Sunday 27 January 2013

Focus on running and swimming and using my new 910XT

The last week has not been 'all about the bike' and has focused mostly on running and swimming.

A couple of hard interval run sets, mixing Z2 with Z4 were included, the first with 8min Z4 / 2min Z2 sets and the second 1km Z4 / 1km Z2. Also logged a 'push and run' set and some hill work. Not managed to include a 'strides' set yet but hope to get that in today. My speed and average pace is improving and so I might try some 5km or 10km time trials next week and at the same time review my lactate threshold level, which could result in some revisions of my HR zones.

In the Club swims we have been mixing some long endurance sets with some time trials, especially over 200m and 400m distances. My times on Saturday were a little disappointing although I have been experiencing some mild back pain that I think effected my performance. I logged the 200m at 3:19 and the 400m at 7:10. I recently logged the 400m at sub 7, so some work to be done there. My swimming improved a lot last year when I increased the swims to 3 a week, something I may have to consider to see better numbers on the time trials.

All the training is being logged more efficiently now with my new Garmin 910XT (pictured below). It is a great bit of kit, which not only records run and bike sessions but swimming as well. It can tell which stroke you are doing, work out when you turn around (i.e. count laps), and even calculate how efficient you are swimming so as to compare individual swims. Lots of data to analyse, hopefully leading to minor tweaks that will help further in my training.

I need to sit down and workout my plan for next week. As the snow has almost gone I expect it will be more time on the bike, a 5km time trial run and lactate threshold test, plus a long run. I do need to increase my running distance as the Brighton marathon (an 'A' race) approaches and I am looking for a personal best (sub 3:40).


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