Well I guess the reason for the first post in 4 months is that I'm getting back into training again (for the first time in 4 months!) Due to work and holiday commitments I've had roughly an 8 week gap in my schedule, so am starting from roughly zero. It's been a long layoff so 2011 is going to be an experiment in how vital a solid winter base really is...!
Going into this year I was looking to race a little bit more low key. With the Europeans and Worlds last year I put quite a bit of pressure on myself, so in 2011 am looking to mix up the distances a little and give the year some variety on all counts.
The year will be starting with Lisbon Half Ironman at the end of April. This will force me to train long for the 14 weeks beforehand and hopefully give me a good platform for the year. From there there'll be a variety of sprint, olympic and middle distance races - all UK based, alongside the usual smattering of run races and TT's.
Right now I've got a pretty solid 10 days under my belt and am not feeling too bad about things. The bike and run are off pace, but I know that with some consistency the speed will come.
A big positive is the swim, I had my first real session back last night and was faster than through all of 2010. With having an enforced period of no swim training I'd been trying to brainwash myself into making some stroke adjustments - hoping that time out of the water would help my body forget certain errors of it's ways and replace them with the new info I was telling it. It will need a couple of sessions to reinforce, but I'm feeling pretty positive that I've made a bit of a breakthrough (2 to 3 seconds per 100m is a decent breakthrough). I'm not going to be moving up to club swimming so know that I need to make my improvements through stroke efficiency and tweaks rather than volume and coaching.
