My Triathlon Journey

IRONMAN Barcelona 70.3 - 1.9km Swim, 90km Bike, 21.1km Run (1/2 IRONMAN) Here goes, 20 weeks of focused training, lifestyle changes and some sacrifices bring me to the start line of IRONMAN Barcelona 70.3 my first middle distance race. I'm not sure it means anything in the triathlon world but I will have now completed the "full house" one of every distance. On arriving in Calella with my bike, all my race kit and the support fan club I could finally start to relax. After the complications before IRONMAN Wales (Bike accident & injuries) & the pre flight stress of getting my TT bike up and running I could now say for the first time the only thing stopping me from achieving my goal would be my physical and mental fitness on the day of the race. Tapering had gone well and using the TSS (Stress) score from training peaks as a guide I could see that I had significantly reduced my training stress over the past 10 days which according to the numbers demonstrate...

Dom and I showing Ditching Beacon to Smithy and Mike The final 4 weeks of this 20 week block. I'm going to mix it up a bit from now on..... rather then break it down into swim/bike/run i'm going to just tell it how it was/is. I'm also not going to talk about my training in 4 week blocks.... i'm convinced that race reports and more detailed posts about particular sessions/weeks makes for better reading. Open to suggestions.... So over the last 4 weeks I gave myself the goal of two more weeks of hard work before starting to taper off to the event. The 1st week involved a stag party for a close friend of mine in Liverpool/Chester. Now I haven't been on a weekend long stag do before, but I assumed it's ok to take your bike and running shoes...? Morning after night 1, 12km easy run along the Liverpool Docks I managed to stay out late each night and drink very little, this enabled me to be up early while everyone was sleeping off hangovers (n...

Newquay Big Goat Sprint – 400m Swim – 22km Cycle – 5.2km Run Pre-race After the disappointment of Woking’s sprint triathlon being cancelled earlier this month I was very much looking for a triathlon event that I could give the lungs a blow out ahead of my first A race of the year. Out of the blue 2 good friends of mine sent me a link to a sprint triathlon in Cornwall, both were keen to enter. This came as a bit of shock as neither had experience of competing at each discipline, one didn’t have a bike and I was pretty sure the other couldn’t swim. I replied, I will enter if you both do. The rest is history. Race Day After a bit of a the panic the night before of having open roads I decided I needed to get up extra early do a quick drive of the bike course in the car. Probably the best decision I made!! I will be honest this revealed a very dodgy bike course. Within the first and last 5km were a series of mini roundabouts and roads peppered with side r...

It's time to TAPER!!! Well kind of... I have some events/racing to do first. As ever I will start with the high level numbers.... Week 1 - 4 Week 5 - 8 Week 9 - 12 Week 13 - 16 Swim 24.7 26 32.3 28.3 Bike 810 970 838 687 Run 7 80 143 15 Average of 12:30 hours a week spent training I also completed my first triathlon of the year a short race report can be found HERE Swimming This month has seen me keep the consistency I have grown to love with swimming. Three times a week on the same days at the same times. Wednesday & Friday mornings and Sunday evenings. I did add a few extra swims in on a Monday evening. This was purely to see how my body reacted to using swimming for active recovery, these tended to be short 1500m swims where I had no goal other than to just swim easy. I also managed to dig the wetsuit out and head to the Londo...