Daz Does Tri

Race week is done. Lines are in the sand, lessons learned and every other sports related chit chattery in the book. From now on, no time for nonsense it's either happening or it's not. Race wise I have nothing in the way. In 5 weeks it'll all be done but 5 weeks is a huge amount of time to move forward. This block is going to be 2 weeks build up, then a week backing off into a race, a final build week adding some heavier work and then again a taper into race week. Last week taper recap Running was all either shakeouts or races. Probably 30 miles in total. No S&C sessions. Taper wise I felt I nailed the training load for the 2 races arnd arrived in best shape run wise to get the best performances in. Health wise, 100% I wasn't right. Lots of shit going around and I have felt like I have had something in my system that's slowed me down. Not real bad but enough to take the edge off. Social wise it was a nightmare. Out Thursday night until late and out Saturday unti...

Training recap... Basically Eddington is strong, Track Thursday is OK and Track Saturday is tired. Rinse and repeat !! I know I am in much better shape than last year but I'm struggling to replicate that training into races. I know I need to relax, keep going as I am and it'll happen. So standard pre-race faffing about. 10 mins easy shakeout and felt good. John picked me up and we headed to Lee Valley. Arrived well early. Couple of trail laps easy. Sat around and then hit the warm up proper. 2 trail laps at tempo - time to bring back the tempo warm ups! Was in race 2 of the open tonight. Threw me a bit as I thought that was too fast for me. Felt OK on the warm up BUT my guts were not good. I was shitting the last of my lunch out with less than 10 minutes to kick off - not idea. I wasn't 100% I'd be out of the toilet at one stage. Lined up, 11 people in my race. Bang, and we are off. Made the decision pre-race to head straight to the back so as not to start too fast. Mis...

I think I can officially say winter training is over for me. Time to focus on indoors and specifically 3000m at the European Masters Champs in March. It's a huge relief that I seem to have come out of the dip that I found myself in and have a solid week banked where everything was where it needed to be. There are 7 full weeks and 5 days until race day. I'd say right now I'm in or around 9.30 shape. Long way to go but a decent place to start. I ran 9.29 last Feb feeling good and I think I can move on from that with a solid block of training. Confidence is key for me. I need to start thinking about myself and how I want to feel through this training block. I want to enjoy running and I want to be excited by racing. I want to feel that at my age every opportunity to run fast is a gift. I love the fact that I can race at a high level and every time I step out on the track it may be the last time I ever get to improve. This version of me is someone that works hard and enjoys eve...

Finally feel like I am back on track to progress. Amazing how a few sessions in the bag can bring the confidence back up. Last blog post was basically working through the slump so now it should all hopefully be sunshine and roses !! Thursday 18th Weight back up to 10 st 5. Cold, absolutely freezing bloody cold at the minute. Track was closed last minute so after arriving we all drove to west site.  Session moved around, was so cold and no warm base so basically 2 mile warm up. Minimum stretching and then into main set. 3 x 1km @ 5k [off 90] 6 x short hills [walk back] 3km tempo Km loop was three hard turns and a hill with lots of stuff to move around and avoid so paces slightly slower than Eddy where you can just run smooth and uninterrupted.  Got confused first rep and ran slightly slower (felt awful warming up into it too) but paces (no Garmin) were around 3.20 - 3.25 first set. Hills ran relaxed hard. Working on this kind of feel for fast efforts which should help more than...

I knew it would happen. You always hope it doesn't and worst case you plateau but sometimes you hit a slump in form. I've had this loads of times in the past and the reality is that I always end up compounding everything. In the spirit of the new me (circa 2022) I am going to do the opposite. Analyse why and plan to move forward. Am I actually in a slump? The Parkrun at Lydiard went pretty shocking tbf. That was on 16th December and came off the back of a good set of training. I had tight calfs and I felt pretty low. I had the Sunday off. The next week was the run into Christmas and was pretty average. I ran easy Monday then rested Tues and Weds before an average session on Thursday. Had a solid session on the Saturday then slr Sunday. So far, I can see some interruption and in fairness that's 2 weeks where I've run well after recovering. I remember looking forward to getting back to routine and feeling that Dec had been stop-start. The following week was bigger at 55 m...

Right, this is it now. Silly season. Everything gets turned on it's head. Booze, food, nights out, colds and flu, family time, doing shit. It's all happening so between now and the day after Boxing Day it's a simple matter of just doing what you can! I have a basic outline - I'd like to get 50 odd miles per week and 2 sessions plus a Parkrun in the 2 week period but again, it will be what it will be. Right now I feel like I am approaching good shape but I'll be more than happy not to give too much back to the clock !!  Last week I really messed up timing and made things excessively hard for myself. This week a little more intelligence required. Monday - am) Gym. Decent session. Focus on the main movements and added in some Iso stuff at the end of each section. Paid off handsomely with some DOMS on Tuesday. I'll struggle to get more than 1 x per week so focus on some good work here. pm) BJJ. Enjoying this. Not 100% on benefit but it's some x-training and it...

It's that time of year where running becomes a bit of a blur and merges into a heavy Christmas filled booze / food / film / cheese state. No real race plans now. Bunty 10 on 30th is likely and I'll probably hammer a Parkrun on the 23rd as I'll have aged a year. The plan is to get through the Crimbo minefield with some decent base training banked and not ill or injured. Battersea Debrief So the dust has settled. 16.33 is a bit outside where I wanted to be however it was probably the worst I could have raced so that said it's not actually horrible. My legs just didn't have any zip in them, lack of race conditioning was crucial. I'd say that better pacing would have gotten a low 16.20 range so it's not a million miles off. Better conditions would have helped and all of a sudden now we are talking. Nothing critical to fix I just need to keep doing what I am doing. It's all positive in the big scheme of things. No need to panic, just some patience required. I...