Thursday, September 20, 2012

Day 8...So it has began!

Big training, hot sun, sun burn, feeling zapped.

That sums up yesterday perfectly.  And it did knock me around a fair bit!

The day started weird, was raining, so I delayed my ride until it stopped raining and dried up.  Some people will think that I am soft, what happens if it rains on race day? etc etc

The truth is, you don't get here by being soft and by doing stupid things in training, you don't make race day.... So you choose the option of smart vs soft!

By delaying the start, it did impact on the time available to me also.  Cutting my ride short to 4 hrs with a few high intensity efforts was all I could fit in without impacting on the other sessions later in the day.

Getting another bit of the climb to Hawi was good also.  The mind games with myself have already started out there and it is reminding me of some of the head space that I encountered last year!  One minute cruising along at 60kph no effort, next struggling along at 28kpn with HR very high.  It just plays with your mind.

I had to keep reminding myself of last year and that come race day, all would be fine.  Looking over my race day garmin file from last year post session gave me some re built confidence that things are still on track.

A nice easy run off the bike followed.

Catching up with Greg & Matty between sessions has been great and has enabled me to just relax without over thinking a lot of the days efforts.  As we know, this sport is played between the ears a lot of the time and many people are defeated there even before their physical abilities come into play.  Working with the thoughts is sometimes all we can do, no point fighting them.

After a break from the first session, an open water swim followed, just a gentle 1k - 1.5k rolling the arms over.

Another run followed after the swim and my legs felt pretty good, so no complaint there.

Once all the training was done for the day, I hit a pretty big wall and had no choice but to basically have dinner and go to bed, hence no blog :(

The body was talking and the mind was listening!!

Waking this morning feeling fresh, we all met for a swim.

4.3k later arms tired but very happy to have had the sun on my back.  The set went like this:

1k w/up consisting free, back, kicking and drills.

5 x 200m paddles/buoy on 3min cycle coming in on the 2.45

100m easy breast/free

5 x 200m paddles/buoy on 3min cycle coming in on the 2.45

100m easy breast/free

10 x 100m on 1.30 cycle coming in or better than 1min 20sec paddles/buoy

100m easy c/d

The main point of the session was not speed, but to get strength work in the arms at a speed where I could maintain for the duration.  Session done and happy days!

Another run followed the swim and my legs felt like rubbish, absolute rubbish for the first 15min, met up with Greg and before I knew we were just talking and ticking over the time for the duration. 1hr easy done.

The afternoon is basically replicates the morning, the swim will be open water however and the run just ticking them over.

I will report back later on this and the plans for tomorrow, and add some random photos!

For now...

X-Man


No comments:

Post a Comment