Busy rest week

In what seems to be a regular pattern I couldn’t quite pull off three consistent weeks in a row – but it may be a blessing in disguise.

Three days of work offsites meant no real training; early starts and late finishes combined with the fact that I still had to balance ‘normal’ workload took up a lot of time. I then also really needed to help on the home front because I’m interstate for work for four days from Sunday.

This is where it may be a blessing; I actually managed to get some good quality sleep thanks to my son also sleeping, and it now have a well rested body to capitalise on any time I do have to train while away.

I’m event managing a large conference in Port Douglas in tropical North Queensland and although I’ll be busy during the days I’m planning on doing double sets (swims and runs) each day I’m up there.

I holidayed to Port Douglas with the family earlier this year so know that the hotel in staying at this time has a dedicated lap pool where the local tri club trains. I also have a few good run routes to hit up.

My wife has even said that while it’s not a holiday I should try and have early nights by avoiding unnecessary dinners or drink functions and use it as a chance to get some rest in.

Hopefully the stars align and this work trip becomes a solid training block and something to further launch myself for the season ahead.

A spoonful of cement

My woes of illness and lack of sleep have dominated these pages too much lately. This week I switched the spoonful of cough syrup for the metaphorical spoonful of cement and hardened up and the results were great.

On Tuesday I was still snuffly but well and truly over it – sick of being sick. I headed off to the pool and smashed out 2km (standard 500m warm up, 4x[250m steady/50 easy] and then 6×50 sprints) and felt great at the end of it – if not hungrier than usual.

Strength training in winter to go faster in summer.

The next day I was symptomatic so without wanting to push it too hard I went to the gym on and did a bike warm up followed by 45 minutes of strength work – and left the gym feeling better than when I got there! Maybe there was method in my madness and I just needed to sweat it out?

By Thursday I had well and truly lost all sense of self-control and pulled out a double – a 2km swim set in the morning and then a great speed session on the track in the afternoon, including 2x 1600m at 4:00/km pace and 2x800m at 3:40/km pace.

It was my first session on the track in a long time and I had been invited by a work colleague in the midst of his marathon training so I couldn’t slack off. I had nothing to worry about and led through the session.

There are certainly times that you shouldn’t train when you are sick; the standard rule is anything above the shoulders (ie runny nose) is fine but anything below (vomiting, breathing problems, etc) should be taken more seriously. Obviously there are exceptions and anything with a temperature should be responded to with rest and fluids but I took heart from this week in pulling up my mansuit and getting some quality sessions done.

And the best thing is that today, Friday, apart from a few nose blows the cold is largely gone. Happy days are here again.

The tightrope

I remember reading somewhere that any elite athlete, but especially endurance athletes, walk the finest of fine lines between pushing their body and going too far. I’ve discussed this before on this blog in my own experiences and after a good week of solid training the question has raised its head again.

I pushed out a solid 16km run on Saturday to give me five sessions for the week (3 swims and 2 runs). This is still far from perfect and at the level that it needs to be, but at this point in my schedule it works for me. The run on Saturday was the furthest I had ran possibly all year which is a bit scary – I did three marathons last year and this year I haven’t run more than 10 miles! That said though, I felt controlled throughout, pulled back when I thought I was going too hard and quickly showered, got dry, warm clothes on and got good nutrition into me – which is why I was worried to have woken up the next day with a snuffly nose.

Was I really just one decent run away from getting sick? One average but consistent week of training away from illness? Is this what my life had come to – and more importantly was it the training or something else?

I considered all the options and am convinced it was not my body saying I’m a fool for trying to much. My training had been a balance of intensity and aerobic and my underlying heart rate had been good. I looked around me, what else was unusual? Well, I’d taken my two kids to swim lesson on Saturday morning; was the kiddie pool actually just a cesspool of viruses and bacteria? Highly probable. Both kids also woke up with running noses, mild and similar to my condition so maybe there was something else here. It may very well have not been the pool at all, but I am convinced it was the kids that got me sick and not the training.

The other alternative is that the office has been struck down by a revolving door of illness, circulating at a rate only slight lower than the air conditioning machine distributing the bug filled air around our office.

The upside is this really is a mild cold – nowhere near a deadly dose of man flu I’ve experienced in the past. I’m working from home today so not sure how probable it will be to get some training in but the fact that I feel I could go for a run is positive in itself.

Irrespective of what caused it, it’s a double dose of multivitamin and this other mystical cure for a lot of illness that I read on websites that must be aimed at people without kids – something called ‘rest’. I think I’d have more luck trying to find a snakes oil cure that works than having a chance to rest, but it’s all part of the experience I suppose!

