The Last Two Weeks

As Rhys said in his last post, It's been quiet on the old blog front lately. My last entry spoke of my high hopes of getting plenty of training in during the half term holiday. It didn't quite work out like that. Ironically, the week I returned to work I managed to get a lot more done. So here goes, the last two weeks in review:

Monday 16th February - As mentioned in my last post, I did manage to complete a 7 mile run which felt good. What was really frustrating was, on return from said run I realised my Garmin GPS watch had been in swim setting which meant my timings were all over the place. So, according to my stats, I swam 7 miles around the streets of Gloucester in less than an hour. Brilliant.

Tuesday 17th February - Lucie and I decided to take Madoc fossil hunting along the Jurassic coast and it was brilliant. We hired a chisel and goggles for the boy and when digging. Charmouth was a great beach to find fossils. Just wish I realised that at some areas I was chiselling away at, it was actually an offence to do so. We'll say no more about that and pretend it never happened! Although I didn't train on this day, we did walk a lot of miles and it was great.

Wednesday 18th February - Today was meant to be a scheduled return to swim coaching but I missed another session. This time for good reason. Today was the day I picked up my new bike from the shop. Oh yes! I was ridiculously excited about this. We spent a little longer in the shop than planned as they made sure the bike was fitted correctly to suit me. To add to the excitement, Lucie bought me some new clip-in pedals and cycling shoes with cleats (something I have never used before) and I can't thank her enough for all this new kit. She's awesome!

Thursday 19th February - The maiden bike voyage. I was very nervous but very excited about embarking on the cycling element of my training. Not only had I never used clip-in pedals before, I had never actually ridden a road bike before (jumping straight in the deep end a little doing an Ironman). The weather today was shocking; bloody freezing, windy and wetter than an otter's pocket. Not ideal for a road bike virgin. I'll admit, I was bordering on scared during the ride. The difference between road and mountain bike is massive. I was wobbly, on the brakes every five seconds and slow. In the end I only went 10 miles, but for a first time and with the weather as bad as it was I was fairly happy with that.

Friday 20th February - Swim? No.

Saturday 21st February - Lucie's parents came to visit in the morning, so although I didn't get out to do the 8 mile run I had hoped, I did have a hell of a sweat on from all the vacuum cleaning! In the afternoon me and some friends went to watch Gloucester play rugby. It was a good game with a few cheeky beers thrown in so inevitably not training was done today.

Sunday 22nd February - Nout!

As you can see, half term didn't entirely go to plan from a training perspective.

Moving on to week two. A much better week despite a slow start.

Monday 23rd February - Today was my birthday and doing no training because it's your birthday is as good an excuse as any not to do any training. So I didn't! Despite it being the first day back at work after the holiday, I had a really nice day and an even better evening with my family. Watching Madoc street dance to my new CD was classic!

Tuesday 24th February - Back to the gym today for a good hour of high intensity cardio and sprints. This felt really good.

Wednesday 25th February - An overdue and very much welcome return to swim coaching today. I hate missing weeks as it feels like starting from the beginning again when I go back. However, today wasn't too bad, despite missing three weeks. It was just great to get back in the pool and focus on the discipline which is worrying me the most.

Thursday 26th February - Back to running today. With my GPS set back to run I was raring to go. I set out at a good pace and covered 10k in a respectable 46 minutes. I was pleased with this seeing as I hadn't run for a while.

Friday 27th February - Another opportunity to swim today. No drills or exercises, just a chance to swim. I covered 1.1km but with only one stop which is real progress for me. Happy days!

Saturday 28th February - No training today. Although I did burn a lot of calories through the stress of driving through Shepard's Bush, London on a busy Saturday morning, as we were collecting a new Buggy Lucie had found online. Road rage was tested to the max!

Sunday 29th February - Bike ride number two. The conditions today were much better. No rain, dry roads and blue skies. However, it was still chilly and blowing a hooley (or hoolie there is some debate on the spelling, I looked it up haha). Even on only my second time out, I felt so much more comfortable, confident and stable on the bike. I absolutely loved it. I had better speed on the down hills and straights, and at the moment taking on the hills is brilliant. I'm feeling a lot more positive about road cycling after this. Today's distance was 12.1 miles in a time less than that of the 10 miles I covered in bike ride one.

Well there we are; up to date on the last two weeks training and as you can see, week two was definitely the more productive. I hope to keep this up for the week ahead, but the best laid plans and all that......we'll see.