Back in the pool again.

So after only a little over a month break I got back in the pool last week. It's amazing how much swim fitness you can lose in a month. I did my 200 meter time trial and 400 meter time trial to see where i'm at. My 400 meters was 6:09 just before the Ironman it's not gone back to 6:37. I had the 200 meter down to 2:54 that's gone back to 3:09.

Lots of work to do. I'm not going to spend as many hours in the pool this year as I did last year. If I can get into the pool twice a week I'll be happy. I suppose ideally if I could swim twice a week and run and bike twice a week that would be a good week.

Did the old power test on the tubo trainer my computrainer which is pretty much what i'm going to be using seems to measure the power slightly different that my power tab hub. I am doing a slightly different test to get my FTP (functional Threshold power, which is basically how much power you could hold for an hour). The old test I did before was warm up then a series of 30 second intervals then easy spin then 5 minutes as hard as you can, then 15 minutes recovery then 20 minutes as hard as you can. Once you have the average power from the 20 minutes you assume that is 95% of what you could hold for an hour. The newer test i'm doing is similar enough you do a bit at the start think there is a one minute all out effort. Then there is two 8 minute efforts. You then add these together and get the average power. Then your FTP is 95% of this.

Anyway without boring you too much there is a big enough difference between the test results on the Powertap and the Computrainer. The power tap bascially gave me an FTP of 255 but the Computrainer only reckons it's 207. I suppose for training it really doesn't make much of a difference I'll stick to what the computrainer says and work the improvements off that. The only bad news is according to the computrainer I'm an untrained person. The below chart lets you work out where you stand as a cyclist. You get your FTP then divide it by your weight. so 207/86. Hopefully I'll be able to work on getting that score up a bit.

Post Dublin Marathon Blues?

As soon as one event is over I need to get my head into something else. So whilst I had been thinking about other events and what to do I wanted to wait until after Dublin to decide to do something. In the end it was a fairly simple choice. Liam Dillon is going over to do Ironman Lanzarote 2014, I had such a laugh training with him and for the few days over there it seemed like the thing to do. Kelly and the kids had a really good time too. It's actually not a bad place to go with young kids, all they really want is spend time at the pool or beach and Lanza was pretty good for that. The only problem is with the Ironman been on when School is on. Grace is in Senior infants so we might have to take her out for a week. Don't really like doing that.

So training wise last year I really felt like we were controlled by the weather. The weather last year was so bad that I'd say at least 50% of my long rides were either cancelled or cut short. This year I'm going to try and learn to love the turbo a bit more, I just think there's nothing to be gained going out in the pissing rain from start to finish everything is slower and when you check heart rate and power it seems like you weren't even working hard. So I'll try and get out once a week but i'm happy to just sit on the trainer and work hard if it's not an option to go outside.

Have no problems running in the rain, most of the time it's never much longer for 2 hours even the long runs and your generating way more heat on the bike going down cold hills pissing into the rain, just don't see the value. Spent years training in mud baths for Rugby training and told it was good for "character building". Then you play some Argentinian team who've prob never trained in the rain and they are running circles around you because the sessions they did counted, they weren't "character building".

So this year it's a thing called "trainer road" that i'm going to try and do at least one bike session a week on it. The general guideline is two bikes a week two swims a week and hopefully two runs. So i've swapped one of my swims from last year to a run and i've added another run on top of that. Last year I was really only running once a week as I was carrying a bit of an injury that seems to have gone now so fingers crossed I can do three runs a week.


Having not biked since last May i'm really looking forward to getting stuck into the training. This is the typical scene that greets you on  trainer road.

Dublin City Marathon Race Report.

I had signed up for Dublin marathon shortly after the Ironman to have something to train for. I never really got enough time in for training. This year i've struggled with my running more than anything else. For the first time in a long time i've really enjoyed swimming and so when chance came up to do a 10k swim from Bray to Greystones came along I jumped at it. The swim was taking place at the end of September and Dublin marathon is the end of October. So the plan was do one long run a week then once the swim is over do a few 10ks and 20ks during the week for the month of September. However by the time I had really recovered from the swim I was supposed to be in Taper mode for the marathon so I only ever did long runs as part of the training. With this in mind it was decided that we would go out and try and beat the 3:50 pacers. I reckoned 3:4x something was respectable enough.

So Debs, Rodolfo, Rob Baker, Mick Bolger Csaba and Peter were the crew that was running together. Bolger and Baker took off like 100 meter sprinters. Rodolfo and Debs were running a very steady pace so we settled into a rhythm. Coming into the phoneix park I needed to go for a wee. So I ran ahead to get a bit of time. It turned out been a very very long pee. I must have been there 4-5 minutes not only did the 3:50 catch me but the 4 hours guys did too.

So from left to right that's me with the yellow bandana. Csaba with the yellow t'shirt. Rodlfo with the red t and shaved head. Debs with the wicklow tri top and white cap don't know the dude in the foreground and then Peter on the far right.

It took me about 2 miles to catch back up with the group. We ran steady and pretty uneventful until about half way were we saw Baker and Mick Bolger looking in a bit of stress. Bolger was stretching the calf up against the wall. There was a good bit of slagging going back and forth and they ran with us for about 3 miles.

Round about mile 17 Peter and Csaba who both seemed a lot fresher than the rest of us broke away to a slightly faster pace. Rodlofo went with them, I started to go with them and slowed down a bit when one of the splits came us as 4:45 per kilometre we only needed to be doing around 5:30. So suddenly I was stuck in no mans land Debs was somewhere behind me, the three lads had gone on ahead. Eventually as we turned to go down fosters avenue debs ran beside me. She had only been a little less than 50 meters behind me the whole time.

So we ran the last 10k in together. It was pretty nice feeling running the last 10k and not feeling absolutely wrecked so many years doing the marathon I would have been reduced to a walk by now. It only really hit me hard at Holles street hospital. I think if I hadn't got Debs running beside me I might have started walking. In the end I finished with a PB but it was by far one of the easiest marathons I've done. I've never ran as little in training as I did for this one.

There's a lesson to be learned from this. Less training is the way to go.