Muscle memory

I’ve now had three solid days of training in a row. It’s not been easy; our youngest is cutting another tooth so sleep remains interrupted but I’ve committed and delivered. I mentioned my swim set on Monday which was great, I was even more impressed with my commitment yesterday.

I had one hour free all day at work that wasn’t full of meetings. I grabbed the opportunity and headed to the gym and did my new favourite treadmill session that I posted about previously. I smashed out a high intensity, high quality run session in 30mins with a little bit of timing for some stretching, a shower and then straight back into my next meeting, Right proud for taking the chance rather than saying it was too hard.

Today I pushed out another solid swim set and really feel the muscle memory coming back, both in terms of fitness and ability but also in physical sense; my arms, shoulders and torso appear to have bounced back in appearance as well!

Today’s sessions:

Swim today was just over 2km; standard 500m warm up set (150m/100m/50m followed by 4x50m drills). This was followed by 12x50m sprints leaving on the 1:05 breathing on the right side on the way out and the left side on the way in. These were hard, I finished all reps between 49 and 53 seconds but that rest period went so quick!

Finished off with a reverse ladder 400/300/200/100 leaving on 2:05/100m. All in all 2.1km done in 48 minutes. Challenge is now do I run tomorrow or take a rest day so as not to over do it – so hard when I finally have some momentum!

Finding the balance: sleep v training

I’ve seen a plethora of articles lately highlighting the need for and importance of quality sleep for endurance athletes. This is definitely the biggest challenge I’m facing in my training, despite the fact that the benefits and likewise the impact of a lack of quality sleep are well known. One example is this recent article, showing that lack of sleep leads to:

• increased levels of cortisol (a stress hormone),
• decreased activity of human growth hormone
• decreased glycogen synthesis (glycogen is stored energy in muscles).
• Glucose metabolism (main source of energy) slows by as much as 30 to 40 percent

Finding the balance is really tough. Meeting my sleep needs, training needs and father duties will be tough. I think what it will take is a really close monitoring of my obs to ensure that I’m not overtraining, or more importantly pushing my body too hard. It will be a case of recording my pulse (HR) and most likely toning down the intensity of most of my scheduled sessions.

It’s not ideal and will impact performance but I think to be realistic I need to view this season as a base builder and to gain experience and prepare me for future seasons while still pushing myself to see what I can do. With this lens it makes it more realistic and gives me achievable goals.

Today’s session

It was swim day today and I was stoked with my session. My standard 500m warm up set (150m/100m/50m followed by 4x50m drills) is really pleasant and nice now. From there it was straight into the main body – 1000m straight. This was the longest I’m swum straight up in some time but felt really good and finished in just under 21 minutes, all in all not bad.

After that, with one minute rest it was in to 6x50m freestyle sprints. I was worried how I’d go after the endurance swim but I smashed it. I had to start every 1:05 and this gave me between 5 and 15 seconds rest. I finished the first five all around 50 seconds and the last one was 55 seconds. Not lightning speed but I felt strong. It was a good session. 1800m all up.

Tomorrow morning will be run day, just a short 7-8km easy pace, as much as I would love to do a speed session sensible is the key!

Kids + training = illness

I thought the biggest challenge of training for triathlon was going to be the lack of rest and sleep. And it certainly is a big factor, but I think it actually is just a pit stop on the way to a bigger issue – illness!

I’m sick – again. Nothing serious, just a cold, lost my voice, congested nose, etc. But enough that the last thing I want to do is train. It’s hard because I know the less I train the less improvement I see, but is it better to rest and get better or battle through and let it linger on? Both the kids have been sick and my wife was sick also so it was inevitable it would get to me.

I’d had a decent week of training, two swims and two runs and then had my daughter’s third birthday on the weekend. And my son’s baptism. And my folks staying with me for four days. It all added up to an inevitable outcome.

I’m feeling a bit better today, day three of illness but have lost my voice today. Which is a challenge in itself as I am on a leadership development course for work for the next three days – I won’t need to talk there will I? Lol.

The downside to the course is that it is three full days, 8.30am – 8.30pm so training is going to take a hit so at least I get compulsory rest from training. I might try and sneak a run in one night and already have my swim set planned for Friday and a run on Saturday. Just got to do the best I can.

29 weeks to go

When I started planning out for my first half-Iron distance race on 1 February 2015 I was 53 weeks away from the big day. Through ups and downs I’ve cracked the 50, 40 and now the 30 week to go mark and I would say things are going okay.

My running has been solid, significantly less than previous years but I was solely run focused then. That said I recorded a PB in my only race of the year and feel that I’m getting a good balance of intensity and recovery runs.

I’ve loved where my swimming is at. I hadn’t swum for almost two years before this adventure and even then I look at what sort of training I was doing then compared to now and am very proud. My sessions have increased from less than 30 minutes and around one kilometre to just under an hour and 2.5 kilometres. Call me vain but the changes to my body as I adopt a swimmers physique is pretty cool too!

