I went for a ride around a hill.

On the 28 of January, myself and 2 friends went down to Taranaki for the 150km round the mountain cycle challenge, the course was 30km of rolling hills to start with, followed by about 30km flat. Then 30km of climbing, only a slight gradient but no relief at all. Finishing with rolling hills again.

Pre race routine: Bumper bar and banana for breakfast, got ready nice and fast to check out from the motel. Registered nice and early, then sat around, and checked out others bikes...

Warm up: about 10-15 minutes easy pedaling around too and from registration.

I got talked into starting with a faster group than I thought I should have been with. I was with the group for about 20 minutes until there was a split, which I got caught on the wrong side of. So I made things worse by trying to catch up to the group, after about 15 minutes of not quite being able to close the gap my legs were gone, and I was only 35 minutes into a long day. Because of these mistakes I was unable to hook into a decent group as they overtook me, so spent most of the race by myself, once I came to terms with this, and settled into my own pace things got a lot better. I also didn't drink enough in the first part of the ride, only 2 bottles in the first 100kms, I think this is the reason that I started to cramp up in the last hour or so of the race. Fortunately there were 2 drink stops, and a bottle and a half of electrolytes seemed to help.

What would you do differently: 

1. Start in the right group
2. Not try to catch up to groups after being dropped
3. keep a closer watch on my pace/effort levels at the start.

Warm Down: A beer and a hamburger. Free with entry, nice!

January Training Log

Pretty good, nice and consistent, and starting to get regular long rides in:

Going well

So far this year, my training has been going well, for the 3 weeks of January we've had so far I've totaled 6, 7 and 9 hours of swim/bike/run. This has been split between 3-4 early morning runs a week, 2 after work swims, 2 after work bike rides and 1 long (50-100km) weekend ride.

Going forwards I want to be averaging up a the 9-10 hours/week level but with some slight changes to the ratios between the 3 sports. the things that need to change through February are:

1. 3 swims per week, every week (about 90 minutes/week)
2. More running, 15 -25 minute runs need to increase to 30-45 minute run, and frequency needs to increase to 5 per week (about 2 1/2 hours/week)
3. Biking stays much as it is, 1 60 minute midweek ride, 1 90 minute midweek ride and a long weekend ride, about 3 hours (about 5 1/5 hours/week)
4. This gives about 9 1/2 hours per week

But before that, there is the small matter of the Taranaki cycle challenge, which is this coming Saturday. I know it's going to hurt by the end, but I am definitely looking forward to it. 

A good read on swimming.

I don't want to lose this link...

http://joelfilliol.blogspot.com/2012/01/most-popular-post-on-this-blog-is-is.html?spref=fb

The To Do List

So what racing do I want to do this year. Well the first point is that this year I'm not going to be doing training plans building to any specific events. The overall goal for the year is to build a base, and get my body used to training at the level it needs to so I can do some serious (Ironman?) racing in the future.

That said, I will be doing some races, for the social aspect, and because they are fun. So the current, provisional list for the year is:

• 28 Jan, Tarankai Cycle challenge
• 26 Feb Mangawhai Sprint Tri
• 11 March, Peoples Tri, Maretai (Sprint or Olympic)
• 31 March Kai Iwi Sprint Tri
• 21 April, Northern Crossing
• 24 June Wellington HM
• 28 October Auckland HM
• November Peoples Tri, Maretai (Olympic)
• 17 November Kerikeri HM
• 24 November Round Taupo Cycle Challenge
• 8 December Taupo HIM

Getting back into the swing of things

December signaled getting things back on track. I've been getting out consistently every week. I've also begun long rides on the weekend, which is going to be a consistent feature of my training in the future.

For the next few weeks my goals are to maintain the level of cycling (about 4 hours - 100km / week) and increase running (up to 5 x per week) and swimming (consistent 3 x per week)

Decembers training 

The single Best thing you can do for your health