Have I reached my potential already.

I've never really pushed myself very hard at this whole Triathlon lark. I always assumed deep down I was talented and just never applied myself correctly. Now I'm getting a bit worried. I've been doing this cycling program with Trainer road for 10 weeks. Granted I have missed a good deal of the sessions but I think after a very short cycling career I may have already hit my peak.

The first four weeks were great I could feel myself getting stronger and fitter the  whole time then I was doing the same sessions that at the start were hard but going on the same wattage I was finding them very easy. Then after 5 weeks I retested and i'd jumped up, huge improvement. So the systems automatically adjusts my FTP figure and i'm training to a higher number basically. My problem is I haven't completed very many of the new sessions so I know when I retest next week I may even go down in terms of FTP because for the last 5 weeks i've been getting off the bike after 1 interval when I was supposed to be doing 3. Here is a graph another cool thing trainer road do to show you how much you've trained each week. Basically TSS (training stress score) means if you went as hard as you possibly could for 1 hour you would get 100 points. So most of my sessions are intense but are usually about 90 minutes so in theory you should be getting 100 points per session. If I am down as 30 or 50 or something it usually indicates I opted out of the session half way though. I'm going to retest next week have a funny feeling I may have to move the FTP down a touch.

Swimming is going ok. I mean I'm getting in the pool twice a week but I suppose my problem is it's only for 30-40 minutes and then there's a fair bit of backstroke and kick only involved so in terms of actual distance i'm prob only doing 3-4k a week. I tested myself recently over 200 and 400 meters and i've actually gotten slower. I may have to look at doing something drastic with my swimming.

Running is prob going the best of the three. I got myself a treat in the new Garmin 620 run watch. It does all sorts of new functions and is really fun to play with. It measures your cadence your oscillation (bounce) ground contact time. Of course all of these would mean nothing other than the fact that they show you were you are in terms of other runners. My only really concern regarding the watch is it seems to say i'm in the top 10 and top 5 percentiles (cadence) for a lot of things. Now if I was I might be winning the odd race, i'll have to give Gary Crossan a loan of it and see what it says about him. If I'm in the top 5 where the hell is he.

It also does a VO2 max test. You don't have to push yourself to the limit for the watch to work this out. Most experts i've spoken to have said that it can't be very acurate although to be fair all the reviews I've read of it appear to be accurate for the V02 test. So it gave me a score of 54 which is what I got last year when I was tested in UCD so it can't be too far off. What it also does which I found interesting was it has a race predicator so based on your heart rate and your pace it gives you an indicator of what how fast you should be able to do certain races. So it has my 5k time down as 19:45. Whilst i've done 20:15 recently i've never broken 20 so i might give that a try early in the new year. Hope to still get a bit done during the christmas break.

putting a few weeks of consistent training together is the key.

I don't know about everyone else but I tend to struggle with consistency. I'll be superman one day and lying on the couch for the next 4 days then go up and do another day of 3-4 hours training. So this year it's all about getting in regularly and trying to at least do 1 hour a day.

I don't want to sound like George hook but to quote the man "I think i've fallen in love with a piece of technology" George was talking about a sky remote control i'm banging on about trainnerroad.com again. Now I can't prove the results of trainner road just yet as i've only been using it consistently for about 5 weeks. I did however go out for a spin with the notorious Liam Dillon and I know he's been doing a good bit of training so when I got the call to go for a spin with him I assumed Fernando Feuntes his coach had decided Liam needed a bit of a confidence boost going into the festive season. In fairness I have only been on the road 3 times since last May so he probabaly thought it was a dead cert he'd take me down. I kept the normalised power at around 200 watts and felt really comfortable the whole way around. I haven't been on the bike for long spells haven't really cycled over an hour so expected to fall apart at some point but it never happened, so I was pretty chuffed about that. I realise that I do need to do at least one long spin a week but i'm going to stick with Trainnerroad.com (no not on commission yet!!) for my Ironman lanza training during the week.

Swimming wise i've been trying to at least get two sessions done a week. I've sort of ditched my Ironman training program from swim smooth.com not because it wasn't working but I have to say I find swimming in a group so much easier. I don't dread the session I go in and work out hard for 45mins- hour there's a guy in lane called Kevin. He's pushing me on a good bit trying to stay ahead of him and I feel this is of more benefit than going in on my own and pushing against a clock. Unlike last year I have no idea what times i'm hitting for my 100's and I don't think I'm too bothered. I'd like to do a 200 and 400 test prob at christmas week just to see if i'm improving. I'm going to try and test myself towards the end of every month going forward at the three disciplines to gauge improvement. I retested my FTP about  3 weeks ago and moved from 207 on computrainer to 239. However i'm really struggling with all my sets at 239 so I know there is no point re testing until i'm comfortable doing the sessions.

Running is going ok. The plan is Kilcoole track session on Monday a fast run over 8k during the week and then a long run of over 20k towards the end of the week. So far I've missed one of those sessions and unfortunatley it's usually the long run. I find with two young kids and a wife you can't justify to yourself been out for longer than a couple of hours. Don't get to see enough of the wife and Kids as is without adding training into the mix. Overall November was a good week training wise if I can hold the same for December i'll be heading into January a happy man.