Training Week 4

The week didn't start too well with Monday and Tuesday off sick. I got some sort of winter vomiting thing which stopped me in my tracks. I was fine by Wednesday and had a session in the pool that wasn't great and a comfortable hour on the treadmill. My knee was sore afterwards which is still a big concern.

I swam again on Friday and actually enjoyed it. I did some lengths and some drills and I did feel a small amount of improvement. Baby steps! My training is hampered by not being able to use my fins in the pool at Tooting Leisure Centre. Health and Safety apparently. Load of nonsence. Many of the arm drills I've been given in the lessons require you to concentrate on arm position so you don't get much propulsion from the arms and have to rely on your legs. Without fins its incredible tiring.

Saturday's swim lesson was again really good. I am slowly beginning to like swimming rather than feeling it is something to just get through. Who'd have thought.

I went for a run today.  I kept it slow to try and save the knee but I felt strong from the word go and kept the pace higher than I have of late.  I got to about 45 minutes and still felt good but my knee started to twinge.  It was the same story.  It was just an ache that ever so slowly grew but not causing me to slow so I just kept going.  I did 7.2 miles in under 9 minute miles and my HR never left zone 2.  Perfect.

Finally, I will not be doing my Sunday weigh-in.  Its my birthday tomorrow and this weekend has been fairly indulgent.  I went for a 10 course meal last night and there was nothing that was on the weight-watchers lists of healthy meals.  Tonight its roast beef and all the trimmings and I'm sure there will be cake tomorrow.

Stats:
Swimming - 3 sessions, 1.2 miles, 2hrs 6mins
Running - 3 sessions, 16.7 miles, 2hrs, 32mins
Cycling - 4 sessions, 44 miles, 3hrs 5 mins
Press-ups - 343

1000 push-ups

At the start of the 30 week training plan for the Ironman, I decided to do daily press-ups. I would start with 10 on the first day and increase it by 1 each day until I got to 100. Then maintian the 100 each day until August. This was mainly to strengthen my upper body as I've never really worked on it, especially when just doing running and cycling.

It was gone well with very few days missed. Today my total reached 1000 mainly because I have exceeded my planned daily total several times. So that's over 1000 in 28 days. I plan to do the next 1000 in under 25.

Cake

Yesterday, I was off uni with some sort of bug. I felt sicker and sicker on Sunday, feeling like I was going to heave at any minute and eventually doing so. This cut short my planned run.

I had Monday off as a result which again ruined my gym session. I did, however, turn out to be fortuitous as at 11:30 I got a call from my daughters school to say she had been sick. I got her and she spent the rest of the day watching TV. I still felt rubbish but did manage to get loads of work done, finishing my 5000 word essay of dialogic teaching (don't ask).

Today, we were both feeling better but the school has a policy of no-return within 24 hours of being sick so she wasn't going to school. She asked to make cakes (she muct better) so we went to Waitrose, got a load of things and set about making a mess. It was great fun.

We made choc-chip biscuits and a lemon dizzle cake that is pretty good even by my standards. Obviously, with the bowl licking and sampling, the diet took a hit today but it was worth it.

Training Week 3

Another good week. I really enjoyed the swimming lesson on Saturday. I felt I progressed a little and it was good to get the confidence back after a terrible swim on Thursday. I also played 5-a-side football on Friday which was great fun.

My concerns this week are about the amount of running I've done. With only a month until the first of my 20 milers, I need to up the mileage. I was hoping my knee would feel fine by now but I still have a bit of a niggle that worries me.

Swimming
Time in water: 1 hrs 55 mins
Estimated Distance: 0.9 miles

Running
Time: 2 hrs 32 mins
Distance: 14.0 miles

Cycling
Time: 5 hrs 45 mins
Distance: 76 miles

Totals
Sessions: 13
Total Time: 10 hrs 12 mins

The cycling numbers are quite high. I do include my cycling to and from school as well as to and from the gym. I always treat these are exercise and work hard so I feel they should be included.

Next week my aim is to get out on the road bike. It is dependant on the weather but I don't want to do all my miles as a commute on the Ridgeback. My run is also up to 75 minutes but I need to keep raising so I'm ready of the Meon Valley 20 miler in February.

I also successfully completed my press-ups this week. 270 in 7 days. That rises to 300 next week. The weight loss wasn't so good. In fact, it was zero. I lost nothing. I was doing well until Friday when I was feeling down about the amount of school work I have to do and lost all sense of control. Friday night and all day Saturday were shocking. A malt loaf, stake & chips, pick n' mix and biscuits were some of the highlights. The fact that I didn't put on any weight is a miracle. Must do better next week.

Excellence

Inspired by this video called Standing Start and a blog by Paul, I got to think about excellence. What does excellence mean to me, do I strive for it and do I ever achieve it?