Since my youngest is still sleeping downstairs in my study I haven’t been able to set my bike up on the CompuTrainer to start any specific bike training, but watch this space – I think I’ve found the solution to increase my focus!

My strength training has been going well, especially my legs where I’ve done deadlifts, box jumps and weighted squats all for the first time. I have neglected stretching so need to focus on this a lot more. All in all though the training is going as well as expected given the lack of sleep from the little one.

Looking forward to him continuing to improve and me getting some real quality sessions in. I’ve got a slight throat infection today after a few days hard training so will dial it back and reload for the next few weeks. That said, 29 weeks will go in no time!

A treadmill session that almost killed me – but not of boredom

I regularly hear people complaining that if they ran on a treadmill they’d die of boredom. Today I did a treadmill that had me fearing for my life, but was certainly not boring!

It was a wet and cold Melbourne day today and I didn’t feel like a run in the rain during lunch at work so instead headed to the gym with a colleague who said he was going to try out a new treadmill interval workout he’d had a friend tell him of.

I was mindful that I didn’t want to over do things and considered instead doing a stock standard easy run but in the end curiosity got the better of me. Essentially the work out consisted of two minute intervals starting with two minutes at 12k/hr followed by two minutes at 13km/hr, 14km/hr, 15km/hr and a final two minutes at 16km/hr before dropping back down to 12km/hr and starting it all over again for a total of three sets or 30 minutes.

It damn near killed me.

My mate and I did it at 1% gradient and we got to the 15km/hr interval in the second set before we had to pause for a minute and stop our breakfast from surfacing. We then pushed through the second 16km/hr interval and got back up to 14km/hr before needing a minute break in between the next two sets. It was a real high intensity workout and felt great afterwards for doing it.

I think the fact that the intervals are only two minutes means your mind can’t wander and you need to stay alert, plus the speed meant that you were always engaged. Those paces were challenging for me but clearly you can increase or decrease speed to your skill level.

I still prefer getting outside to run whenever I can but this was one treadmill session I truly enjoyed. Let me know how you go!

The need for internal dialogue

You may have noticed it’s been more than a month since my last post. It’s been a tough time and the blog was sadly one of many things that slid off my routine as I adjusted to the sometimes inconvenience called life.

It was the perfect storm of insanity at work combined with the fact that my son’s sleeping habits reached an all time low and I was exhausted. I think before then I’d been delirious but seven months of crap sleep finally caught up to me and I was done.

In the time from 9 June until 2 July I swam once and ran just one time also. I thought about training lots. But I felt so tired that I didn’t have the energy to move. Or at least the mental energy to drag me out the door.  I was a broken man and took to up to three cans of Coke to get me through the work day. My nutrition wasn’t great either but not as bad. I just needed to break the circuit.

Then last Wednesday the penny dropped and I broke out of my funk. On the train on the way home from work I started reading a book called Unbreakable by former Navy SEAL Thom Shea, covering the need for a strong internal dialogue and mindfulness. I realised that I had turned myself into a victim and was letting circumstance dictate my mood, energy and attitude.

My son was still not sleeping any better but my attitude improved and I focused on my goals and restoring balance between family, work, sport and spirit. I had been all focused on work and it wasn’t working. Since then I have eased back into training and had four really solid sessions in five days and I feel strong and in control.

Over the weekend I took action to break my son’s sleeping habits and while it’s still early days the signs are promising and both my wife and I are getting more sleep. The pieces are slowly coming back together.

It’s amazing how quickly and easily things can transpire to hijack a good plan. I lost my way for three weeks. There is no use bashing myself up over it or trying to make up that time, but it is a great reminder why I need to keep everything in balance and ensure that no one area of my life dominates any other.

But boy does it feel good to be back!

 

A shorter session beats no session

I’m learning to love to fall in love with the thin blue line again! Work was insanely busy again today but I was determined to get out of the office and into the pool. I set aside an hour for my swim and had a meeting that I needed to be at at the end.

I walked to the gym, got changed and that took about 10 minutes of my time. Jumped in and started my session – I swear as the time progressed and I got closer and closer to the end of the hour I swam faster and faster to ensure that I could finish my session.

I ended up missing two reps at the end cutting my swim 300m short, and while that was disappointing I’m fast learning that the key to training is consistency and it’s better to get in a session that is 10 minutes shorter than you would like than try and wait for the perfect time and not get a session in at all.

The same occurred with my gym/strength session yesterday – I had 35 minutes from start to finish but that was the only option for the day. I smashed out a short but fast and intense session on what otherwise would have been a wasted day. Flexibility is the key and taking what I can get as I make training fit in around life.