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

Its Been a While!

So, its been a while, far to long you could argue but at least I'm writing another post again. I've been busy, life has got in the way work, university and everything else has taken time away from me being able to do any considerable training let alone sit down and write and proof read (an ungodly number of times, and I'm sure its still full of mistakes) any blog posts. All this being said I've still managed to lay down over 50 miles running including 3 distances at 10k-12k, my Saturday morning timed 5k race (ParkRun) time is starting to drop off to now under 27 minuets. So at least for the running things are improving at a rate I'm happy with and I feel a lot more confident about the 13.1 miles in 3 hours that caps of the end of the event in May. 

Looking very happy (this was pre swim) 4th from the left, back row

Managed to get in the water on boxing day for the Activities away annual boxing day dip which this year helped to support the charity Age UK, it was cold to say the least and it was only a short lap round the nearest set of marker buoys but anything that's for a good cause gets a try I'm my book, also there was a hot tub to get in after and pigs in blankets to eat!

More generally fitness wise I am feeling a better, there's still a way to go definitely before I stand a chance of crossing that line at the end of May. To that end I have been in contact with a swim coach at the adventure centre Activities Away in Lincoln, to organise starting some open water swimming work in March. The realisation of the physical toll swimming all the way up and down the rowing lake below is going to have on my body at the very start at the start of the race is starting to dawn on me! I'm also planning to go to the leisure centre later tonight for the open swim session and figure out how much they are going to rip me off to have access to everything they have in the building just so I can use the pool.

The unending lake at HPP

With my next to none existent knowledge about how to go about training for such an event, let alone doing a half Ironman as an overweight, unfit and completely inexperienced athlete (yes, that's right even with that damning list of attributes I still referred to myself as an 'athlete') I decided to purchase myself the 'Ironman 70.3 Training for the Middle Distance' book to look at what their guides are for training plans, times and more detailed things such as heart rate zones for each activity. With a stroke of what I could only call blind luck the training plan in the book aims for a first week in June race plan starting in January,  which is only a week off my race so is should be easy to adapt to the plan to suit me. 

My reading for the next week or so!

That being said the distances and times for daily runs/swims/bike sessions in the book are far above what I already do, which whilst not completely unexpected does show me just how much further I have to go before I even stand a chance of crossing that finish line at the end of May. 

It also shows how little I know about the rules and procedures for things like transition and the rules for overtaking bike segment. Hopefully reading through the book, the next week or so's reading before bed, I will be able to pick up most of the basic procedures and rules. I feel that the only really way to figure all this out though is to take part in at least one, preferably a few of increasing distance, triathlons before May so that I can experience first hand the transitions and the flow from one activity to the next. 

Not quite as shiny and new as when I left the house!

Before today I hadn't been outside on my bike since I've got my clip in peddles but I've been trying to get on the turbo trainer when I can. As the photo above shows, my shiny new peddles took a few hits first time out, as did my poor body! 3 times over a 21 mile period I went over still partially or fully attached to the bike, every time when moving slowly failing to get my feet out of the cleats before tipping over. 

Other than the bone jarring contact with the pavement on the above stated occasions it wasn't a bad ride, the route needs some work mind you, suddenly realising that what I thought was a small single lane road curved round into 3 lanes onto a dual carriageway roundabout was interesting to get across to say the least! My speed needs to come up a significantly about though averaging only just over 13 mi/h on that ride wont cut it. To come under the 4 hour cut off time I need to average at least 15.5 mi/h. This is something that will hopefully come with a combination of increasing fitness and more miles out on the bike getting used to the new clip ins and doing progressively longer distance rides. 

All in all its not been to bad, I'm not really where I wanted to be but I could be in a lot worse position in terms of general fitness. There's a good 2 more stone I would like to lose before I would feel that I was at a fit weight but that should come with an increased amount of training and some better diet planning.  I am hoping to put into place a more structured training schedule to work from aimed at training for the event more specifically as well as general fitness, to that end any advice those of you have done triathlons before or even any longer distances individual events could give will be greatly appreciated! 

Until next time (hopefully next week or at least a lot sooner than the last gap in posts!),

Alex

Best week so far

So this post is a day late, mainly due to the fact that the format of the lecture/lab I usually write this in had changed! As the title eludes to this has in fact been a great week in terms of both distance covered and getting other things done.

