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It’s been a long time since signing up to these events and the time in between then and now has gone at different speeds depending on what I have been doing. With time having been dragging since the Prague Marathon, the last couple of weeks have flown by ad I am fairly sure the next 3 and a half weeks are going to go even quicker. I’ve even managed to go beyond the 100 days without a drink with my total tallying up to 104 now – 23 to go!
As I pen this – can I claim to be penning it when I am typing it? We’ll go with key. As I key this, I currently have a bedroom floor surrounded with piles of various items as I pack for Saturday’s Ultramarathon. Nutrition, mandatory items, clothes to run in, clothes for different weather & clothes for the couple of days after. Simple…
Keeping with my tactic to focus on the cycling to make the most out of the Ironman, not a lot of running has been done since my weekend training in the Lake District – but I dont see this being a problem this weekend. If I had focused on my running a lot, I could have smashed it, but with the two events so close to each other, I had to take a priority. In the last two weeks I’ve had two 100km cycles and covered 50km of intense indoor evening training – each session I could feel the improvement – leading nicely towards the Ironman in 3 weeks time. The bonus of not drinking is that I am not spending that money – so I treated myself to a couple of toys to help my training this year and beyond. A new turbo trainer that can link up to the computer & adjust the resistance depending on the resistance the computer sends to it. This can be used for Zwift – the game that I spoke about previously – or on training programmes which set specific interval training. This means that training is more realistic as well as keeping me paying more attention as gear changing is vital if I want to keep my momentum up. The other gift, was a bike sat nav. I’ve started to get bored of the local roads, so by using this I can plan my rides beforehand and then load it onto this. Guiding myself to places that I only know how to drive to via motorways, which is always interesting.
Running wise, I have just ensured I have kept my legs ticking over, remembering what it is like to run. The course has a reasonably tough start on Saturday, with quite a lot of hills early doors not allowing my legs much time to settle. The advantage is that it doesn’t start until 11am – giving me plenty of time to prepare in the morning. I have no real idea how long idea on how long it will take me but I am setting a target of 8 hours. Not sure how my legs will feel during it – they could completely die and I could end up walking and having a race for time on the 13 hour cut off!
I’ll write a report early next week on the outcome of the race. Wish me luck!
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