Gearing up for a tough weekend

Felt a little lazy after my swim session last night. Usually I get pushed hard at these, leaving me pretty shot by the end of the 3000m (or thereabouts) set. Last night was a little different – the distances were shorter (sets of 50 and 100 in the main) than usual, with a sole 200m being the only foray into a larger distance (and the warm up of course!). I was swimming pretty well though, with decent times (1:21 and 1:20’s for the 100m’s and 38’s for the 50m’s in the main). Started pushing harder towards the end of the session to get my heart rate up, but will still need to go fast at the weekend on my 1500m session to make up for what I perceive as my laziness.

Mark and I were chatting about Ironman Hawaii – its this week and should be an awesome race, especially from a British perspective. I’m going to make some cheeky predictions;

1. Chrissie Wellington to win the Female race, but not my as much as last year.

2. Philip Graves to break the bike leg record, before fading on the run but still managing a top 10 placing.

3. Catriona Morrison and Bella Bayliss both to manage top 15 positions, with Morrison finishing higher than Bayliss.

4. Craig Alexander to win the mens race, with Chris McCormack to finish in the top five.

If I get all those right, I should consider a betting career.

It’s my weekly 3k TT tonight, probably the most painful session I do. It takes just over 10 minutes to complete, but those 10 minutes are among the most agonising I’ll ever experience. The speed increases over each km, even though, at 2km in, you feel like you’ve got nothing else to give. In the final 1000m or so, my heart rate passes 180 beats per minute (over 90% of my max), and boy do you feel it thumping away three times a second. Do the session well though, and there’s a couple of bonuses – one, you sleep damn well, and two, you feel good washing the sweat off in the showers after. I’m aiming to be doing it in 9:35 before the first triathlon of the season in April, so I’ve got plenty of hard work ahead. I like to give my targets a sense of perspective – 9:35 is pretty fast (sub 32 10km pace), but not compared to the world record – a quite staggering 7:20:67.

In other news, Sarah has started training for the Skipton Triathlon. She’s started doing 3k runs, and 600m+ sessions in the pool, which is comfortably ahead of where she needs to be at the moment, but there’s no harm in being over prepared! She’s a good cyclist, so I don’t think the 20k bike will be too much of a problem come April!

09/10/09