Goodbye week 3! Another week down and as my training is 30 weeks long i’m going to employ some complex maths and say I’ve done 10% of the weeks.  The plan i’m following has three weeks of slightly increasing durations for runs and cycling then drops in the fourth, so getting to week three means I have a free pass in week four because I’ve covered all the distances in my ‘drop’ week before now.

The training is broken down into three 10 week phases, the base, build and peak phases. In my head I further broke these ten weeks down into a football style 4 – 3 – 3 week formation. You start with the 4, then it’s only two sets of three weeks and you have completed a phase. In my head this makes the long plan seem a bit more easy to break down, as i’m only dealing with three or four week training plans at a time (incidentally i’ve been printing off copies of my plan to stick around the flat and work, and i’m using this 4-3-3 week system to print off the plan).

Before I started I was a little concerned about training over christmas and new year, with all the parties, family visits, eating and drinking that goes with it, so to get through it without injury, missed sessions or missing out on all the fun christmas goings on is a pretty good feeling.

I’ve only done one swimming session this week (although i’m substituting a game of football tonight instead of my swimming). This is down to a combination of a sore shoulder and different opening times over xmas for the Manchester Aquatics centre. My shoulder isn’t hurting that much, but I don’t want to aggravate it, so I figure having a few days off swimming to recover is probably a wise choice so early in the training. I used the one session to just do drills, I honestly have never read so much about doing a sport as I have swimming in the last few weeks. If I hear one more ‘water is almost 1000 times denser than air’ quote I might actually die.

My running is getting faster, after feeling for the first few weeks like I was only just plodding along, my speeds are improving whilst my heart rate stays the same. Got to be a good sign i’m getting fitter. I had another fun ride through the heart of Cheshire yesterday with Tom and true to form it rained for every minute of the ride. I’m surprised at how much better my cycling is already and i’m really enjoying riding.

The actual details of what I did, and what I have done in total are here.

Week 2. Done.

So far, so good. My total hours have increased slightly and I still feel good. I actually don’t feel as burnt out as I normally do with marathon training at this point. I think there’s something about mixing up the training with different sports means you are working different muscles. I’m enjoying the challenge of fitting it around the rest of our lives and so far it seems to be going pretty well (although if you ask my wife, she might disagree!).

My swimming has absolutely come on leaps and bounds since the last post. I’ve signed up to a ‘Masters’ (their name – i’m in the beginner section) swim session. This was advised in the Be Iron Fit book i’ve based my training on and so far I could not recommend it highly enough. I had to go through a few weeks of lessons to get up to speed, and now i’ve progressed into the main swim sessions. It’s run by www.uswimopenwater.comand to say they push you is an understatement. This evening the second part of our ‘warm’ up was a mile swim. I think we covered about 3.8km in total, which is about the Ironman swim distance. Its far far easier to train when someone else is doing the pushing, this way I can just rock up and know all the difficult bit of swim workout planning is done. I love it.

Saturday’s long ride was courtesy of a route found by a friend, Tom, who also came along on the ride. Saturday was not the greatest day for a ride – to say it was wet does an injustice to wet. We passed a lot of flood warnings, we fjorded a couple of roads and generally got drenched. I’m not sure if I was out on my own if I would have enjoyed it, but having someone there makes a big difference. It was different getting out on the country roads in Cheshire, and it makes cycling a much nicer experience when you don’t have to worry about traffic, junctions and pedestrians as much as you do in town (although having to cycle past the grinding poverty in the Cheshire plains was heartbreaking – some people don’t even have a separate double car garage).

So week 2 went fine, all workouts done, and i’m getting slightly quicker on my running for the same heart rate already. Tomorrow should be a rest day, but i’ve rolled forward my Tuesday run to give me a day off on xmas day (I shall not be reporting on either what I’ve eaten or drunk!).

The actual details of what I did, and what I have done in total are here. Merry Christmas!

The first week is done! I have a swim session later today, which will be my third of the week and is technically one more than the plan says, so i’m calling it done now. It feels pretty good – I find it so much easier to training for something – to have an event scheduled in and a plan for how to get there. Strange as it sounds i’m one of life’s lazier people, unless I have a good reason to go out running, cycling or swimming I generally don’t. However, knowing I have something I need to be trained for is like switching on a light, the sessions don’t feel so long, the effort feels less, and I can just enjoy doing it knowing that it’s part of a bigger thing.

I’m glad I did the pre-training stuff. I was a little apprehensive starting as I could not get out much last week due to a cold I picked up – it would have been tough to dive it with no prep work. So far, i’ve actually enjoyed the challenge of fitting it in around my life, and have managed to fit in two Christmas work parties, one Mumford and sons gig and a 30th birthday party, as well as a Sunday brunch (full english, why not, I’ve earned it).

The actual details of what i’ve done are here (I don’t want this blog to be about just the boring details of my training, so i’m trying to separate text from logging).l

In terms of how i’m doing with the actual training, my running is fine, but way slower than i’m used to running due to the heart rate zones. My swimming needs tons more work (I got cramp in last Sunday’s session and couldn’t finish, not ideal), and whilst I love my bike, the seat is a little less than comfy! I’ve also discovered that indoor training, whilst really useful for time efficient is not that exciting, and very, well, sauna like. I was pretty pleased with doing the bike session yesterday on the back of a pretty large hangover (tip: 3am finishes on nights out and morning training do not go hand in hand).

So this is it, this is how it starts, and for the next 9 weeks i’ll be building up my base levels of fitness to take on the tougher challenges to follow. Which reminds me, I need to change my plan over Xmas – two sessions on Christmas Day is not going to happen!

After only a little over two months of waiting the big day has finally arrived. My new bike has landed in the flat. Its been a bit of an anxious wait because:

• I don’t know what i’m doing when it comes to bikes
• I’d never seen it
• I didn’t know if it would fit

So it was a bit of a relief when I first got on it and everything seemed fine. Actually fine isn’t the right word, I first got on it and LOVED it. It was only a 10 minute ‘is-everything-fitted-and fixed-in-place’ scoot around the car park, but even so I left with a big grin on my face!

So when you get a bike, you want to get on it and get out right? Well, i’ve been a bit silly there really because despite having two months notice I have neglected to buy either an indoor trainer or anything you need for outdoor riding in the winter (lights, warm clothes, etc etc). So I’ve been restricted to a very small ride in the light after work yesterday. I loved it.

Things to note:

• there are a lot of pot holes in Manchester.
• my bum is sore after spending about half an hour on the bike in 4 days.
• I have currently been banned by Pilla of calling it/her a she or naming it.
• Im not sure i’m ready to buy tights yet.

So I need to sort out some gear, some routes, some stuff to keep me distracted on indoor rides and i’m good to go.

In other news, i’ve been swimming 2-3 times a week. I feel like i’m getting a bit faster and I really enjoy *some* of the drills (i do hate some other. ‘Fisting’ the water is not fun). My endurance in the pool is really not up to scratch, and i’m only getting 1500m at most from my sessions.

Also, Chrissie Wellington (4 time world ironman champion) was at the same pool as me on tuesday. Her book is at least partly responsible for me doing this, so it’s a shame I didn’t bump into her. Although that probably would have been an akward conversation in your swimming outfits!

I’m poorly (I might write a post about that) so what better way to spend you evening than mucking around with graphs?

Below is a stacked chart, representing the bike and run minutes I’ll be doing over the 30 weeks – I haven’t got a time for the swim bits yet.

Not at all worrying, is it??