Speedwork

It's been a while since I've updated on my training progress.

I recovered well after Hell of The West and was able to get back into training hard fairly quickly. And just as well, as this week we had quite a few hard sessions.

On Tuesday's track session, we did a 30 minute set of 600m at 70%, 400m at 80% and 200m at 90% with 10-30 seconds rest in between, just rolling through the set until the 30 minutes are up. Then we finished with a 1km best effort, which is more like 90% for me. As being an endurance athlete I find it difficult to do all out sprints for the short distance. Managed to lower my time to 3:38. I've only gone quicker once at 3:33, but I also suspect that the track is a few metres longer than my Garmin.

Thursday's swim set, we did some 50m sprints. My quickest that night was 36.4 seconds. About a third slower than what I used to be able to swim in my teenage years.

Friday was the first time I joined the Computrainer session. It was fun seeing your name on the screen and how you ranked against those around you. But it did hurt, we had to do some two minute all out sprints after doing 15 minutes at 70% and 10 minutes at 80%.

These speedwork hurt but I'm seeing the benefits already. I felt really strong for this week's long run. An average pace of 4:32/km for the 24km - four loops of the 5.2km loop around the hilly neighbourhood. Getting comfortable at this distance which means I'll be adding another 2kms for the next long run. Adapt and then progress.

I haven't been cycling with the group for the Saturday long rides for a while. Just a change in schedule and have been cycling on Sundays instead. Rode with a fellow Red Dog member last Sunday and we headed south to a small town called Yamanto. Nice roads with rolling hills and wide shoulders. Today I rode on my own to Redcliffe and struggled a bit with the headwinds. I've done two 140km rides and aiming to increase to 150km next week.

Li-Ann is away until Friday. She's back in Malaysia for Chinese New Year. While this gives me no excuse to attend all the training sessions, as cliche as it sounds, having her around does give me strength when the going gets tough.