Only Joking
back during my mini epic camp i joked with my training buddy , Wayne, that he had a worm in his gut (which was why he was feeling so weak despite eating loads).... well a visit t the doctors last week proved my joke to be true and Wayne’s got parasite in his colon!!! not a nice thought at all, but at least he knows its that and not some mystery illness or worse still, chronic fatigue again! despite this he still managed to do the London marathon in 3h15... an amazing feet if you ask me considering he was probably running on about 30% of normal energy. He’s gona kill an event one day when it all falls into place!!! i joked (once again) that before taking the medication to kill the thing, he should make a quick trip to Mc D's and the Cadburys factory.... but really its not that funny. he's got to pull out of IM Lanzorotie and might miss his A race of IM Germany. he deserves a better break, but like i say, when it comes he's gona be SO strong (both mentally & physically) that the result will be worth the wait!
The fine art.....
so this week sees my first important target race of the year, the national Duathlon champs in Edinburgh. I’m still finding that the whole taper/ peak thing is a bit of an "unknown". chatting to bridge last week, we decided that i don’t handle long tapers well. i also find a big reduction in training leaves me very flat physically and actually tired mentally. she had just come back from hearing some of the worlds leading cycling coaches talk about the latest in their world and one of the things discussed was the "Taper". for those that don’t know what this is, its basically a period of time where you try and reduce your training to let your body "bounce back" and hopefully reach new heights of performance (usually for a race).
as I’ve found out over my short career in multi-sport, getting this right is a fine art I’ve yet to get close to mastering. looking back on my training plans for weeks preceding previous races I’ve felt good in and thinking through all bridge had to say i came up with a plan that has roughly half my normal weekly volume, but tries to keep the same number of sessions as well as the intensity in them. hard as it might be, I’m really starting to think that i perform and feel at my strongest, when I’m doing the hard sessions HARD and often, even when the volume is still high. Saturday will tell i guess. It’s all still so much of a learning curve!
one final note.... my swimming is probably stronger now than it ever has been. i did a great session with glen from slippery fish ( see the side bar to the right) on Saturday in a 50m pool. drafting off of him at 20min 1500 pace felt really, REALLY comfortable. I’m interested to see how I’d do trying to hold onto this for a full 1500, swim. Sunday was another good day in the pool... a kind of "no chain day"... well for me anyway ha ha. its good to see that there are some results coming from the hours i seam to be spending in the water. its no way near the level I’m ultimately looking for, but it fuels my belief that my goals are possible and speaks volumes of how much Glen's helped improve my swimming. I’ll write something for my "special training area" soon on what a difference Glens made. the lake beckons on Wednesday possibly..... another good marker for where I’m really at.
