Milestone

Last week was a bit of milestone. Since beginning training again after New Years, I reached the longest week (14 hours) so far leading up to Florida 70.3 and also managed to cross the 100km mark in running, 105km to be precise.

So far, I have roughly spent 50% of my training running, 25% swimming and 25% biking. This is all in keeping with my overall strategy for this first training period: to improve on my main limiter running. Judging from the triathlons I did last year both swimming and running should be my focus, but running is relatively more important for the final time, so it makes little sense to put the same effort into swimming.

I'm also fairly happy with the progression that is visible in my running. I have yet to put myself to a serious test, but feel much stronger than last year. Indeed in the weekend we did a fairly tough brick workout consisting of an out and back:

• 20 min run
• 1 hr bike
• 20 min run
• 1 hr bike
• 20 min run

The idea was to take note of the turning point on both run and bike, and to try to go further or at least as far each time. On the run portion I managed to run further each time coupled with some very decent pace splits. However, my biking portion was not as successful, not quite managing to reach the turn around point on the second leg. There was a lot of wind that day and my average speed wasn’t that bad at 37 km/h for the first leg, but I still believe my biking has suffered as a consequence of my focus on running. I don’t feel outright slow at the moment, but just not as strong. However, with some purposeful training I am certain it won’t take more than a month to get back on track with the biking.

This weekend I have a killer biking session planned with Johan who is off to Ironman South Africa soon and in need of a bit of race pace / speed work for his final prep. Distance is around 110 km and consists of:

• 20 mins easy (warm-up)
• 3 x 5 min hard pushes with 2 min easy
• 25 km time trial
• 5 km easy
• 25 km time trial
• 5 km easy
• 2 x 5 min hard pushes with 2 min easy
• 30 mins easy (warm-down)

For the time trial I will be giving Johan a 2 minute head start and subsequently adjusting that head start for the second time trial based on our time difference on the first one. Should make it interesting.