These thoughts are always challenged by my mate Ed, who has different objectives than I do and he works in a very different way. I am driven by a need to complete things. I love the fact I've done 7 marathons and 98 running races in total. The fact that my marathon PB is probably not as good as it should be doesn't bother me. I guess its quantity, rather than quality. Shaving seconds off my PBs doesn't give me that much joy but doing a new event, specially if its a bit unusual, fills me with excitement and a huge sense of achievement.

Ed, on the other hand, wants to do his best. He wants to say "I did everything I could to ride that event in the quickest possible time". If anything prevents him from doing his best, he is annoyed. He eats as perfect a diet as he can manage, trains as hard as he can, gets the best advice and makes sure he has the best gear he can afford. To enhance his training for the Marmotte, he has a personal coach to guide him through the next 5 months and maximise his training. This is sure to get him a sub-8 Fred Whitton.

I chose not to do the Marmotte as it felt too similar to the Etape. I will do it one day but I needed a new challenge. The Ironman fit the bill because not only is it longer than anything I'd done before but the swim added a huge degree of uncertainty to the event. I truly do not care what time I do it in. All I care about is the medal and being able to call myself IRONMAN.

So, are we both striving for excellence? In the normal definition of the word, I am not but Ed is. He yearns to be the best that he can be. He is willing to sacrifice a lot to get better and better at his chosen sport. I do not. I will sacrifice as much as is needed to complete the event. For the marathons, I didn't really have to lose that much weight so I didn't. For the Etape, losing weight would help so I lost some. Now for the Ironman, I really need to lose as much as possible, partly for aesthetic reasons but mostly to help prevent injury during the volume of work I have to get through. So I will lose it. I do what I have to; not the pursuit of excellence.

Yet, I feel like I have achieve excellence in my own frame of reference. I could not run to the end of the road in December 1999. When I finished my first half marathon in 2000 I knew I could not run one step more. And when I finished my first marathon in 4:59 I vowed never to run again. Yet here I am.

PS. I believe I have represented Ed correctly and positively (he'll soon tell me if I haven't). I don't say that one goal is any better or worse than another. I think having any goals and pushing your limits is all that's important.

Swim Lesson 2

I had my second swimming lesson with SwimForTri today. It started with a few warm-up lengths before moving to a recap of our leg work from last week. Swim from the hips, not the knees is the mantra. This is something I am having trouble with. My legs hang low, I use my knees too much and I flap my legs more and more as I get tired. I just have to keep working on this.

The next phase was to put on our flippers. I hadn't worn fins before so I was shock at just how much they help. It was great fun zipping through the water. We did a few lengths just practising our leg strokes before doing some arm drills. One on our back, rotating our shoulders out of the water whilst keeping our head motionless. The second drill was to swim with one shoulder out of the water for an entire length. I enjoyed this and found it OK.

I now have to do more drills and less basic swimming in the pool according to the coach. She says that there is little point doing length after length with a poor stroke as all you will do is ingrain bad technique. So its mostly drills from now on.

Weight

Last year, I tried to lose weight. I knew that the lighter I was, the easier it would be to climb Mt. Ventoux. I did end up losing weight but it was 90% down to the increased levels of exercise and little to do with better eating habits.

I am now in a similar position with a need to lose weight to aid performance. And so far, its going well. The difference? Well, its the swimming. Not that actually swimming makes me lose weight but wearing nothing but a pair of small swimming shorts makes you very aware of yourself. Every time I think about a chocy bar or a bag of crisps, I just picture myself in a wetsuit and I eat an apple. Vanity is a powerful thing.

My first aspect of my diet I changed is bread. I have blogged about it before but bread is my weakness. I love it in all its forms. I worked out I ate thousands of calories a week on bread as well as all the things I put on bread (butter, jam, pate etc.). It has now been 6 weeks since I ate any bread and it has been a real boost to the diet.

The other is fruit and veg. I ate it when ever possible. Often when I don't feel like it. It just keeps me full all day. It doesn't stop some of the sugar cravings but it helps.

After reading Ironwit's blog, I have a few other things to think about. I train for treats. Doing a hard session on my bike or running tends to give me guilt free eating. I feel I can spend an afternoon eating what I want. With a big event like the Fred, it lets me eat what I want for the rest of the day but I just can't turn if off. I eat like a horse for a week.

The other problem is that I need to up the calories to take into account my growing levels of exercise without eating bad things. I'm fine at the moment but when my training gets to 10+ hours a week, I know that a bowl of soup at lunch won't be enough.

Finally, I have no physical target for my weight loss. I have found that setting targets usually results in disappointment. I will likely end up missing the target and feel like I failed. My aim is to continually have a downward trend in my weight until at least May with a blip in April as I eat bread for 1 day after the marathon. Yum!