Get in, Hold on, and shut up

As I sit here trying to think of a title, this one popped into my head...When you break it down into its three parts it really explains what I have to do.

Get in.....
No not into the car, but into the right frame of mind.

Hold on...
So much will be thrown at me I have to be ready to get ready for the wave of training.

Shut up....
I need to shut up and not listen to the excuses on my one shoulder and listen to the other and and get out there and and train. I also need to listen to my body and know when enough is enough and when to take a break.

Okay enough of the philosophy class and down to what I've been up to.

Just when it seems the month of November was starting, it's over now. Officially I was on program for the last two weeks and I was pleased with my efforts. The month started off with a focus on biking and finished with swimming. (I guess that's what I get for trying to guess what the coach would throw at me.)

For the month it looked something like this.

Biking 615km for just over 22:07 hours
Running 38km for 3:10 hours
Swimming 23.3km for 10:51 hours
Strength 6 hours

or about 42 hours / 10 hours per week. Not bad for getting back into the swing of things.

The good: I actually did 6 hours of strength and core which is one of the things I really need to do. Woo hoo to me! The other good thing was my swimming. Really if you look at my month, the swimming was mostly in the last two weeks so to do so much swimming, I'm pretty happy.

The bad: The weather which did not allow me to get out for some bike sessions. My running, now granted my program only had me running twice a week so I really shouldn't complain.

December, what do you have in store for me?

Kids parties, numerous Christmas libations, a move, a renovation, friends from home coming to visit...oh sorry wrong list... More swimming, Cycle training with a computrainer (technical geeky stuff which measures, wattage output, cadence, heart rate to try and figure out the best way to cycle). Who knows, maybe even a sprint tri for fun.

Tomorrow we pick up the keys for our house and I'll use that time to take my bike in for a tune up. Riding in the past few days it seems I have a creak in my crank. That and I think it's time to put a new chain on.

Cheers all
Richard

The water logged week

Wet and wild this past week has been. Now I know this sounds like it could be a good title for a movie, it really explains the past 7 days.

The weather...now that's a story in itself. 3 massive storms past through bringing with it heavy rains and strong winds. I think when all was tallied, the storms past through Brisbane dropping a massive 300mm+ of rain and winds that took down trees, created land slides and destroyed homes. Most of the damage was west of the downtown (CBD) and didn't hit us too bad, but some 100 houses were destroyed and thousands were damaged. To give you an idea of how bad it was, here is a picture I took while coming home from swimming on Thursday night.

Ironically this picture is actually of "Water Street". With this type of flooding, you can only imagine how bad the roads were for pot holes and debris so riding was postponed by me.

Did I mention is was wet this week? I was in the pool 5 times this week and man are my shoulders screaming! You know you are in the water a lot when you run out of bathing suits and towels. I did learn from this past week, but it's the start of something, so I'm trying to keep that mind set as I got through the weeks.

The week of strength training and swimming lead to what was one of the funnest weekends of triathlon activities I've had. Saturday morning was the start of it, with a squad swimming carnival.... Team Australia, Team New Zealand and Team Rest of the World. What a battle it was.

Each team of 10 put two swimmers in the water at once and points were awarded for each position, 6 for first place and 1 point for 6th place. There were a number of events in which each person must compete in at least 3 event with a maximum of 5. The kicker, all team members must compete in the two team relays. It's all a little hazy from all the water I tried to drink (more on that to follow) but I believe the events consisted of:

100m, freestyle
50m freestyle
100m butterfly
50m butterfly
100m backstroke
50m backstroke
100m breaststroke
50m breaststroke
400m freestyle
100m IM
50m water rescue
2 team realys

I showed up right on time at 6:15am but the games were already underway. Being late, I had to take what was left. 100m backstroke or 50m fly... 100m backstroke it was. 50m fly or 50m backstroke....50m backstroke it is.

I jumped into the pool and got ready for my 100m back. Off I went and was actually feeling good at the first turn. Back to the starting wall and doing okay. Started the third length and running out of gas. It also seemed each time I was putting my arm into the water, I would get a face full of water just as I tried to breath. Got to the wall at for the final turn and I my arms were screaming. Turned and heading for home, I did all I could to make it to the wall.. Where the heck were the flags (for you non swimmers out there, they have flags at the 5m to mark so you know where you are in the pool)!!! There they were, a few more strokes....made it..and I wasn't last, I had actually beat and Aussie swimmer....Now that's never going to happen again, a Canadian swimmer beating an Aussie... Who knew..

