Cold..... So cold open water....

So Tuesday night after a sort but energetic session in the pool (assuming a 10 close to get there at half 8 and find it closes at 9!) I decided that the drugged up bright red eyed look I was getting from having no swimming goggles needed to be rectified.

Black and red the best look!

Luckily I had some Amazon voucher money left from Christmas so the price I actually had to pay was the 9p that is did not cover. Ended up settling on a pair of "Aqua Sphere Kayenne Goggles" from now on to be known as my batman goggles. They ended up being what I think are a good pair for me after looking around at price, average review etc. You can feel free to tell me I'm very wrong and should have bought goggles X or goggles Y if you know better!

Decided to try a mini tri (sprint distance) in the gym just to see what its like doing different activities one after the other. Although completely out of order with run first then the bike with the swim coming in last. Rough timings are as follows:
Run 32 mins 5k
Bike 41 mins 20k
Swim 20 mins 750 meters (30 lengths)

Still in one breaststroke, one freestyle mode for swimming (this was also pre arrive of batman goggles). It wasn't to bad, the swim at the end was more effort than usual due to the pre exercise going into the pool. The time on the bike was painfully boring, I will biking outside from now on I think and similarly for the run. As much as I love watching a fat sweaty me running perpetually towards myself in the floor to ceiling mirror I would much rather be running along the path round the rowing lake, river Trent or lakes at Rushcliffe.

The crowning achievement of this week was Saturday morning with my new park run time of 24:56. This is a cut of almost 2 minutes of my 5k race time and further confirms my suspicion that the Lincoln course is much faster and flatter! Even with that being said I can feel that my race pace is increasing and I can go for longer and harder every time I go out.

So Sunday morning I got up to go for a swim in the lake in Lincoln. I was expecting it to be cold, I mean its February 4, maybe 5 degrees was about where I was expecting. I had not counted on it being 0.5 degrees and covered in sheet ice in places!

Photo of the lake, after I got out of it!!

In my defence I got in a swam, all be it for only about 3 or 4 minutes before the cold had taken over my hands to the point I could barely move them. I can only hope that the water in the rowing lake on race day might be a few degrees warmer but I'm not entirely convinced!

So this was a day late but I've been trying to catch up on uni work I'm behind on and this is one of the first things to take a back seat. Until next week.

Alex

116 days and counting .....

I have eventually started my swimming training, Wednesday night I signed up for Nottingham gym membership to use all there facilities across the city, namely the use of the Clifton leisure centre that's 5 minute’s walk away. It has a nice 4 lane 25 metre pool, not very deep but more than enough to swim along. A quick bit of number crunching tells me I think that just over 77 lengths equates to the 1.2 mile swim for the race.

So first things first let's address the elephant in the room in terms of swimming. I can barely swim 2 lengths front crawl! Having now swam for years any water fitness I had has long gone, and my general fitness isn't up to a point where it can carry me through the swim yet. First session was 55 minutes of stop start lengths for about 57 lengths and by the end of it I was aching in muscles I never knew I had.

Pulled from the information on the Garmin website (Red Breaststroke, Pink Freestyle)

Second session was much the same but after reading a bit about my watch tried starting and stopping it to get more accurate distances in the pool. I also tried to swim on breaststroke and one freestyle length to try get into swimming more freestyle. Again swimming about 0.9 of a mile in the hour in the pool, though in my defence /I had come straight from the gym room next door where I had done an hour and a bit on the bike.  I NEED to get a set of goggles, I capitalise the 'need' here because my eyes had a certain bright red glow to them after the session on Saturday and it was particularly pleasant during the hour in the chloriney pool (god I miss the clean water of the lake at activities away, have a whole new appreciation for swimming in it now!).

The last week was the first time I tried to stick to a training plan! The plan is one I pulled from the new book I bought last week, it is the sets for January. Easiest place to have it was on my white board in my room as a constant daily reminder of what I should be doing. This table does not include the training zones for each of the activities mainly due to that fact that I have to do so much on Saturday I couldn't add another column without having to rehang my white board and there's only so much effort I'm willing to put into creating a table that's only designed to inflict ever increasing physical pain on me.

The white board of pain, the first thing I roll over and see in the morning!

I've not stuck to it completely, I will confess that straight off. But I never expected to first week it shows that what I should be training at is a much higher level than the distances and times I currently am. I started on Wednesday and other than Sundays 20km run (which would probably do me more damage than good at this point, not least because it was like an ice skating rink outside) I have done fairly well. The plan will be changing as of next Monday to February suggested weekly training plan but there will be more on that when I read it!

Unfortunately as well the Parkrun that I go to was cancelled this week so I did not get my early morning Saturday timed run in, but I did manage 2 longer runs during the week which should have more than made up for it!

Hopefully it will stay warm enough for there not to be any more ice or snow over the next week and I will be able to get out on the bike and get used to the cleats a bit more as well as work on my biking in general. At a guess from the ride last week I need to make some changes to the height of the seat and angle of the handlebars but it’s going to be guess work and a bit of trial and error until I get it to somewhere that feels comfortable for me on a long ride. 

So the plan is to try and keep up slotting in as much training as I can, when I can to up the miles under my belt before the big day. Tonight won’t be a 50 minuet run as the training plan calls for but an hour or so in the pool instead as I feel this is currently by far the weakest element! 

Until next week,

Alex