Swim, Bike, Done

I "raced" the Little Woody this weekend. A great race which I enjoyed, not least as it stayed dry and warmish. However the third discipline still remains elusive.

The Good:
Finished the bike with no injury worries and some cracking numbers on the PM. 271w average with a massive negative split and the last half hour at 291w avg. Felt pretty fresh too but that's always easy to say. Came in 5th I think but no results yet.

The Bad:
I wanted to run, oh how I wanted to run!

The Ugly:
On physios orders I tried a 30 minutes run this morning, as regular as clockwork my knee seized up about 25 minutes in. I have now not completed a run longer than half an hour in 3 weeks. This is beginning to get desperate!

Tri-Topia photos

Cycling over the river in Angles. You can just see the castle in the background.

Coffee in Angles

All that bilateral breathing finally pays off as I can see the Abbey in both directions.

Enjoying some quality food, seconds soon arrived.

Tri-Topia

Just a quick update from France. I drove from London yesterday and about 10 hours later arrived at Tri-Topia situated about 200 miles south of Paris near Poitieres. It is amazing. The weather is 30c+ and the setting is amazing, in the middle of rolling country side, near various lakes and rivers for swimming and the farm house itself has it's very own farm. Looking forward to eating bacon sandwhiches which couldn't be any more local, about 20 feet away from the kitchen.

Looking at the photos of what the place was like 2 years ago Lee and Sam have completed their very own triathlon Grand Design and the addition of the endless pool only makes things better. I'll be writing up the whole weeks experience in more detail soon but now that the knee is finally sorted I cannot think of a place I would rather be than here!

This is getting wierd....

He's managed to do it again.

Maybe I'll stick this one on top of the previous article as right now I know which one is most important. Time to stretch and then work on my deficient swim stroke. Be thankful for what you do have rather than lamenting what you don't.

http://chuckiev.blogspot.com/2009/08/injuries-dont-just-happen.html

Vital

Gonna print these off and stick them on my wall:

http://chuckiev.blogspot.com/2009/08/young-pro-triathletes-guide-to-survival.html

Number 1 - it ain't a job 'till I'm earning money, it's just a really tough, full time hobby.

Kona - 61: Food and the injured athlete

One week of training down. The knee still ain't perfect and running mileage has been severely restricted but nearly 500k on the bike and nearly 20k in the water means I'm starting to lose some of that weight and I'm currently feeling a satisfying level of fatigue. With a day of tomorrow I'm hoping to recoup with some ice and anti-inflammatory I'll be able to push the run up to 90 mins and be able to break 100miles on the bike and crack 15 hours during the week.

I mentioned in my last post I'd managed to gain 5kg in the space of 10 days and I've always had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with food. Some of you know (some may not) that I wasn't always in possession of the svelte physique I currently own and used to be a little softer around the edges. My Mum always said that I was born skinny and then started eating, and then never stopped (a fact backed up by the doubling of her weekly food bill when I was back home!). I love food and being an athlete this isn't really a problem. When I'm training I feel that I am the model of professionalism with my nutrition. My diet is low in gluten and all processed foods. I avoid bad food and refined products and aim for 10+ servings of fruit and veg a day. I also take a rough calorie count to ensure I'm not under/over eating. I also LOVE cooking and generally aim to make all my own meals so I know exactly what goes in them.

The problem is all it takes is a break in routine, like an injury, and I fall off the band wagon and I return to the 17 year old who ate because it made him feel good for a short period of time. This was then followed by guilt and inevitably more eating. At 17 this usually ended up with me raiding the cooking chocolate draw and eating it's content, sadly it wasn't much further from the truth when I was back home last week.

It's something I don't really understand about myself as I have the discipline to train and eat well but if I want to get anywhere in this sport I have to be able to deal with setbacks. Previously, when triathlon was a hobby, it wasn't as much of a problem but working on my mental game is something I will be aiming to do over the next few months as I feel it is as important as being physically prepared.

Bit of a "stream of consciousness" blog I'm afraid, haven't written one like this for a while and a random collection of thoughts from the last week nailed together. Apologies if it reads badly...!

Back to base(ics)

The knee is sorted (fingers crossed) so now it's all about the numbers:

Days until Kona - 67
Days where I can make myself faster - c. 53
Kilos I need to lose - 5kg (food and the injured triathlete are a topic I'll post on later this week).

I'm gonna be keeping it as simple as possible, lots of miles and just as much recovery to make sure I'm in the best shape of my life for Kona.

Happy training all and congrats too all the Hillingdon athletes who raced at London this weekend.