My Triathlon Journey

So after my small success at the Eton Dorney Olympic Triathlon I was going into my last 3 weeks on a bit of a high.  I rather cleverly booked off work 21st August - 11th September to really aide in my final preparations before the big day. This was for two reasons, I had a submission deadline for my MSc Dissertation on the 4th of September and I needed to sort out all the logistics for getting myself/family & friends to Wales on the 10th of September. Triathlons in general require a lot of admin. IRONMAN races are next level!!! For the 3 weeks I had left, only one more week was planned with early starts and high volume. I was going to finish my training off with long ride and long run on the 19/20th of August respectively and then head into my taper feeling a million dollars. That was the plan...  As for the long ride and run, I planned a 150km ride on the 19th and 30km run on the 20th. Up until this point my longest ride in the programme had been abou...

August 2017 Swim – 13 times Cycle – 13 times Run – 10 times Total time 39 hours Total Distance 741km At the start of August I had entered another 10km run, this time @ Regents Park. I did this run purely for the medal…. It was shaped like the London Underground logo. I also managed to drag a friends along for the event, she ended up smashing a 10km PB!! I managed to also secure another PB for the 10km distance. However, it came at a cost: as soon as I stopped running my left knee was in pain. Unlike previous running pain this pain continued on for a few days and I very quickly become worried about my chances of completing a marathon in 5 weeks!! For the next 7 days I didn’t run at all and instead focused on cycling and preparing for the Eton Dorney Olympic distance race. Now at this point I made a promise to myself, I’m not going to chase a PB in this race and if I’m in pain at all on the run I will either withdraw or walk to finish. Instea...

Ok so on the 23rd of July I completed my first ever Triathlon which if you have been following up till now will know was the London AJ Bell.  This triathlon is reported as the largest in the world in term so participants over several distance options and routes over the weekend. One reason I haven't mentioned for why this triathlon appealed to me was the route on the Sunday for the Olympic distance.  The cycle was from the Excel in east London to Big Ben and back. Those of you who know London or have visited recently this route has recently seen the addition of a segregated cycling lane. Therefore, has become a bit of a Strava segment hotspot in central London. I saw this an opportunity with closed roads to get some PB's on this route. So as mentioned in my previous post 'AJ Bell - training and objective change' Mike and I now found ourselves training for an IRONMAN in Wales, which on race day was 7 weeks away. Both of us didn't "taper' into the ...

After my disastrous swimming experience in late April, the 1 st of May came around… I mentioned I bought some simple kit i.e. some goggles and swim shorts. However, I also purchased one other product: a Garmin 735XT. It’s such a cliché across Triathlon, but recording my swims/cycles/runs did revolutionise my training. I’m someone who works with numbers on a daily basis, so having a device that recorded basic metrics gave me the motivation to train more and see my progress. At this point my Garmin watch and my Strava account was all I had. Ok so training plan…. I started training on 8 th May, exactly 12 weeks before the London Triathlon on the 23 rd July. The slight delay was so I could finish off my last exam for an MSc I had been studying part time. To start with I didn’t put together a training plan. All I knew was I needed to swim lots and get running. May 2017 Swim – 9 times Cycle – 14 times (7 commutes to work) Run – 2 times Total time ...