So, 2017 brought the beginning of my 28 week IRONMAN plan, the sasco year planner is firmly on the wall, and my IMUK training schedule has been duly inked upon it .
Exciting right?
I promised you a ‘warts and all’ account every week, so here goes.
My first week got off to the worst possible start!
After enjoying the xmas festivities and everything that brings to the full throughout december, 1/1/17 was meant to be mark the re-birth of the pre marathon iron-rookie, no drinking, no smoking, eating right and diving head first into my IMUK training plan..
Sunday the 1st started well enough, I awoke feeling excited about the new me, I even managed to get down to the local pool that morning and bang out 64 lengths.
However on my return the wife announced that instead of driving home that day as we initially planned, we would be staying with friends for a further night.
On came the football and out came the beers! (as did pretty much everything else that I really shouldn’t be partaking in)
This debaunchery spilled over to Monday & Tuesday and I didn’t train as planned on either of these days !
I was looking forward to getting out on the bike Wednesday but didn’t as I ended up writing the car off! don’t worry I am fine, but the car isn’t! Basically I skidded on some ice on a roundabout and the car is now history! thankfully no-one else was involved.
Life has a habbit of getting in the way of your training, and it can easily consume you, however writing this blog has given me an unexpected yet welcome degree of accountability, so I made sure I trained as planned thurs, fri, sat & sun.
My diet has been poor throughout December and this continued pretty much all week this week, I still had some beers left over in the house from xmas and these got polished off, as did pretty much all the left over xmas treats.
No surprise then that when I got on the scales for the first time in 2017, I had put on a good half a stone over xmas and am now a full stone heavier than my pre marathon weight which is frankly unacceptable and needs to be sorted out…
I am feeling the extra weight and I ain’t liking it…..it’s messing with my ‘zen’……
Thankfully I know precisely what I need to do in this regard!
One of the things I will be closely monitoring over the next 28 weeks is my weight, and my body fat %, my goal being to get down to pre-mara/70.3 weight as a minimum before IRONMAN.
I have discovered that at my gym they have a bodytrax machine which not only weighs you but gives you hundreds of various health related measurements and is apparantly 99% accurate.
I am very keen to observe the effect of my training on these stats, and will record them for all to see here, but I will continue to use my own scales as a back up!
December wasn’t all bad though, I managed to maintain regular mile swims and a few 50 mile bike loops, but I dropped my runs right down to 10k, as I saw little point in running any further than this.
Readers should not be under the illusion that I am going into this 28 week Ironman thing straight ‘off the bat’, the exact opposite in fact!!
Getting to this point in the journey was the training if that makes sense. (see training plans)
My present level of fitness is such that I would feel very comfortable tackling an Olympic triathlon tomorrow and could possibly even stretch to a 70.3.
So, in summary, a mixed bag this week, a poor start but a strong finish.
Swim
When I first started swimming I was unable to swim more than a single length front crawl but 64 lengths comes very easy to me now,
After each pool session i’m like what? i’m literally not even drawing breath here! This was very much the case once again this week and feeling like I could still fight a lion after my swim sets is precisely the feeling that I am looking for..
I enjoy my swim sets loads I really do but I must admit swimming against the clock so I can post my time on here is agitating me, its upsetting my rhythm.
My mile time this week was just over 38 minutes which I am cool with. I will talk more about times next week.
Bike
Similar to the swim, when I first started I hadn’t ridden a bike for over 15 years but the training plans that I have been following mean that I am now totally comfortable riding 50 mile IMUK loops.
The biggest challenge out on the course for me is the weather, certainly at this time of year, and this week virtually the entire circuit was shrouded in thick fog, cold and very, very wet……not exactly the cycling conditions we dream of!
My chain appears to be slipping so I must get this looked at before it snaps and at times I felt a few of the climbs this week but I felt strong towards the end of the ride which is always good!
Despite the poor weather it felt great to get my first loop of 2017 under my belt and I recorded a time for the 50 mile circuit of 3:23 which I am very happy with given the conditions, but more on times next week!
Run
Run training is run training, I still wake up on run days looking forward to it and I do love entering run races! especially given that when I first started, I was unable to run more than 10 yards without wanting to stop!
My first 10k of 2017 certainly blew away the cobwebs! It felt as though I didn’t warm up until 5/6k!
I am going to enter a 10k race at the end of Jan to see how I get on as I always seem to be much faster in races than in training, why I do not know but it always seems to be the case.
My 10k time this week was 1:02 which was my regular 10k training time last year,so I am pleased with this! Don’t forget that my goal is not to get fast @10k’s, but to feel strong after them, like I could do it again and again (and again!)
Brick
Short brick run after the 50 mile loop, all good, used to these now!
Strength Training
Weights are easy when compared to the above , right?
However I must say, I always feel a million dollars after my gym sets.
Looking forward to going ‘all in’ and getting fully ‘on board’ week 2, with the big priority being to sort out diet once and for all!
Stats from week 1:
Height 6ft
Weight on my sclaes 13st 11 lbs (1st jan)
Weight on Bodytrx scales 13st 9 lbs
Body fat % per Bodytrax 22.8%
Muscle % per Bodytrax 73%
1 Mile Swim Time 38:40
47 Mile IMUK bike loop time : 3:23
10k time :1:02
Next update 15/1/17 Where we will take a look at time!
To your amazing journey!
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Full details of my journey, together with the exact training plans that I followed for each race and of course the secrets from the Iron men themselves will be revealed in my book, which will be available to download soon.
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