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