Father Christmas was (as always) good to me with plenty of Tri related goodies. Once again I need to thank Mom and Dad for their rediculous offer to pay our flights out to IM Florida. One day I'll get them out there with me, actually that's a lie, getting my Mother on a plane would make the A-Team getting Mr T on a plane seem a walk in the park. Shell also excelled herself by spending far too much on Tri related goodies, 2XU should give her an account.
So it's time now for a year review. I'm not going to talk races because there was only one real target and we all know I screwed that up. There were a few low key wins, some pb's and some decent podium places. I've got a little Excel file that compares my training over the last 4 years and so it's only fair I compare with my last IM season in 2005 at the 2 years inbetween were a lot more low key.
Swim - The swim is neither here nor there really. I'm fast enough to be good without ever tearing the pool up but the ammout of training I'd need to do to get significantly faster is far more than I can justify. On average I train once a week, occasionally I'll miss a week but these hours will be made up by race day swims. I did 55hrs overall which is about average and the fact that I know I can swim a comfortable sub 60min IM swim (55mins in Florida this year) while just ticking over is a great bonus that many people don't have.
Bike - Here I struggled. It's my weakest event and somewhat consequently my least favourite. Also this years Summer was damn awful which put me off a great many of my planned bike rides. That being said I was suprised to see that I was a massive 40hrs (20%) down on my 2005 total, only putting in 167hrs compared to 208hrs in 2005. This may go some way to explaining why my Florida bike ride was the slowest of my 3 attempts despite a pretty new Tri specific bike and aero helmet which in theory should have seem me closing in on the 5hr barrier rather than 5h20m (5h08m was my previous best there).
Run - Just as much a suprise as the bike time was the run training time which was the exact opposite at 173hrs compared to 138hrs in 2005. This means that I actually spent longer running than cycling which is an obvious screw up but easily done when it's so much easier to pull on a pair of trainers than to mess about getting bike ready (especially in the rain). Although this gave me a high when I effectively jogged around Wolves Marathon in 3h08m it all comes to nothing if I still end up putting in 4h33m at my main event. For 2009 the bike/run comparison needs to be much closer to the 2005 percentage split.
Gym - This was the difference maker in my yearly hours as I've never done gym work before. I crammed 33hrs into the first 3.5months of last year which was 33hrs more than 2005, or any other year come to think of it. The result?........ Hmmmmm. Well I was swimming my head off in March/April, no quicker, but with so much more power and stamina that I was bustig 800m+ pb's any time I wanted. Was I any quicker on the bike/run? I've no idea, although I've had far less back problems that previous years, that could be down to the gym core work or it could be down to my lack of cycling I'm not sure. I'm pondering the idea of making once a week appearances again this year, but the accusations that I've suddenly developed 'moobs' in the last 12 months could also be attributed to my slacking off gym work once the weather (sort of) improved, so maybe I'd be best to stay away.
Onto 2009 then.
Today I started the year in a similar way to the end of 2008, with a 12mile run! This morning I ran to Woolacombe Beach (8.5miles) where I met up with my Tri Club for our annual Dash and Splash. You can read about it here
so I won't bore you with the details.
I really need to sit down at some point and work out what events I'm doing this year. I'm a bit of an old skool Triathlete and still believe I can enter races on the day or the week before, this simply doesn't happen any more and if I don't pul my finger out then all the small local races that I like to do every year will be full. Damn!!
Anyway, that'll do for now. If you haven't fallen asleep yet then you can't be far off it.
Happy New Year everyone. Here's hoping you all have a great 2009 and if we ever meet at an event then I'll love to see you finish just one place behind me :-)
Until next time.
1 comment:
Your year's totals put me to shame. Our first baby arrived this year, so that and the fact my wife hates me training and racing meant I didn't get in the training I wanted. Did do 1st Oly and 1st half, but had to promise not to do any of my "stupid races" this year. If I win a lottery slot to Kona I think our marriage would end! Oh well, can always get another woman...
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