Wednesday 9 January 2013

Training Log

For Christmas I was lucky enough to receive Joe Friel's training diary (thank you Secret Santa!), which I will try to keep updated with my training notes, weekly goals, nutrition, times and distances. In addition it has boxes for recording a measure of sleep, fatigue, stress and soreness (score 1-10). You could argue it is simply another thing to keep updated and why add this manual method of recording data when I have spent so much money on buying the latest Garmin technology and so often go to the trouble of downloading data to Training Peaks for further analysis.

Well Training Peaks remains my preferred platform for analysing training data however the discipline of recording details on paper of how you feel and what you eat is quite powerful and sometimes focuses your mind. I do like the idea of coming up with weekly targets and not simply to train so many hours or complete a chosen distance in a speicifc time.

This week my weekly goals are:

1. Introduce more strength exercises (something that has fallen away over last month)
2. Further reduce my intake of bread and sugary foods and replace with whole food options (good progress since Christmas but still more to be done)
3. Maintain weight below 12 stone. (During the festive period my weight increased to 12 stone 4 lbs, now fortunately back to my preferred target of 12 stone and under; I would expect to lose another 2-4 lbs during the race season)

In terms of volume this week (titled 'Base week 2' in my training diary), I have set a target of 12 hours, up a little from last week, following the structure listed below:

Mon - 0:45 Run: push-run incl 6x strength exercises (10x push ups, dips, lunges, squats and step-ups)
Tue - 2:00 Bike: Brighton commute incl. hilly route / easy return
Wed - 1:00 Run - negative split Z1-2 out / Z3-4 return; 1:30 Club Swim
Thu - 0:30 Run - 14-16x strides
Fri - 2:00 Bike: Brighton commute incl interval work / easy return
Sat - 1:00 Club Swim; 0:45 Bike: turbo power set
Sun - 1:30 Run - easy Z1-2; 1:00 Bike: turbo power set

Totals: 2:30 swim; 3:45 Run; 5:45 Bike - 12 hours

So far completed Mon and Wed runs as planned. For yesterday's morning commute I chose a good hilly route and ended up going over Ditchling Beacon, which added a little more on the distance/time - probably closer to a 3-hour session in total (incl. return journey).

Although I plan to increase my running training (strides, intervals, hill work and easy/recovery runs) I do have a cycling challenge next week. Brewin Dolphin has enetered a team in the Nocturne City Challenge at the Excel conference centre and I have been asked to compete. I am hoping that my power sessions on the turbo will continue to help in my preparation for that event - more details to follow.

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