Mini-triathlon, sort of.

A busy day of training today. I didn’t fit in yesterday’s functional exercises, so I had to play catch up today.

Run. Warm up, then 10 mins of 10K pace, then jog back. It’s difficult to maintain a decent pace in the dark, on pavements with black ice, when the temperature is about 1 degree. But if I can run at 4 min/km pace in these conditions, I should manage it in the balmy summer sun on Dundee in May….

Then the strength functionals from yesterday. Single leg squats, hamstring raises with an ankle weight, lunges, then some ankle eversion and inversion exercises with the resistance band at the end.

Then back on the bike. The rear wheel is true again, and having cleaned it up after the race, it’s running nicely. The front mech cable has stretched significantly, so I need to tighten that up later on, but it still works. Just about. 20 mins warm up, then 12x 15 secs flat out with 1 min rest. The pleasing thing here is not the power, or the speed (although hitting 34 mph on the last sprint isn’t hanging about), it’s the HR of 140 for the warm up, and being able to bring it back to 140 after the sprints. The mad HR of 180 on the bike of a few months ago….

Erg.

45 mins. 10,527m today.

I had intended on going to the pool for a longish swim. I had to stay late at work, though. So, once I got home, quick erg. I feel stronger on the erg recently – it’s still hard, of course, but last year I was struggling to do more than 20 mins, albeit at 2:03 ish, and now I’m finishing off 45 mins at 2:08, and, time permitting, I could have carried on….

Only 4 days until the Derwent swim. Going to Carlisle on Friday afternoon, then on to Derwent on Saturday. Quick swim, then hopefully I’ll get to do the triathlon cycle route afterwards. With Mother……

Two days away in the Lakes to swim, cycle, run, eat, and be merry. Sounds great.

In other news – the Inov8 shoes I ordered are out of stock (QA process failure or something) so I’ve asked if they’ll send me some Road-X 233 shoes instead. Minimalist road shoes. Then if I like them, I can get some 285s for trails….

Rain, rain go away

Woke up to miserable rainy day. The plan had been to cycle to Tensmuir, and back before speaking at a conference in town in the afternoon. But the miserable day put me off. Not because I don’t like getting wet, but I don’t like falling off and missing a paid gig…

So I did a 10K erg instead. Actually, a 45 min erg – 10456 metres, an average split of 2:09.1. I really need more aerobic fitness, so this is perfect, really. I figure I should try some more erging. On top of the three disciplines, and the weights…..

A cycle tomorrow, after work, hopefully.

Dumb 1B

Week 1 Dumb Bell session B. This one was tougher than session A, although perhaps that’s because I’ve walked around with sore pecs since Sunday….

Woodchop 2 x 12
Dumb Bell Press-ups 2 x 12 (Still useless, still have long arms)
Side Step ups 2 x 12 (Found a better step)
Renegade row 2 x 12 (These are tough)
Side lunge touch 2 x 12
Cuban press 2 x 12 (These are great – primary target is rotator cuff, but they’re great deltoid exercises too)
Dumb bell squat 2 x 12
Side plank with lateral raise 2 x 30 seconds (Tough tough tough)

So, I’ve done two sessions this week. Another erg tomorrow morning, I think, and perhaps a swim in the evening, if my pecs can cope….

Erg.

In my new quest to do *something* every day, a 30 minute erg. I used to knock out an hour at 2:02, ish, when rowing a lot, but today…..

30 minutes, 7156m, average 2:05.8

Great CV workout, so happy with today’s workout.

Couldn’t cycle to work as I had to take a load of stuff in, and tomorrow I have to drive to Arbroath, but Wednesday….

And in other news, I’ve registered for the Derwent sportiv swim. 1500m, algae permitting. Just waiting for P-Dub and J-Edg to register too, and we can have a weekend trip away. I wonder if I can manage the Epic lake swims too….

Dumb-Bell. Who? Me?

Not done a lot of training. Not really enough time, what with the exams at the medical school, the whole child-rearing thing, and trying to get through Portal 2. So, it’s time for another regime to try, one that promised to be quick, simples, easy to do at home… I should really make more of the Erg, but that’s another story.

So, dumb-bell workouts, it says down here.
Week 1 Session A
Internal rotations 2 x 12
External rotations 2 x 12 (Much harder than the internal ones)
Wood-chop lunge 2 x 12
Step-up 2 x 12 (Need a better step than an upturned box)
Press ups 2 x 12 (I am so useless ar press-ups. I’m going with the long levers argument, as usual)
Shoulder Press 2 x 12
Bent Over Row 2 x 12
Dumb-bell roll out 2 x 12

So, let’s see how long I last on this, then. Hmmmm.

