I remember my first "Tri Suit"
So this one should be brief as one of the weeks within this block I have covered in detail. Click HERE to read that post!!!
I now consider myself to be on the home stretch, 12 weeks of training in the bank and with 8 weeks to go my focus is now turning to testing my fitness in races/events.
If you have either read previous posts or know me well I only trained for 11 weeks on the lead up to IRONMAN Wales. So hitting 12 weeks with plenty of time to go feels great!!!
As ever I will start with the high level numbers for weeks 9-12
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Week 1 - 4
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Week 5 - 8
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Week 9 - 12
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Swim
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24.7
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26
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32.3
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Bike
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810
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970
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838
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Run
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7
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80
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143
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I have spent an average time of training each
week of around 15 hours. Up by 1 hour from the last block.
Once again I kept myself on my 4-week rotation
of 1x medium, 2x hard, 1x easy weeks. However, to date I was doing this via
number of hours trained… As I have said in my previous posts I’m looking to try
and move my training away from distance and number of hours spent training as
metrics.
Below I have included my TSS for the last
12 weeks. For those of you who don’t know what TSS is, it's a training stress score which
Training Peaks calculates based of how intense each session is. The score is an
accumulation of the stress of each session.
It would appear based off these numbers I have been doing 1 easy, 2 hard and 1 easy week.... this worried me a little bit. However, I have listened to my body throughout the last 12 weeks and tbh i'm not sure I could have done much more.
If anyone wants to know more about my numbers or advice on how theirs compare please don't hesitate to get in touch!!
Swimming
Let's start with the best news.... I don't appear to have a shoulder injury. I'm not sure what I have done to make the niggle disappear but it has... touch wood that remains the case.
I think it was a combination of all the things I listed last time...
- A decrease in upper body work in the gym
- Slept awkwardly on joint
- Spending more time in the TT position while riding
- Starting to use paddles when swimming
Ultimately, I increased my upper body work in the gym, massaged my tight spots around the joint, made sure I slept on my other side, used paddles less in the pool and limited the time in the TT position..... seemed to work....
With no shoulder pain I was able to swim the furthest I have to date in 4 weeks and that included swimming 11.6 km in my training week.
I'm going to take this moment to acknowledge that in 2017 I swam 84.6km and in 2018 i'm already up to 79km!!!
I'm going to write a separate post about my swimming progression once I have completed the 5km Swimathon on the 29th of April. That will mark 1 year to the day I got in a pool!!
Back to this four week block, in week 4 I went to the usual Sunday Chaser Social Swim, main set was 15x100. These were all off 2 mins and you had to increase the pace on different lengths. I have to say when I got out the pool after that session I was very happy with myself. For the 3 sets of 100m where all 4 lengths were flat out I clocked sub 1:25/100m each time.
Coincidentally, I was reviewing my goals for 2018 recently. My target was to swim between 1:40-1:49/100m in my race..... As it stands even when i'm swimming easy i'm just dipping under 1:40!!!
Bring on Barcelona and potentially a sub 30min swim for 1900m!!!
Running
Its getting more exciting!!!
I averaged 35km a week for this 4 week block. Every time I complete a run now I pinch myself as I can't believe how much I have progressed!! By that I don't mean time wise, I'm still way off getting close to my PBs, it's more that i'm running pain free!!
As mentioned in my training week post I have started to get down to a track and work on some speed. I completed 2 Yasso 800m sessions. The second one I was able to average 2:49 x 8, not bad for someone not training for a marathon YET!!
The last run of note in this block was an 18km run completed on the last day. This was exactly what I targeted. In fact what I actually targeted was running for 90mins and keeping my HR below 135. Big tick!! Big confidence booster.
The next 4 weeks will be interesting as I start to do some events, this will be a test of where my speed endurance is at. As I move closer to the main event I will be trying to maintain around 35km a week but decrease the distance and increase the intensity.
Leading up to Wales I averaged 25km a week and to do that I needed a steroid injection and pain killers.
Cycling
I stuck to my word!!! I did less cycling!!!
As promised I started the 4 week block with an FTP test and i'm pleased to say I saw an increase.
I averaged 299watts over 20 mins which gives me an FTP of 284 watts. My goal for 2018 was to have an FTP of 250watts!!!
This FTP test it's self was grim, my legs hadn't recovered from an S&C session a couple of days before and I had to do it on "free ride" mode on Zwift as it crashed in the warm up. This meant I had no idea what my average was throughout!! I'm sure if I known I was close to breaking 300 watts I would have pedalled a tiny bit harder!!
This 4 week block saw me get out on the open rode a little more. I managed two long club rides and some laps of Richmond Park on my TT bike.
Top of Box Hill on a very cold Chasers ride!!!
My TT bike....
I have been saving the pennies for a few months now with the aim to buy a new rear wheel for my TT bike. When I bought the bike it came with a Zipp 404 Tubular rear wheel, great for pure TT's but not so good for triathlon racing. In short I purchased a Zipp 808 NSW...
On my first spin around Richmond Park in anger on the bike I was setting PB's all over the place. I hope it wasn't just because of the bike :)
I didn't think I could like a bike this much!!!
Planned events before Barcelona
1st April – Woking Sprint – 400m-23km-5km
8th April – 10mile TT
29th April – Swimathon 5km
6th May – Tour de Yorkshire
130km
Events later in the year
Ride London – Charity place – July 100miles
Swim Serpentine - 2.4mile swim
Velo South – September 100miles
Recap of objectives from Weeks 9 - 12
- Complete
British Triathlon coaching level 1 course - Course cancelled due to weather!!
- Start
to include brick sessions - 1 short brick included
- Monitor
my fatigue score closely - DONE and included TSS score!!!
- Start
to include perceived effort scores with session (rate 1-10) - Not done whoops!!!
- Increase
to FTP of 10+ watts - YESSSSS increase of 20 watts to FTP
Objectives for Weeks 13 – 16
- Race Woking Sprint - Not time goal as of yet....
- 10 mile TT - under 25 mins... not sure if that punchy!!
- Sub 20 min 5km either in a race or a Park Run
- Brick sessions minimum 3!!
- Yasso's x10reps
So this next 4 weeks will see me bring it altogether for the first time since September last year.
I honestly can't wait to race again and in all honestly i'm not too worried about the time, back in Feb when I still wasn't running I never expected to be able to enter a triathlon of any distance before Barcelona. That said..... I am going to RACE and I will be looking to do my best!!!
I'm more excited about competing in a local club Time Trial, I have never done anything like that before and it's going to be interesting to see how I match up against some pure cyclists.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Get in
touch via Instagram if you have any questions.
Thanks
@Triathlon_Ross