Today is a good day

Well this week was a pretty good week all told. According to Training Peaks this week was all green and yellow, not only is this pretty to look at but it suggests that I am getting somewhere close to the amount of training I was supposed to be doing.......Brownie points all round! Ok so this is not quite true, there was a bit of tinkering throughout the week to make stuff fit and I called time on Sunday's training as I was dying on my feet, no sleep for 36+ hours will do that too you.

However all told I am happy with the week and I learnt a couple of new things:

1. I can fit in 15+ hours worth of training a week
2. the training is fun and I am feeling good about it.
3. I am not loving nights (told you I'd come back to that)
4. I must do more swimming, both time and distance.

This week I am again on 7 nights so training is limited to 10 hours, a lot of that is being made up with the commute to work so a bit of a bike heavy week but that's not all bad as it will be the bike where I pick up any major time gains I thinks. Also I am putting in 3 x swim sets to try and bump that up.

Finally, there is a trail marathon next year I think I might sign up for it. There would be no time targets or what have you, it would just be for fun and I think a training run of marathon distance would be good. I suppose if i start at midnight i could do a full dry run for the swim and bike legs too.

Other than that, this week has been fairly quiet on a Jim front so I shall keep this post quick.

See you next time

Say goodnight

I think I missed the point



I am slightly worried today. Well by today I mean this week. As normal I missed a good proportion of my training, this will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this but today is different. I am not worried that I missed all session from Tuesday to today (there is still some of Sunday to go and I might get out still), though this is bad, what worried me was that I wasn’t worried about it. This week I managed 2 out of 11 hours training and this time last week I was all focused and ready to go where as now as I write at 01:30 on a Sunday morning I am calm and relaxed that only 20% of my training load has been completed.

So what has made me worry about my lack of worrying? I think the biggest problem is that I am currently resigned to being on nights from now until the end of time and as such I have accepted that my training when I am on nights is going to be hit and miss at best and at worse none existent.  This acceptance is in itself a good thing I think, this is because there is nothing I can do about my rota, I have requested more days and been told that I’ll get what I get (politely). So this week I am thinking about how to best make use of not seeing daylight.

• Think about non-training training, by this I mean counting my 20 min ride to work each day as a session, it isn’t great but its something.
• Accept that on nights that I will not get a lot done during the week so fit what I can in on those days, even if it’s a specific rest day. Then look at the time between the nights either before and  after  if it’s the mid-week shifts or in the 3 days in the middle.
• Train smarter not harder when on nights.
• Most importantly, not to panic if I am not hitting the sessions I need to when on nights, I think that the positive mental attitude I had last week (it only lasted a little while fortunately) is of more benefit that a few half arsed sessions.

Having been all positive for a minute, I also have to realise that I am not signed up for a 10k plod round your local flat town (though the route does look pretty flat, 100m of climbing over 44km) I need to find that happy balance between calm acceptance of not getting all my training aims and goals met and blind panic that I won’t get race I want if I don’t train for it.

So again it comes back to goal settings. I think my goals for nights need to be about weight and diet rather than miles on the bike or in the pool, to this end I would be taking control of the situation rather than being reactive to events that I do not have control over. This feels like a more positive and proactive (possible other P words too) way to focus my training, and you never know I might get my Monday Friday 9-5 job soon.



See you next time.

Results day

Helvellyn  15km 
50th of 467
1:20:00

Ulswater  14km 
14th of 170 or 45th of 400
1:20:58

Now thats a Dirty weekend.

This week I am going to keep it short, well shortish. The reason for my brevity is not a desire to skimp on details or to because there is a lack of exciting things to tell you from this week but due to the fun and games of the last racing weekend of the year.

Last weeks training was a fine mix of bang on target and about as likely to hit the target as a stormtrooper. It all started so well with a good sweaty session on the bike and a cheeky cross training on monday, tuesday was fun and a nice cruise on the bike to a hard hill set both of which filled me with joy, well kind of, its hard to get excited about hill reps. The less said about the middle of the week the better, 3 sessions, 3 failed to starts. 

For next week 

• mix of swimming and running with a little riding thrown in for balance.
• The worrying thing is that this week is where the base for next year really starts. I think that I will need to try to hit all the targets even if its only for my head, if I cannot get 10 hours in how will I manage 20?

Ok, so now for the bit you have all been waiting for, you may not have known that you were waiting for it but you were!

The Dirty Double weekend is the last two races in the Lakeland trail series. one takes you up Helvellyn and the other takes you on a cheeky little slog along the banks of ulswater.

So Saturday dawned wet, windy and not exactly toasty, great trail running weather. The start of the run is mainly up hill towards the top of the valley between Sheffield peak and Birkhouse Moor. we then scooted round Birkhouse Moor and headed towards Neathermost Pike before turning back through a bog towards a hard packed trail and then raod to the start/finish line. All in all 368m of climbing and 361m of controlled falling down hills. The run was 14km and I covered it in 1:20:07, I’m not sure how this compares to everyonee else yet, the results will appear in the next day or so, but for me it was a fun race and I think it was a nice start to a tough weekend. The high point was that I didn’t bonk. I think this was inpart due to a full english 2 hours prior to racing but more importantly getting some planning in place which meant I was ready to go and there for in better shape to run.

Sunday: Was a bit of a mixed bag as far as weather went, it looked good then bad then mediocor. it finally settled as perfect runnning weather except for the head wind. Whilst a shorter and flatter course, though we climbed 431m and desended 436m, none were as big as the first climb on saturday so therefore its flatter, I continued to focus on consistancy and completed it in 1:20:58. I cannot deside whether this is good or bad yet, but it makes me smile that the times for two very different races were so close. The race it self skirts the Lake with a fairly messy technical wooded area where if the roots don’t break your ankel the rocks will, not that you’d know which was the culprit as all is covered in slimey leaves.

However, it was a beautiful day and it was just fun to be out in the wilds. 

Anyway next week its back to moaning about training and lack of consistency. 

see you all then