Here I am splashing around.


A bit of a break and I was back in the water for my 50m backstroke. Not pretty and my arms were dead off the first stroke but off I went anyways. I missjudged the wall for my turn and ended up having to stop and start which lost me some valuble time. Made the turn and back to the start wall....6th place. Throughout the carnival it seemed either the Aussies or the Kiwi's were in the lead, Team Rest of the World, well we were there but not leading..yet. What's that saying "to have a championship team you don't need a champion team member"? We liked this moto.

We even got to see some good belly flops, better than me.. Here we are caught looking at one..


Going into the relays we gave up our brief lead and were needing some good swims to keep in contention. The first relay started which was a medley relay. As there were 10 members per team, an extra free and extra fly were added, just to mix it up. Teams could go in any order, but you had to make sure you got all the legs in correctly. We determined it was best to go as per the standard medley and mix up the events finishing with a free, fly and a free. This seemed to work. We were off and early on we were in 2nd or 3rd place, but still in contention. I jumped up on the block and dove as hard as I could pushing and dolphin kicking until the 10m mark. Up I came and continued with the breaststroke, which was my leg (thank god, not another backstroke or fly). I think I held my own, or at least didn't put us too far behind and off we went with our final three swimmers. James got us to within striking distance when he touched the wall and John, powered his way into the water. How much power, you take a look at this...



John flew through the water and got us into the lead for the first time in the race...Ky entered the water for our final swimmer and continued on Johns lead and brought team ROTW to the wall first. We made it. Going into the final relay we had taken the lead back, but just slightly.

The last relay was the 50m free that all had to do. A win or second place gave us either the win or a tie breaker. Well, in similar fashion to the first relay, our three anchor swimmers brought us in at second place and it was close. Tie breaker time. 4 best swimmers had to do a medley. An obvious cheering squad member with that criteria, I did what I could to bring our swimmers in. We ended up beating the Kiwi's in the tie breaker which was awesome!


Now Sunday was supposed to be a technical riding session with a short ride there after. One of the squad members was also setting up an enticer triathlon at QUT, the local Uni. She put out a call again to some of the squad members to come out and enjoy a quick triathlon, so I went. I paid my $20 and racked my bike. Unfortunately they did not get near the numbers they wanted to, in fact, I was the only squad member who showed up. Actually I was the only one with a tri bike. Oh well, I was there for fun. I lined up and off we went in the pool. Swim was good and made it out alive. Heading for the bikes, I managed to pass one of the quicker swimmers. Hopped on my bike and get it hell. In fact I managed to ride at over a 40km/hr average. Coming back into transition I was the first one and man, that is such a weird feeling...no other bikes there, was I in the right spot? ya, my shoes were there. Racked my bike and headed out for the run. Off I went and pushed the throttle the whole way. Running into the finish line, I managed to hold the others off. I had won the race. Okay now for the small print...

This was actually a very small race, so small in fact there were only 15 people in it. But who cares I had won my first tri.. Wooo Hoo team me....

Now what? Do I end my triathlon career on a win and walk away? Nah! I have bigger fish to fry, namely me at IMA.

A bunch of time in the water is on the menu for next week, so let's see how I do. All good and a great way to finish the week...Having a blast and not caring about how fast, how many watts I was using, what my cadence was, etc. I think a few more of these are in my future. That and the Aussie's and Kiwi's will be looking to get revenge.

Cheers
Richard

BTS IMA-09 group revealed

The past week has been good for me, just missing out on a couple of workouts, mostly due to rain. I'm feeling better it seems each week in the pool and on the bike, but without a good start to IMA, I'll be suffering the whole way. Sooooo, with that, and the fact I'm back on program, my focus till the end of the month will be the water. Yup, this prairie boy will don a new calonge "Ode to Pool". Actually being on program again which I do enjoy in a morbid way, has me in the pool/water 5 times a week, working on both drills and technique. Before I introduce the BTS team, here's my monthly totals thus far:

Cycling: 381km for 13:50 hours
Strength: 4 hours (notice a trend here, I'm actually doing core/strength work this month)
Run: 27km for 2:10 hours
Swim: 9.7km for 4:05 hours

Running was down but not a big deal at this point.

