This week I’ve really been on a high. I absolutely smashed this week and am really proud of myself! My long bike on the Sunday was great. It was the first bike ride I’ve done outside for about 5 months and I did the full 3 hour session. I completed this ride with a friend which always helps. The session was more of a social ride for me rather than keeping to strict power/speed etc. To be honest my main goal for this session was to keep my bum on the saddle of a bike for 3 hours!
This may not sound difficult to most, but for some reason this has been difficult for me this year! Now I know that I can do this next week’s long ride is going to be more specific and I will be strict with the Power/HR zones Ray has set me.
Other highlights this week have been upping my swim volume and paces. Technique focused sessions seem to be a thing of the past and I’m really enjoying smashing the lengths. I set out at a pretty brisk pace now so the technique work seems to have really paid off!
On top of that I added another swim session in this week on Friday with a local triathlon club. I’ve dabbled with the club in the past, but due to other commitments and not being able to make the session time’s I’ve never really kept to it and just done my own thing. Well they have started running a coached swim session on a Friday at 7:30pm which is ideal for me as the kids are in bed by then and my wife, Zoey has come in from her exercise class. I’ll be honest I was a bit apprehensive about going to this session as I do most of my training solo. So seeing what seemed like 50 athletes waiting at the side of the pool, and plenty with the Ironman tattoo I was like “what the hell am I doing?”.
One, I had no idea what lane I should be in and two, they all had fins, pull buoys, floats, paddles etc. and all I had was my goggles. Oh and shorts otherwise that would have been embarrassing! Well in reality I had nothing to worry about they were all really friendly and I settled in nicely. To be honest, looking back at my splits for my 100m I was like, damn I either am really slacking when I swim on my own or I’ve really pushed that out of the park swimming with other like-minded triathletes as I was flying. I think I was knocking out 90 second 100m for fun!
Other sessions this week have been my tough interval sessions. One on the bike and one on the run this week. They have been 5 x 4 min hill reps with 4 min recovery on the descents. These are tough, but the strange thing is as I’m feeling fitter and stronger than I think I ever have I’m embracing the efforts and just doing the best I can. I completed the run reps but failed 3 minutes into the 4th bike rep. 270w is tough!! I’m determined to complete all 5 next week if this is back in. On that note it’s training time. Thanks for reading as always and happy training everybody.
– Mike Catton
Mike is training for some triathlons and half Ironman in 2019. Check in next Monday for his next article about his training journey.
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