Preparation Phase (second week of four)
Cool surprise. Macca was in Shanghai and we got to train with him around Century Park. Average around 37 kmph with bursts up to 45 kmh. Wow. Too fast for preparation phase training, but not going to pass up this opportunity to do a session with Triathlon legend.
Long swim on Tuesday; 2.4km
Wednesday; Run for 30mins. Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) = 3 (out of ten)
Saturday; long bike 80km around 2.5 hours. With a short run off the bike, 3km around 30mins. RPE=3.
Sunday; long run. 70 mins RPE = 4/5
First race of the year. No much consistent training this year. So happy enough with the result.
2 hours 47 mins.
Swim; 1500m; 29mins 4 secs
Bike; 40km; 76mins 21 secs
Run; 10km; 60mins 33 secs
The run time includes the second transition. The first transition from swim to bike was about 1:30.
I have realised that to keep my training going, I need a big race ahead of me. So I have registered for the Singapore 70.3 【Half Ironman] next March. Watch out for more updates on how the training goes over winter. A half marathon is looming!
Not much swim training this year. Even so, a race is a good opportunity to test out explosive sprints and fast starts. And the competition pushes you along a little bit more than usual.
Swim meet this weekend. Three second places:
4×50m freestyle relay
50m freestyle [ 33sec]
50m breaststroke [41sec]
Finished the Jinqiao 8k race in 40 mins 20 secs which was a personal best which was great. Lovely weather and I enjoyed the race.
Last winter I spent preparing for an Ironman race which was successfully completed in April. It was an immense undertaking requiring dedicated and consistent workouts over six months. And even running through the snow in London and going for a run on Christmas day. But it was all worth it as - even though running in 35c heat was not exactly fun - the whole process was a great learning experience.
Since the triathlon season closed down, I have been spending most of my training on learning yoga and after three months of fairly consistent effort- about three times a week - I am finally starting to feel like I am making progress. Stretching is one part of most athletes regime that gets relegated to a few stretches here and there. I have found that my hamstrings and legs are so stiff that touching my toes has been a real mission. Still like every sport there are levels that you go through. I am finally emerging from rank novice and can now focus on pushing my postures a bit more and working on improving my flexibility.
With our desk-bound jobs putting more and more restrictions on our flexibility, go and check out a yoga class at your local gym or studio. Expect the first three months to be a struggle if you have never worked on your flexibility before. Regardless, you will have at least one posture that you find really easy and do better than most others. Like Andy Warhol said, ” we should all have at least one muscle we can show off in public”.
Although we are off-season for triathlons, now is a great time to catch up on fresh ideas, and make plans for 2011. A great podcast that I have been listening to for several years and helped me make the journey to Ironman is IM Talk run on a weekly basis by two Kiwis: Coach John and Bevan. Check them out they are amazingly consistent with their shows and have some great interviews with the top stars in Ironman. Their web site is IM Talk.
Toastmasters is a very positive organisation that provides a supportive learning environment for learning public speaking, communication and leadership skills in a low-risk format. The types of people who are attracted to join and stay in Toastmasters are very positive and sharing.
In this facilitated discussion with a group from one of China’s highest quality club - Shanghai Leadership Toastmasters Club - we talked about ways to use the skills used in Toastmasters and apply them in other areas of our life, such as health, wealth and contribution.
The principle is based on leveraging the activities that you spend the most time on. The more applications you can find for a given skill, the higher your ROTI (return on time invested) will be.
You can link to my Toastmasters page here. Or you can download the audio file directly here. (MP3, 18.3MB)
Well it’s been about two months since I started the long road to fitness. Joining a gym really helped and I have been averaging about 15 sessions a month. The last month have been tough with many “brick” sessions of back to back cycling and running. This prepares the muscles to race tired - which is very important in triathlons.
Honestly, my body is feeling pretty exhausted. I gave myself a day off on Saturday to rest and sleep up. It was a big help. Although I do not have any aches and pains due my slow build up of exercise, I did not realise how much the brick session drained me. Doing a run only yesterday felt so good!
With 7 days before the race, I am only doing a few gentle workouts with a couple of swims thrown in. I will also carb-up during the week on pasta. Although I am not a nutritionist and there are many schools of thought on endurance diets, there is something reassuring about bowls of pasta. My goal for this race, as it’s my first of the season, is to get through safely and in a reasonable time (around 3 hours). With the other four to five races planned through the summer, I will look to drop some weight and that will probably mean a more protein based diet.
Once again during this process of change, I am surprised at how easy it is to achieve a consistent change when there is a fixed target in mind. I wonder why I can’t keep this going throughout the year. Certainly, I have to put aside the excuses of busy travel schedules and packed work calendars. Even though I spent last week in rural parts of China at a friend’s wedding, I still squeezed in several treadmill runs between the continuous banqueting.
I am looking forward to this first race, and see it as the first step in my continued journey towards better health. And perhaps to a faster race time of 2hours 45 minutes!
I revived my exercise program about one month ago and I have been consistently taking small steps on my running. In this time, I have had 23 exercise slots. I started by just walking, then added in a minute or two of running, and now am moving into my run/walk program. I do a 5 minute warm-up and 5 minute warm-down and now I am doing a 4 minute run / 1 minute walk module. This means that I run for 4 minutes, then walk for 1 minute. So I am running about 50% of the total time of my work out (including the warm ups and downs).
As I use a treadmill, I can work with speeds and heartrate to guide my progress. Currently I run between 9.0km/hr and 7.0km / hr. At the same time I observe my heartrate. It is currently within 50-60% of my maximum heart rate which is acceptable for base training. I talk about how to calculate your maximum heart rate here.
So now that I am building up my time running, I adjust total work-out time (20-35 mins), speed while running (my target is 10km/hr) and my heartrate (so I can do more exercise with less exertion). The biggest lesson here is that small and consistent is the only way to build up a healthy fitness level.
I also have a target for my first triathlon of the year: an Olympic distance in Suixian in Henan province in China. Here’s to a healthy year for you and your family.
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