Training summary w/c 7th January

I realised that all my Facebook posts are about my training posts. I love sharing my ups and downs but I bet it gets annoying after a while.

So instead of sharing daily , I’ll write a post about how my week of training went on Mondays. Monday’s are my rest days so will have plenty of time write it up.

But if you want to see my daily posts then go and follow me on Instagram , I’ll keep sharing my posts there daily 🙂 www.instagram.com/gabiruns

7- 13. January 2019

This was my Week 11 of Tokyo marathon training and Week 4 of Ironman training.

I think I’m getting better with incorporating the 2 training plans and also figure out how and when to do the exercises so I won’t get as tired.

Monday

Rest day. Best day of the week. According to my plan I could do some strength training or some yoga. But at the moment I just feel like doing nothing. Recovery is important.

Tuesday

I went to swim after work. Because I star work at 6am I never will be able to make the morning tri club swim sessions. So I’ve gone swimming after work. The plan said “1hr swim” so I decided to do an endurance one. I know well that I need to practice and improve a lot so I keep pushing myself.

So at the end I’ve done 4x 500m with 30 secs rest between sets just under 50mins.

In the evening I went to the first tri run session of the year. I can’t believe the last one was 3 weeks ago. Tonight’s session was a run-strength training one. Few laps around the track and different kind of strength exercises with a resistance band ( planks and leg raises mainly ). Ohh geez how unfit am I ? My core was sore like 3 says after this session. But it means I do have abs , just under a layer of fat haha.

Wednesday

Wednesday = Brick session. I need to practice this a lot. My legs still feel like jellies after the cycling but my runs seems to be much faster.

Can’t really explain how but after a few mins running I am able to keep up a great running pace and my legs don’t feel tired.

I’m still only doing 30 mins cycling and 30 mins running but this is only week 4. Plenty of time to build up.

Thursday

Swim session number 2 of the week. Pool was a bit busier than normal but I manage to get my swim done. It wasn’t the planned 2000metre but I’m happy with the shorter distance.

Later on the evening I’ve manage to do my 5mile run according to my marathon training plan. It was a bit chilly when I started but nothing majorly cold. It feels like I’m getting better with my runs. Remember when I started the Chicago – Berlin training in last May I averaged a 9:03mins/km. By the time it was October I ran the race with a 8:30mins/km.

Friday

Another cycling session. Still only 30mins but I really don’t mind that. It feels like that cycling is my weakest part so need to keep pushing it. Still only indoors on the turbo , it’s way too cold to go outside and I’m worried about the slippery roads.

Saturday

I can’t even tell how much I love Saturday. Saturday means long run day. I love getting my long runs in. I’m not fast but I always getting them done. I have so much time to think about myself , my training and some totally random thoughts. Mainly keep asking myself ” Why am I doing this ? ” , and ” Why not just staying in the comfy bed ? ?”.

Today I only had to do 12 miles. Who the hell ever says ” only”.

I was supposed to leave the house around 6am but decided to have a lay in. Sleep is important.

Not too sure what happened or if it’s relating to my swimming and cycling but I didn’t feel tired at all. Ran my fastest 12 mile ever and also got a new 10k PB.

I have a feeling that I’ll need to rethink my Tokyo marathon plans. I smashed my 2 long runs in the row so maybe I’ll be faster than I’m planning to be in Tokyo. I keep getting my training done and hopefully Tokyo will be another PB course.

Sunday

Long ride Sunday. I’m still on the turbo because I feel so cold outside. Also still haven’t made my mind up about Zwift. Does it worth it ? Does it motivate you to go faster ? Virtually chasing others ?

I’ve spend the last 4 weeks of cycling watching The Greatest Showman back to back. I’m still loving it.

The plan was to cycle an hour , slowly building up my distance and keeping a constant pace.

Sunday evenings are about the tri club swims. On Sunday’s we do Technique sessions.

Tonight we concentrated mainly on how to sight out of the water. Well it’s harder than I thought. But with practise it won’t be that bad. You really don’t want to get lost when you swimming in a lake.

Our main set was the below :

2 laps of full speed swim

5 laps of CSS pace swim

Repeat 4 times

My CSS is supposed to be 2:30mins/100m but I did swim faster tonight. Maybe because we only had to repeat it 4 times and I didn’t feel too tired or because all this work makes me a bit faster. Who knows ? According to Garmin the 4 sets turned out to be : 2:22 , 2:14 , 2:20 , 2:21. So not a massive difference from the 2:30.

Sleep

It’s really important to get enough sleep in otherwise the body won’t recover. For me it’s really hard to get the recommended 8 hours in. Specially because I have to wake up at 4.20am Monday to Friday just to go to work. Then I have a late afternoon/evening training session and sometimes won’t get to bed till 10-11pm. Definitely not enough sleep.

But over the weekend I try to rest as much as I can.

As you can see from the charts below :

Summary

I know I have a massive disadvantage , I never trained this much before , I don’t have years of experience. But I know I can run the marathon, I know my swimming is not that bad and will be able to do the swim part but I’m way too worried about the bike cut offs. So need to push myself hard with that. That’s the main reason I decided to go with the Intermediate plan not with the Just finish.

This week’s statistic :

Duration : 8hrs 36mins

Swim: 5005m

Bike: 61.7km

Run: 31.3km

My training load will slowly increase to 15+ hrs /week by the time I get to the Peak phase of the plan , which will be the last 10 weeks of the plan.

Love ,