Fives

No football last week due to overnighter with p-Dub, so a bit rusty. Scored 6 goals, amazingly. Also got my hand caught in the door whilst trying to tackle Africa East, ran onwards at full pelt with my hand stuck in the door. Big egg shaped swelling on my hand. Not broken, I’m sure. Nice to be back “playing”.

Tennis Downs and Ups

Another tennis lesson with Jenny Tennis today. Total mixed bag. I decided to ask about grips – how to hold the racquet, not what colour the handle should be – and I had it just about completely the wrong way around. So, with that fixed, my ground strokes went completely messed up. Long, short, skied, sclaffed, the whole 9 yards. Terrible. So I shuffled the grip back around to half way back towards what I had before, and things slowly started to come back again. But it was pretty demoralising to go so many steps backwards. But; Kaisen.

So on to serving, which I have been particularly scattershot at. It went really well. I estimate 80% serves in. And I have something which might actually be a second serve. I’ve only been having lessons for 3 weeks, and before that I never really *played*, more just smacked it about a bit. So it’s been a really great steep learning curve, and I’m really enjoying it.

And it’s great fitness training, too. Coach reckons it’s a good complimentary cross training for swimming – certainly it’s similar core strength, co-ordination and shoulder strength. And it’s sweaty.

I was going to go for a swim too, but after the tennis, I was pretty tired, and fancied lunch, to be honest. I have another tennis lesson tomorrow, with the boys, so I think we’ll go for a wee swim afterwards. Outdoor pool. Obviously.

I resisted the temptation to buy the Nike+ GPS watch. The software is great, but and the watch is great, but I think I should go for the £180 cheaper option, of going out for a few runs first. And I can always borrow Emma’s Nike+ kit for her iPod Nano. In fact, I think it would work with my iPod touch…..

Birthday Tennis Lesson, and wee swim

Happy Birthday to me.

Tennis lesson with Jenny Tennis. Hard work. Steep learning curve, though. We started practicing serves. My badminton smash should keep me right, as the movements are pretty much the same thing. I have to slow everything down, of course, but I have an idea of how it’s meant to go at least. It’s very tiring, running around the tennis court. Good for general fitness.

I went for a short swim straight after. I didn’t fancy a long swim, so I just went for a 400 swim, managing to beat 6 minutes, which I was very pleased with. If I can carry on that pace, I’m managing 24 minutes for a mile. Something to aim for. Now the drills move onto intermediate, I think I’ll be back to basics, with lots of balance drills. I think that will help.

I also need to get back into the other two disciplines: cycling to work; running a bit more, that is, running at all!

Not a lot of time to do much sport for the rest of the week, talk tomorrow, Middle East meeting Thursday, then it’s the weekend. Back into training next week, I think.

Bike Fitting, Tennis, Swim

This morning I went for my birthday treat – to Rock and Road cycles in Bridge of Allen to have a custom bike fitting session. My Aeron is a good fit, I know that much, but I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that it’s not *quite* right, but I’m not sure *how* it’s that little bit wrong. And I suppose there’s no way of knowing what you’re missing, until you try it out. So, we made the journey, and got going with measurements, and tweaking.

It didn’t take long, actually. And we only had to tweak a couple of things. The best setting was 2/3 racing, and 1/3 sportive. It felt great. Comparing it with my bike, it was almost exactly the same, apart from the headset height – and there’s no reasonable way of increasing the height without screwing up the rest of the geometry. But it’s not far out, and I can certainly live with it, now I know it’s *so close*. But it did lead to a conversation about what bike to get next…

The Aeron is designed by Ridley, so another Ridley makes sense, and indeed, the newer Ridley’s have a higher headset height than previously, so that’s a winner. I’ve always fancied a Willier, but they have particularly low front ends, so that’s out. Ridley let the buyer design the colours for their bikes:

This was the one in the shop:

I like this one:

But you can really screw things up:

Then it was off to our tennis lesson. I’m picking things up, but it’s slow progress. It’s very different to badminton, and squash. My serve is coming on, but I’m still very inconsistent. But it’s great fitness training.

Went for a wee swim – only a paddle really, sore shoulder from practicing 200 serves (Thanks Jenny Tennis…)