My 2011 season's training is now into a fairly full swing, and looking at the days flying by on the calendar it needs to be.
It was a rest week a couple of weeks ago, planned in on the basis that I was away for 6 days and training was going to be tricky. Unfortunately on the following Tuesday my wife got ill with cold and throat infection - I held out for a couple of days but by Thursday afternoon I'd caught it, and it really knocked me out. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were completely written off but the sofa was very very comfortable....
Unfortunately the illness meant I wasn't able to get to HPU for my pre-season lab testing. It was a bit disappointing to not make it - the intention being to get a pre-race season baseline for my fitness and give me some good V02 max figures etc to work off for the next few weeks. I'll hope to get along there soon as it's nice to have figures to work from - not just to be working off heart rate and 'how it feels'.
I'm now only two months away from my first race of the season. I'm a little bit behind where I was last year in all disciplines, but I hadn't actually been doing any more than 4 hours per week for 8 weeks up until 21st January, so have only now got 4 solid weeks behind me. I've been putting the long runs in and managing to hit some 6 minute miles on the way back, and on my interval sessions have been hitting sub 3.30 per km. That's where I was at this time last year in terms of speed, but with the added bonus of 12 miles average for the long runs instead of 8.
Swim and bike are a little bit off, but that's to be expected. Those were the two that really suffered with my 8 week sabbatical so I know I need to put the work in. Will be looking to push the swim and bike for the next couple of weeks and see where that puts me by the middle of March.
