10 week update!

Well I have come to the end of my 10 week base period training block, so I thought I'd send you all a little update! The 10 weeks have flown by, and so far I have clocked up 950k cycling, 312k commuting, 190k running, and 42k in the pool, clocked up 80 and a half hours of training is 93 sessions, and burnt 40,000 calories (not including the calories I've burnt in the pool!), and that doesn't include the hours I've spent in physio and rehab, doing knee exercises!

Training is going really well, in all 3 sports! Swimming and cycling are their usual solid selves and plodding along nicely, with distance and times steadily increasing towards the ridiculous, except of course my ride this saturday. A bad ride was always going to happen at some point, and I'm sure there will be a few more but in hindsight, I should have prepared better, dieting and riding long don't go well together! Basically I bonked (ran out of energy/hit the wall/etc) big time! It was ridiculously windy, and as a result the first 45 minutes I was flying along to the pennines, averaging 35-40kph, and then hit the climbs. I did about an hours solid climbing, which when dieting isn't clever, but doing 14% gradients into strong winds is always going to hurt. The climbs got harder and harder, and then finally it was time to head back, except it was all into the wind and I didn't have any energy left. I was working as hard as I could, only managing 25kph, just completely drained. I arrived home dead, completely drained and the thought of having to run a marathon after double what I did, made what I've undertaken hit me! I have a lot of work to do! But I'm glad it happened, I know my limits a bit better, know how to spot the signs and it was probably a good workout!

I'm sure most of you know the fun I've had with my knees, which when training for a marathon isn't exactly helpful! But (fingers crossed/touch wood) they seem to be getting stronger. I am running 4 times a week, up to an hour, and times and distances are steadily increasing. I am only about 5 weeks behind where I would have been without any problems so am very happy! I have been hit by illness once, though this was through lack of sleep, which with current sleeping of 8 hours a night plus naps most days shouldn't happen again!

I am now moving into the build phase of my training plan, another 10 week block. This adds an extra swim a week, and all my swims increase to 3k a session. I have an extra bike a week and another run, which happens after my long ride at the weekend to get used to running with nothing in the legs having cycled 100-180k, which as any triathlete will tell you is an interesting experience! This takes my weekly sessions to lucky 13 including weights, and will have me doing 2-4 sessions a day, 6 days a week! But it's great fun and I love it!

Thank you so much to all those who have donated so far and keep them coming in! It is for a great cause, and really helps me keep going when the training gets tough! I'm hoping to have raised £1000 by the time my Ironman comes around, and so far have had nearly £400 pledged/donated. So if you haven't already go to http://www.justgiving.com/timdoesironman and give what you can! And remember to gift aid!

Also if you're avoiding doing any work, keep popping back to my twitter page http://twitter.com/agent_ti to keep up with my training, and my blog at http://timdoesironman.blogspot.com/ for weekly summaries!

Happy Training!

Tim