I have managed to clock up just under 17 miles pounding the pavement this week. The most by far that I have ever run in that short a time frame. This included a solo 10k that disappointingly came in at less than a second over the hour mark as well as my first park run early on Saturday morning at Rushcliffe (see the photo below for my unique blind running style!) The event was as the website promised, well enough organised, efficient and everyone there was friendly and supportive, which is made even more impressive by the fact that it costs nothing but your time to register and the cost of printing out your personal bar code to enter.

 Also managed to get out on the bike this week scouting out the route from home to Holme Pierrepont where I like to run. The route is 90% tarmac with a small well packed off road section near the run. Looking at the bike distance (56 miles) and allotted time (4 hours) means that I need to ride at at least 14 mph all the way round to come in under the cut off.  Which at the moment is faster than I think I can do, so I need to do some work in improving my form and endurance on the bike which can only be done with seeing a trainer and getting some time on the bike done as well.

So to that end I've ordered more stuff (because pouring money at this is the way to get better right?) Which include a set of road shoes and peddles as well as a few other bits from chain reaction.  Also went out and got a new inner tube for my bike (evident from the fact I've been out on it) but have still to sign up to the pool to start any kind of swimming training!

On kit that has already arrived my new watch and heart rate monitor (above) works really well although seeing what heart rate that I can get myself up to doing relatively little is sometimes worrying. Also my Tri suit arrived which fits really well luckily for an internet clothes order and looks interesting to say the least on!

So looking forward hopefully more shiny things will turn up over the next few weeks and be fitted to bikes etc. There is still a need to go get in the pool or some open water (going to be cold this time of year!) and start that part of my training. All in all its going better and if can repeat this weeks performance again i will be more than happy with the ways things are progressing.

And so the cold moves in

So another week has passed, flown past more like! Seams only yesterday I was being pestered about the fact there wasn't a post up yet for last week. The weeks been a busy one lots of work over time, some late nights doing course work and building PC's. Unfortunately its been what I could only call a set back week in terms of training with very minimal activity.

This week I've only managed to eek out 3 runs totalling a meagre 7 miles and have failed to put any time in the pool on the charts or get my bike fixed and put down any time on the turbo trainer or road. There's no excuse for it really, I've been crazy busy with everything else but not really enough not to nip to the bike shop and pick up a inner tube or go out for a run before a 9am lecture.

The three runs I did manage to clock this week have been good, a three mile run with my house mate Will was in perfect conditions: cool, sunny and fresh. Will is also trying to get fit for his own reasons but as a side note, he's doing Movemeber as the fabulous photo below shows and you can donate at Movemeber Donate. This was the first run at Holme Pierrepont National Water sports Centre from now on to be known in these ramblings as HPP, having kayaked on the white water course weekly, even daily at times I had often glanced over the peak of the small separating hill to to the regatta lake at its 2km+ long rectangle  disappearing of into the distance and wandered why anyone would ever run/bike round it, and now I am and will be many more times over the coming months!  The course for the run section of the outlaw goes around the lake twice as part of the route the second time coming down the back straight to finish in front of the grandstand.

The other two runs were unremarkable beside the noticeable temperature drop off, the first 2 miler late last week was a cooler morning the second 2 miler this morning was what I would call cold at -1 degrees when I left the house. First time I've ever run I a thermal top (merino wool) and it seamed to be about the right temperature so if the temps are down at that again I will be donning more thermal kit before venturing out in the ice, another interesting if slidey part of the experience!

Now although I did next to no exercise this week I have managed to keep the food intake down, which as anyone who knows me would tell you is an achievement in itself. The plan is to cut out takeaway as much as possible and try to limit the inevitable Christmas season diet damage. To that end I have been trying to eat more fruit and veg and less crisps (namely tubes of Pringles) as well as biscuits and even managed to do a food shop where maybe 80% of the food I could comfortably defend as healthy, the crate of cider, wedge of fancy cheese and crackers were my few let downs, but you've got to have something to spoil yourself with.

Another none exercise advancement (see its not been a completely bad week... right? ) is that I have ordered some more kit. I know I probably didn't need it but I like to think that it will help even if its only a mental boost, so that being said I have ordered a Tri race suit to try out and also a GPS multi sport watch and  heart rate monitor in the Amazon sales to try out. Both are due to arrive tomorrow when I am typically due to go home in the morning to see family so I may not get hold of them till later in the week and will undoubtedly have to trek across town to some hidden industrial estate to pick them up from the sketchy parcel depot.

