10 Weeks to go! Entering Squeaky Bum Time?

Well the training schedule says I am into the "Peak" period of my training, less than 10 weeks to go now, and I guess this is when it all starts to get "Real".

Training is going well. I am now swimming 4k on a weekly basis, which has boosted my confidence to be able to get out the water and onto the bike in a decent state. Looking forward to getting back into some open water swimming to see what my time will be like, rests and turning in the pool don't really give a good reflection of times, but I am hoping for a swim around 1 hour 5 minutes now, based on training times. This time may change again!

Open water swimming is due to begin this coming weekend, although after recent weather I may leave it another week before i venture out.

Weekend long bikes and runs have been going well... The Saturday just gone I did 150km on the bike followed straight away by a 10km run. i expected the run to be torture, but after the first kilometre when my legs were used to it I felt great and was keeping a good pace.

This has boosted my confidence massively, and if I can slow my run down a bit I'm sure that energy will keep my going for the full marathon.

The running has been going quite well too, I am regularly running over 2 hours now, which is around 28-29km. not sure how much further I will go in training, My longest run before the half marathon was 30km about a month ago in 2 hours 10 minutes. i think 32km might be my longest run in training, this would then leave me 10km on the day to complete... hopefully mental strength will get me though this.

So... as the title says we are into "Squeaky Bum Time" to steal Alex Ferguson's end of season analogy... the nerves haven't started to kick in yet. To be honest, I don't really get nervous until the night before races, I imagine I wont be sleeping much that night.

I am occasionally getting a pang on nerves if i look at the race booklet or read about it somewhere, but overall, I'm excited and feeling strangely confident we will see how long that lasts.

So in the last 10 weeks, I will be...

• Taking taking the long bike up to 6 hours
• Reccing the course, once hopefully twice
• Open water swimming again
• Running up to 32km.

Still lots to do, but also a third of the training plan still left! Time to get my head down and force myself out when I don't have the motivation!

Sponsorship Update

I also need to get my sponsorship moving.. currently have £312 about 40% of my £800 target so need to start tracking down some friends to get them to sponsor me.

if you want to sponsor me, please use the link in the top right of the page!

Thanks!

First Race, Revised Goal Time and March Totals

I will start with the end of the week first. To break the training up a bit I thought it would be good to get a race of some description in. So I signed up for Ironbridge half marathon which was on Sunday.

Ironbridge Half Marathon

Was hoping for around a 1:35 time, I have been regularly doing 1:32 on a flat course and as I had heard the course was quite hill so I thought this would be a good target time.

The weather was great and it looked like about 600 runners were taking part so a good sized race. I started about half way back due to the numbers starting and slowing worked my way through the field, over taking  the optimistic people starting at the front. The first half of the course was mainly flat and down hill, which gave me a bit of a false sense of security, thinking I was running fast.

We had been warned about a hill at around 8 miles. The warning was needed, it was horrible, steep and long but I managed to run it all, even if the last few metres were very slow! This drained me for the last few miles that were up and down all the way, each little hill draining my legs more and more.

But I finished strong, with a time of exactly 1 hour 30 minutes, finishing 31st overall. which I am very happy with considering I had a full week of training. would be interesting if I could do a 1:25 on a flatter course with a taper before.

Overall a very good race, good organisation and great support over the Ironbridge as well.


Revising Goal Time?

The above race report kind of points to this problem... creating a conservative goal for myself, am pushing myself hard enough? If I don't manage to make a harder goal, will I be disappointed?

I have provisionally set myself a goal of 12 hours for the Ironman, but it's such a long event and so many thing could go wrong or right, I have no idea how to goal set for it properly. Also, these goals were set based on complete guess work, considering I have never cycled 112 miles before, and have only run a marathon distance once.

In training I have cycled 135km, which predicts a time of around 5hours 50 minutes for the bike, and my marathon time based on a 18.5 mile run would be around 3 hours 10 minutes.
Obviously these times can't be taken as fact due to different routes raced and the marathon time will be completely different to a stand alone marathon.

So maybe my goal should be closer to 11 hours? I think for now I wont worry about it too much, and once the even longer distance training is on the go, I will set a firmer race day goal.


March Total Times and Distances

As we have come to the end of March, I have added my total times for the month. good progression again from last month, most of the extra hours seem to be added to the bike. I'm sure the run and swims will increase as it gets warmer too.

January

Swim           10 hours 18 minutes          29.3km
Bike             22 hours 58 minutes        692.3km
Run             12 hours 4 minutes          162.4km

Total           45 hours 20 minutes        884.0km
Daily Avg      1 hour 27 minutes            28.5km

February

Swim        8 hours 27 minutes            24.1km
Bike        25 hours 01 minutes          748.2km
Run        10 hours 33 minutes          144.7km

Total       44 hours 01 minutes         917.0km
Daily Avg.   1 hour 31 minutes          31.6km

March

Swim      10 hours 05 minutes              29.7km
Bike        33 hours 54 minutes          1017.1km
Run        13 hours 03 minutes            180.9km

Total       57 hours 02 minutes         1227.7km
Daily Avg.   1 hour 51 minutes          39.6km

Sponsorship update

Finally, a quick update regarding sponsorship... i am almost half way to my £800 target, so it's all going well. Really need to start pestering a few people I think!.... so watch out if you haven't been pestered.

As usual, the link is still up at the top right for you to sponsor me.

Thanks for reading!