Best foot forward

Gosh... can you believe it, we're already 11 days into 2015, time sure flies!

I've been back in Brisbane for about a week and a half and getting back into the routine. At the office, most people are back to work too. On the training front, I had a slow start for the first weekend of the year. Cut short my long run by almost half, legs somehow didn't feel that great. And the next day, we went to the market first so when I started my long ride it was almost 9am - it was hot and traffic was pretty heavy, felt totally toast by the end of the 100+km ride that I decided to skip my brick run.

But this week, the Red Dog tri club sessions are back after a two week break. It's amazing how different it is to train with a group. I felt a lot more motivated. The first swim session felt a bit odd, as I was out of the water for about a week and a half. But the next couple of sessions in the pool were great, in fact I felt refreshed and something I decided (or rather got coerced by Coach Trent) to try out was to do tumble turns. This used to be second nature during my teenage swimming days but somehow once I started triathlon, I got a bit lazy. I'm slowly getting the hang of it again, it does make my turns faster but I tire out faster too. Just have to keep on doing it so that it will feel effortless.

Getting a bit better with riding in a group too. But I still get really nervous when I'm descending on a bend in fast speeds and tend to make sudden brakes. We did a nice ride to Cleveland on Saturday in a controlled pace. About 90kms including my ride from home and I did another 30km at UQ campus just to add time on the saddle. Had an embarrassing sideward tumble at the lights with my shoes clipped in. Luckily, I was no longer cycling with the group then. There were two kids in front on bikes and they didn't move although the lights were green. I had to slam the brakes and couldn't unclip in time, what a rookie error! Small graze on the knee and the bike was okay, that's most important! Did a 6km run after, my first brick run in a long, long while. Struggled a bit but it can only get better from here.

The first track session of the year went well too. We did 1km repeats in various effort levels - 70%, 80% and 90%. These sets are important to teach the body to pace itself well. My 90% was 3:41, which was not too shabby, if I say so myself. On Sunday, I ran 20km after not having ran that distance for a while. It was pretty tough mentally and there were a few instances when I wanted to call it quits, especially when I was running laps around the neighbourhood block. But I'm glad I pulled through and can move forward from here. My first race for the year, Hell of the West triathlon is in 3 weeks' time and I'd like to make a good impression for my first race here, first race under the Red Dog banner.

Looking back on my Dailymile training report for 2014, I have to say, I'm pretty proud with some decent miles put in. It's just a pity I wasn't able to cap off the year with a strong Ironman finish. Anyway, we move on. I don't think I'll be able to put in that many miles in 2015. In Canada, although we had some long months of winter, we were pretty lucky to have long days in summer. I was able to ride for over 3 hours after work, something I would not be able to do here. Even though the sun rises early here, I'll only be able to ride at most, for 2 hours before work. But as we all know, it isn't always about the miles. Some of the sessions here are at higher intensity and I'm hoping this will translate to some strong racing for this season.

For the first full week of 2015, I'm pretty happy with a decent 14 hour training week. Putting my best foot forward and looking forward to some great training and racing to come! Watch this space!