Base training

So prep phase finished and I'm getting onto some real training at last. This wasn't the original plan, but the tough winter in the UK and work seem to have kept my training volume lower than I had anticipated through February.

Fortunately, I'm off to Lanza again on Friday. Hooray! Plus Jerzy - www.kasemier.eu - another Timex pro will be out there at the same time so that'll be good. Also the first week is the Serpie tri camp too. Lots of familiar faces riding round the island :)

Last month also saw a trip to New York for the Timex Multisport Camp at the NY Giants facility (the Timex Performance Centre) which was AWESOME. Great time had. Amazing group of people. Learnt lots, good to have some team environment time too. Ironman training can be a little solitary a lot of the time.

Spent an afternoon at Runners Need last week in Victoria with the TIMEX UK team. Nice to see those guys. Got a VO2 max test done while I was there too - see photo - and the score wasn't too bad for the second day of base.

That's enough of a brief catch up. Will try to blog more often from now on! Photos from the sun up next.... roll on friday!

Lessons in endurance

Staying with Liz and Ian has been an eye opener. I thought I had loads of energy, but William (a few weeks short of 2 years old) can run circles round me! He does take afternoon naps, which may be key - I might give these a go over the next few weeks. The commitment and dedication of Liz and Ian are also a bit of lesson - am trying to learn in order to apply to training :) I've also been renamed (rather unflatteringly) Toady as this seems easier to say than Toby. Will definitely get some photos tomorrow and post them...

This week's training has gone well - nearly completely on track. The lack of a good nearby pool has hampered volume swimming, but that all gets fixed from monday when I'll be 5 mins from a decent pool in Geelong. I'm pleased with the new schedule so far - I'm doing a lot more specific stuff and it feels like every session has a purpose, whereas before more often than not I'd just start a session and see what it turned into, trying to accumulate overall mileage (especially on the bike) rather than worry about pacing etc. Having said that, this time last year I'm not sure I would have been able to do such specific workouts most of the time.

Off to the You Yangs state park tomorrow - I'm riding up (gets the scheduled 2 hour ride done), might do the run there too - sounds like there might be some hills :) Apparently they allow open fires (rather unusually) on some of the sites there, so we're going armed with marshmallows.

Off to Oz

Flying to Melbourne tonight (and tomorrow and the day after!) - only booked my flights on friday, so I've been a headless chicken for a couple of days sorting everything out. See you all soon!