Last night, my squad coach has all of us who have plans for IMA over for a BBQ and to go over what the next few months will be comprised of. As it stands right now we have:

1 lone Canadian (Me)
3 Kiwi's (Ewan, Nigel & Suz)
4 Aussie's (Jeff, Scott, Rusty & Tim)

It was really good to go over what to expect and ask questions of those who have completed an Ironman in the past. In fact of the group, three have completed an IM before and two of those have even been to Hawaii for the World Championships. Throw Mark into the mix and you have another person who has completed IM.

Different ideas were floated around, but what it looks like is this group of 8 will be training mostly together with the odd session with the main squad. Some of us are looking at taking one day off a week to get a second long day on the bikes, tackling lots of hills to build strength and to get ready for the hills on the IM course. While not as big as IMCanada, the hills at IMA are good enough to make you work hard. The easier one can make the hills are, the better one should be coming off the bike.

The other good thing about last night, is everyone was encouraged to bring their spouse & kids along so they had an idea of what the next 4 months, 17 days, XX hours will be like.

All good mate, all good... so if you excuse me I have to get things ready for all my pool sessions coming up this week....MMMMMM Chlorine.

Cheers
Richard

new month, new focus

With less than 5 months to go until IMA, and the buildup starting to weigh heavy on one's shoulders, I'm off to a good start in November. I want to make sure I train smart and do well at each of the sessions rather than just push through each of them.

So far this month it has looked like this:

Core/Strength: 2 hours.. yes I know scary isn't it
Running: 20km, 1:36
Swimming: 5.3km, 2:05
Cycling: 218km, 8 hours

A good start, but one needs to keep going at a smart pace to get through it all.

The other good thing I've found (so far) is my nutrition. I'm geared up with two watches as I go now (tech geek I know) but it's working. Every 15 minutes, my timer goes off and just like Pavlov's dog, I take a drink. In today's 3 hour ride, I finished up with the freshest legs I have had, which is a good sign. Next week my long ride will extend out by about another 45-60 minutes which will put me in the 110-120km range for the ride. If I feel good again at that distance then I'm going to have a good feeling for the longer rides due in December.

Food for thought....

The other night, as Colleen and I had a glass of wine we were talking about my training thus far in Australia. The one thing that came to the forefront was the number of races I've done. I've only competed in one sprint race (Raby bay in April) and the Gold Coast 70.3 in August. Hours of training now measured in the hundreds and two races to count for it..what the heck, time to change this. With that I'm going to enter a few of the sprint races here and have some fun which was one of the other things I wanted to incorporate into my training.

I guess this month is actually going in the right direction. Let's hope it continues this way.

Cheers
Richard

5 Months to go??

Five more months until IMA...Holy Shit!

I've got a plan together folks, it won't be pretty but it should get me there. November is cycle month. Not sure what to do? Cycle. How to get to training sessions? Cycle. This month the idea is getting ready for December when 150km rides on Saturday mornings will be the norm.

I thought about signing up for the Canberra 70.3 in mid December, but realized it would be a short term gain and right now I need to focus on the long term goal, so it's a no go this year. Besides it's the nations capital and from what I've heard, extremely boring. I will instead focus on some short course races and will try and find an olympic distance race somewhere, maybe Adelaide?

This past week was a bit of a crazy one, trying to get things together for purchasing a new home, which cut into a lot of training time. I did manage to get out for a few bike rides and a handful of runs though. No swimming, but I will be out with the squad on a full time basis this coming week. Each time I went out, I could feel myself getting more and more comfortable with training, which was a different sensation. I didn't realize how quickly one can lose their fitness level in such a short period of time. Either that or I'm getting old.

Something I will be looking forward to in December is some computraining. It's a program which monitors your wattage, heart rate, cadence and speed. The intent of this training will be to help those of us who are doing IMA with some good information about our biking. Are we going too hard, too slow a cadence, etc.? Starting in December we will be going every two weeks which should help out a fair bit.

Not too much else to say this week, but it's been a few weeks since I've put a picture or two in so here are two gratuitous pictures I picked up from the people who photographed the GCHIM last month. Do enjoy and catch you in a week or so.

Richard