I’ve put on just over 10 pounds since May.  Oh dear.

I’m pleased with the bike session I did today – 20 x 1 minute, high resistance, low rpm intervals.  My breath was like a dragon’s and steam was coming off me.  The bit that really pleased me was that I did the whole session properly.  All of it.  Every last minute. 

I also did a swim today.  It was very different from yesterday’s in that I put the effort in and hurt.  Actually, I didn’t hurt all the way.  I just did 15 x 100′s hard.  Then I eased off a bit for the rest of the session.  Not sure how far I went as I didn’t plan it.  

Yesterday, I was disappointed with my swim speed.  I got a new toy that allows me to time how quickly I swim (a bit like a stop watch).  As I haven’t swam properly since May, I was pretty upset to see how slow I was.  So, I decided to turn over a new leaf and start swimming a bit more… vigourously!  And regularly.

I also decided to reset all my pb’s.  I am living in the past.  My 400m pb used to be 5:55.  Yesterday I did it in 7:12.  Oh, dear.  Yesterday’s time was at the end on 90 minutes swimming, was at a low intensity and so is not a real pb.  However, it gives me something to start from.

Anyway, tomorrow will be another swim, an hour run and perhaps a short bike session.

It is not often that you get to see Basingstoke on the news.  It is even rarer for it to be the lead item.  Well, that’s what’s happened today. 

Five emergency rest centres were set up for people who could not get home!  One person left Reading at 3pm and was still not home in Basingstoke 8 hours later.

Looking out the windows in Reading yesterday, I could tell that it was going to be very bad.  There were lots and lots of cars skidding every where.  Then I found out that people were taking 40 minutes to leave a car park in Basingstoke and so I guessed it would be gridlocked.  So I went to Primark in Reading bought a pair of tracksuit trousers and a hoody.  On the way back I helped push a silver BMW back the right way.  It had skidded so that it was facing across the road.

I then went to someone’s retirement drinks, got my suit off and my Primark stuff on, got the train to Basingstoke (it was on time!) and then ran home.  It took me 40 minutes to get home which is only two or three minutes slower than normal.  I ran up the main road past queues on non-moving traffic.  Absolutely fine!  Much of the time I was running on very compact snow, sometimes compact ice and the last 2k was on proper snow on top of a gravel track.  This was the hardest to run on.  By the time I got to the top of the hill, there was about 15 cm of fresh snow.

Then I borrowed my wife’s bike (it’s got a battery) and took an over night bag for someone who had got stuck with friends a couple of miles away.  Then turned round, and went back the way I had run.  I had to be a bit more careful going up hill, past the queue of cars as sometimes the cars span their wheels so fast that they went sideways quite quickly.  Then I carried on up to the top of the hill (passing all the cars and busses I had past when I ran by before).  At the very top is a small roundabout and there was a furniture lorry stuck there.  So I got off, helped push it, and then rode home.

This morning I will ride to the station.  It looks like the trains are still working (but they will not be to time) and see whether I can ride home or not.

One of the cliches that I like is “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.  We found a better way.”

As I’ve said before, work has been getting busier recently and I have been feeling quite tired as a result.  Exercise has reduced.  Eating has got worse.  Leaving home at 6am, getting back at gone 10pm, nearly midnight one day, is making things tough.  I’ve only done two half-hour runs this week and I am not happy about that.

Work will reduce in a bit and go back to the normal steady state.  But I do feel I want to change stuff. 

So, I went to the gym near work and joined that again.  Next week was supposed to be holiday but I will need to be in the office.  So I have decided to have an extra hour in the morning and get in at 10 (rather than a couple of hours before the normal start time).  It is nearly Christmas after all.

Which reminds me, I need to by some more presents.

Anyway, light is coming up.  I want to go for a run with the dogs in the snow so off to Greenham Common…

The last seven days or so have been very busy at work and so I have done little training.  Not good.  After a couple of 16 hour days, I spent a good chunk of the weekend asleep!  Hopefully there will be light at the end of the tunnel soon and that I’ll be able to start up again before Christmas!

… well it has.  And it hasn’t.

November was a great month for running.  I did 30 runs over 30 minutes long in the 30 days.  Doing just over the 25hrs 30 mins in November.  That’s the most running in a month, beating my previous longest in October (which itself beat my previous best the month before).  So I have done three good months of running.

I did very little biking in November though and a tiny amount of swimming.  Not good.

I decided to give up on the 100 runs in 100 days because I was spending too much time thinking about how I was going to get my next run in to meet an arbitary target rather than doing a bike ride or something.

I have also decided to eat sensibly, with yesterday being my first day of it.  The trouble is that I have said that to myself so many times to myself, only to find out that the next day my willpower is gone as I am eating a huge bar of chocolate. 

So, it is official.  The training properly starts now (or at least it did yesterday).  Yesterday was a 40 min run in Southampton.  Today was a 1 hour run with the dogs at Greenham Common.  I will make sure I do some biking today.  Tomorrow will be a swim and a long run. 

Roll on the summer.