All things said and done I've not really advanced in my training plan and another week has slipped by, this coming week needs to see some miles being clocked up in at least two of the three disciplines if not all three of them! And I need to read up on the rules and regulations of the race to check what actual kit I need to buy to be within the rules and start looking into things I need to practice such as transitions, something I've never done before!

Until next time,

Alex

One Week In

That time has come again yes that's right 2 hour of maths and graphics lecture so it must be time for another blog post. So a week into what should be a fat busting, muscle building regime I would say i'm doing OK. now this would preferably be 'i'm doing really well' but there is no point in kidding myself and you can't have everything! 

Its been a week of setbacks and other commitments as well, I know excuses are excuses but between an inner tube that decided to split and let itself down shortly after a 2 hour session on the bike and starting a new job a Morrison's and spending 8-5 on inductions both days of the weekend i don't think I've actually done to badly. 

For those of you who might be interested in either seeing where and what times i'm running or could give any advice on what i'm doing my Strava  profile will have most of my runs on it, that being said I sometimes forget to turn it on and/or my phones flat so its not a complete log by any accounts. 

So for this week i have only managed spent 2 hours on the bike in the turbo trainer before it decided to give up on me so my aim for the next few days is to get out and get a new tube at some point, this though brings me nicely onto one of my fears of the event. What if my bike fails to make it the 56 miles of the course? Now making my body do that much physical exertion and still cross the finish line is another problem all together, i'm talking about failing kit. My bike, though not awful, is still a base level Halford's road bike and i need to get out on the road and put it through some longer rides to see if it is going to be A) comfortable enough to do that kind of distance and B) if it will take the abuse. 

One thing that is going really well is the running, having done 4 morning runs in the last week i have figured out a nice 2 mile loop from my house i have done 2 x 2 mile runs and 2 x 4 miles (twice round the route). Luckily i managed to maintain some running form from when i ran the 10k and this has meant i have found these runs (almost) enjoyable and will be looking to repeat and extend the distances this coming week. Now a quick look at pace times tells me that i 'could' run at just under 13 minuets 45 seconds a mile and still  scrape in under the time limit obviously i would be looking to not be that close to the cut off but we shall see how the training progresses!

Having been over to the local pool/gym during the weekend and will be looking to start going some point over the next week, they do an early morning swim so the plan is currently (depending on how many days a week i can take running in the morning) to use these sessions as run rest days and do a swim to bike morning session instead. 

Laying out the plan for the coming week. First fix and do some more time/miles on the bike, continue and extend the run to start getting some miles under my belt and finally get in the pool and learn how to swim again. On that note i would like to thank Activities Away for allowing me to swim in the lake a few times to try out open water swimming and the support from the staff there in starting this madness! 

Now comes a bit of a ask from anyone who actually reads this! I am completely new to all of this even in the running i only have the base that the guys at my work placement helped me to form. So any advice, training tips or 'I found this really helpful' information would be greatly appreciated from you! 

Again until next time.

Alex 

200 days not as long as it sounds ...

So my phone kindly reminded me, as it does every time I unlock it, that it is now only 200 days today till my Half Outlaw (half ironman).

Now most people would do something like this because they enjoy it (god knows why), they are raising money for charity (always a honourable thing to do) or that it is for the competitive element to it. That for me is not the case. I am endeavouring to do this for the simple reason of setting an 'achievable' goal for getting fit and healthy again after reaching a worrying weight and level of fitness over the last year.

With that being said I have yet to fully engage into my training plan, getting fit and losing weight. But that changes today! Yes I can hear you chuckling away, 'yea right' and other such comments but no as of tomorrow I shall begin in earnest. The morning run will start anew, I will look at booking/singing up to the local pool (I have no excuse really its 2 minuets down the road!) and putting new tyres on my bike and either getting out on the road or on the turbo trainer.

So to peg a start point to look back to and see if there is any change, this morning I weighed 14 stone 11 pounds (93.9kg), the furthest I've ever run was a 10km at castle combe in 58:34:80, I've never biked competitively and I've never swam competitively.  I've also never competed in a multi sport event, if you haven't picked up I've throw myself in at the deep end, with a set of ankle weights on and am hoping that I will still float!

The plan then is to keep a track via this blog (used to be a kayaking one so it needs to be gutted and revamped!) As much for my own personal tracking as much as for others to read, that being said if my complete beginner to hopefully crawling my way across the finish line in may at the 8 hour limit mark experience can help any others then all the better.

Until next time.

Alex