A start...kind of!

After two weeks of complete relaxing, no holds barred eating and much alcohol it was back to training and decent food this week. I use the phrase 'back to training' loosely as it was a fairly gentle start. Total exercise for this week was: two 10k runs, a 10k cycle and two high intensity body weight workouts in the gym. Some may say that this is a decent amount for a week but to put it into some perspective, preparing for an ironman can involve 15-20 hours training. My total for this week....4!
Not a great start, but a start nonetheless.
However, starting training this week finally brought about an opportunity to use my new Christmas present! Seeing my wife before the holidays deliberating on a present; order one; find a better deal once the original order had arrived; deliberate some more; order the better deal and send the original order back had me intrigued to say the least. This mission of a present turned out to be a Garmin Forerunner 310XT. A multisport GPS training device with premium heart rate monitor (yes that is straight off the box!). Awesome! Couldn't have asked for a better present and I couldn't be more grateful. After spending the majority of the remaining holiday reading the users manual and setting up a Garmin Connect account to log my progress online, I was eager to get out and use it.
So, Monday 5th January, first run of the year and debut outing for my new gadget (I love gadgets!). 10k covered but if I'm honest the relaxing over the break had taken its toll. There is no other way to put it, I really struggled! "Don't worry, long way to go," is the message I kept, and will still keep on saying, to myself. The GPS however was great. Setting a virtual partner to run against is a really nice feature (my partner was set at a fairly modest pace for a much needed confidence boost!). The heart rate monitor produced accurate read outs throughout and the wireless transfer of data to my computer is fantastic and a great way to analyse my progress. I'm really looking forward to exploring what else this device can do, especially as it is a multisport device and can be used for cycling and swimming, handy for the mother of all triathlons.
Anyway, back to the training. After run 1 a gym session came next (Wednesday 7th Jan). Here I focussed on high intensity cardio exercise. Not to much to say on this really apart from things that were easy before Christmas were not so easy this week. To say I was aching the next day is an understatement. Another rest day followed after this then came run 2.
Again I stuck with the 10k distance and was relieved to find that the 'struggling' experienced in run 1 had subsided.....a bit! The GPS again was excellent. This time I switched on the auto-stop function, which stops the timer any time I stop. Very handy when having to wait for traffic to pass to cross a road. On return, I was happy to see improvements between the two runs when looking at the data on my computer.
Next came the cycle and it was tough. This is an area I will really need to focus on over the next year and a half. A bike might be a good place to start!
The final Gym session of the week was another high intensity cardio session which again caused much aching and this time a touch of nausea!

I said to myself that the purpose of this week would be to ease gently back into training and exercise. When I had a text message from Rhys around lunch time on Saturday saying, and I quote: "I'm off to run 17 miles this afternoon." One word came to mind....bugger!