Well I 'nearly' cracked the 50hr barrier this month and but for a bit of bad luck and my laziness the milestone would have been and gone. As it happens though I fell a bit short totalling 48h30m (5h swim, 26h bike, 17.5h run). I've also managed to hit double figues for 2 weeks on the bounce totals which could have been so much higher if I hadn't had a massive 9 lazy/rest days.
The bad luck/lazy bug hit today on the final doy of the month. Needing 2h05m to reach the magical 50 hr month I had a local 32mile TT lined up. That and a bit of a warm up/down would have given me 1h45m which was to be followed by a 20-25min run to make a solid brick session. Easy!!!!
At least it would have been easy if I hadn't got 12miles into the ride and felt an odd shudder. I looked down at my back wheel but it seemed fine so I carried on. A left turn followed and I took it real easy to be sure, all seemed fine until I stood up to work out of the corner and things went wobbly again. I stopped to check and could hear the air slowly escaping from my tyre. Race over!!! 95% of my rides I take spares, today I forgot and get my first ever puncture in my ZIPPs after 4 years. Ah well.
I managed to grab a lift back to my car with a marshall (thanks Phil) but by the time I was back there it was raining and I was cold. Once home I removed the thorn from my tyre and fixed the flat, I suspect new tyres will be another pre-Ironman purchase as they've seen their best days. Since then though the normal rainy weather (sun's shining as I write this) and my laziness took over and that was it for the day. A waste of a Sunday really.
This week I guess I'll stick to mostly short sharp stuff until the weekend where I've got an 80mile IM pace bike ride lined up for Saturday and Wolverhampton (IM paced) Marathon on Sunday.
The bike ride will hopefully be ridden at 120-125bpm, it's fairly flat until the last 10miles when there's more climbing than I'd like but it'll be a good chance to practice getting aero on the new bike for long periods, it'll be interesting to see how my back copes.
The aim for the Marathon is to hold 140-145bpm and take a gel every 20mins. I guess performance will greatly depend on how good/bad my legs feel after the bike ride and also how much hard stuff I do during the week. Hopefully though I'll be pushing for a sub 3:30 finish. All of my long training runs have been sub 8min/mile pace no matter how tired I've felt, my last Marathon was a total disaster though so I won't be underestimating the distance this time.
Well, that's if for August. September is upon us and it's the final 2 month run up. Now I guess is the time where I suck up and train if I've any chance at all of nailing this damn race once and for all. Will I manage to stave off my lazy genes for the next 6 weeks in order to put in a perfomance deserving of the race or will my lack of testosterone/ego/drive come back to haunt me? Soon it'll all be revealed.
PS - Chrissie kicked ass again today at Almere, that's 6 Long Distance wins out of 6. Has anybody else got a Hope in Hell on October 11th at Hawaii?
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