My training finally shifted away from largely easy, aerobic base training to more intense race-like training recently. I broke my foot, was in plaster for 6 weeks and had to go back to aerobic training to rebuild my endurance and general fitness. This is my first year of triathlon racing (I’ve completed 2 triathlons in the past – in 1996 and 2003 I think) and my second year back into an endurance sport so I have a lot of basic training to get through to develop my fitness and skills for each sport.
My mileage and hourage (no, I don’t think that’s a word) has dropped but my sufferage and knackerage (them neither) have gone up. Woah, high intensity stuff is tough! From run training last year I know that anaerobic intervals on the track can have a profound effect on my running, but also that they wipe me out & I can’t do them often. So, joy of joys, with triathlon I get to do intervals 3 times a week, once for each sport, plus tempo pace stuff.
Each session is met with a little trepidation, rather like a 2 hour run. Once started, I hammer it. Being able to hammer it to the end is something else though, and something that has noticeably improved over the last 6 weeks. Speed, lap times, time spent at high heart rates and at high speeds have also measurably improved. Running 800s at 5min/mi pace really helps with technique and efficiency. Steady runs after these feel different, more on the balls of your feet and more forward. Not that I’m getting much steady running in at the moment.
This week I’m barely running 35km but that’s a session of 800s, a hilly run and a 30min run at 10k pace straight off a 20km tempo bike. No wonder I feel so tired. The fatigue from these workouts is quite different from the fatigue of high volume training.
I seem to be prepared for it though. Everything’s holding up under the strain and I have an easy week next week to recover and test some elements of my fitness. Hopefully this will kick my race results up a notch for Bala, Dale and the Cardiff half marathon.
