Week 1 - Looks easy enough

So here we are in week one...oh boy, it's official, the training has started. I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it... As you can see, the blinking training plan is from the USA, so is in Imperial measurements. If you want to be technical, you can use this converter to get an accurate measurement. But to make my life easier, I’m using the following…

1 yard = 1 meter

1 mile = 1.5 km

Well let's see what I have covered in the above plan....

Monday - 50 min run, covered just over 8km. Feeling very slow...I used to do 10km in 49 minutes...but this was a base rate run, so average heart rate was around 150 beats. Felt a bit sore and stiff the next day but knees are good...so can't complain.

Tuesday - 1,5 hours, 3450m swim. Well, I'm only doing one swim a week, so squashed all 3000m (and then some) into the one session. Not bad eh!!! Session went something like this. 100m - Warm up / cool down

800m - swim, arms only with pullbuoy

50,75,100,100,75,50 X 5 - 15 sec rest interval

300m rcovery swim.

Wednesday - Turbo session, I was going to the club Turbo sessions, but with half an hour travel each way I felt it a huge waste of time, so last night I set the Turbo up in the lounge and did 30km in 1h13min. Not great but not awful. I'll get there....Doing a Turbo session on your own is mind numbingly dull. But I put my iPod on and the telly and just got on with it. I’ll do the rest of the cycling on Sunday on the club ride, we usually do around 70km so that should take me to the allotted cycling total for the week.

Now just to sneak in the running…think I'll try do the 30min one on Thursday evening, and the 40 min one on Saturday morning....well, that's the plan at least.

I feel quite tired after this 3 day training stint, but hopefully my body will get used to this punishing schedule.

Introduction

Well, I guess some explanation is required...

In a bid to get back to pre-baby fitness I decided to enter a Half Ironman, so in went my entry for Switzerland 70.3, to be held on the 3 June 2007. So, as some of you sporting Sam's out there may be interested in my progress, I decided to set up this separate blog to log my training preparation for the big race. It will also help me, come the race, to look back at this blog and convince myself that I have done enough preparation to actually get around the course in the allotted time....

I have started some training, not very structured though, just to get back into things. And so far so good. There has been lot's of sore body parts (my butt hadn't seen a bicycle saddle for quite some time), stiff muscles and general aches and pains. But in general, so far so good.

This week sees the start of some serious training. What does this mean???....who knows, suffice to say that there will be more structure. Bronson is giving me a hand with the training plan. He is no qualified coach but having done a few halves, and a very impressive full Ironman, I've decided he is more then qualified to coach little old me. I will also be roughly gauging the quantity of my training using the Tri Newbies website (see Links). The 18 week plan of theirs will be used as a rough guide. I can't follow the plan exactly as work / kids / family just doesn't allow for that (obviously whoever wrote that training plan was a) a bloke b) single c) childless or d) married to a saint).

I am also going to tie the training in with my club training, so for example, the swim sets won't be the ones off the plan but rather just the ones the Thames Turbo coaches set up. I'll also be making some of my own common sense adjustments....like my swimming is fairly ok, but my biking and running needs lots of work, so will rather spend more time on my weaker ones. So basically, at the end of the week, I'll be happy to sacrifice some of my swim time in order to ensure I get the running and biking in. I'll also be doing allot of the biking on the Turbo trainer, UK winters are just not conducive to lots of out door biking, and it means that I can do session at night while Leo sleeps...

So here goes....wish me luck!!!!