Wednesday 25 May 2011

So, it's all about consistency right?

Yep, at least that's what I hear.

You see, I've yet to display any and we are now down to roughly 280 days till race day.  Hmmmmm, and with us still a week away from Winter.  The next few months are gonna be interesting.

So, what happened this week.  Well, after the sad news from last weekend there was plenty of talk amongst the locals and we are still shaking our heads at how easy this all happened.  A lot of the bunches are getting a bit gun shy with the onset of the dark and cold, and rightly so.  The pace has dropped off in our bunch as well as the others, the sprints are not contested as hard and a little bit more space is being taken between wheels.  Unfortunately, it's still not stopping the crashes with another few (thankfully) minor crashes in the various bunches this week.

This week has been a bit of a write off to be honest.  Work continues to be busy and a variety of early morning starts means that I wasn't able to get out and get scheduled training done Monday or Tuesday.  Evenings are absolutely no good for me between my nights with the kids, Tri club commitments and other volunteer stuff that I do.  In fact, I haven't had an evening free for over a month so unfortunately missed morning sessions will not get made up of an evening.

Wednesday night saw the Shepp Tri Club AGM being held and I was again voted in as President for another year.  I'd like to think it's because I am doing a top job, but in reality there is no other numpty silly enough to nominate for it!!!

Fortunately,  given my jammed packed evenings, Ruley has had me thinking about doing some various strength and core work along with the normal Swim, Bike, Run stuff.  The advantage of the stength and core work is that it can be done virtually anywhere and in a minimum of time.  I have tried to be good and do the leg strength stuff he has prescribed however I must admit, it gets forgotton more often than not.  Obviously this has something to do with my advancing years.

I thought I would have a go at the core work instead to see if I could do any better at that.  Ruley had written down a list of various core exercises to have a go at including plank, bridge and something called the bird-dog.  Wasn't quite sure what this was all about, so I turned to that interweb thing for some advice and googled the first exercise - planking or something.  Not sure if this is right, but below are a couple of examples of me doing these core exercises.  They seem to be doing me the world of good.

Not sure if this is the right kind of plank, but I think they are doing me good.



This is a much more advanced plank.  I really felt the burn with this one.

The next few days found me completing the program as set by Ruley, at least until Friday night anyway.  I had been looking forward to Friday night for quite sometime as it was our annual presentation night.  A great night was planned, and it didn't disappoint.  The highlight of the evening was having the opportunity to listen to our guest speaker, Stephen Foster.  It was great to hear Steve speak about the early days in the sport and he gave a presentation with plenty of photos of some iconic races and plenty of legendary names of the sport.

In fact, I got quite inspired and commenced carbo loading immediately.......375ml at a time.  I continued carbo loading until about midnight, when, with just a dozen or so hardy souls remaining, we decided to continue to loading at the pub and quickly made our way there.

And so it continued until about 3.30am where I finally made my way home..........completely (carbo) loaded.

Upon waking Saturday morning it was clear that I had a problem with my hydration strategy as I awoke with a raging thirst.  It is apparent this will require some more practice before IMNZ.

I was due to pick the kids up at 11am and we headed down the street to grab some lunch.  Despite my best intentions to make sure that sessions were completed over the weekend, Saturday was a write off and the majority of the afternoon was spent on the couch for some reason.  I think it had to do with the core exercises completed earlier in the week......

Sunday was not much different as we awoke to a cold, wet and miserable day.  Clearly it was too cold and wet to get on the wind trainer.  So I didn't.

Despite all of this, or should I say the lack of training sessions, and my copious carbo loading I was still able to manage a minor weightloss for the week.  An official weigh in on Monday morning say me come in at 109.5kg, a substantial drop of 0.1kg.  I know.  Awesome, right?

For the record, training for the week was as follows:

Monday                        Sleep in
Tuesday                        Work appointment
Wednesday                   Bike 43km, 1hr 22min, 31.4k avg
                                     Swim 2000m, 41min 15sec
Thursday                       Run 10km, 53min 25sec
Friday                           Bike 44km, 1 hr 25min, 30.8k avg
Saturday                       Hung over
Sunday                         Too wet and cold

So, as I mentioned at the start of this weeks post, consistency appears to be a bit of an issue.  Although clearly I am getting plenty of core strength.

Very confident that this coming week will be much more consistent.  And of course, this week also culminates with the Williamstown Half Marathon BOP Invitational.  This is an event not to be missed and will be one of those iconic events that you will tell your grandchildren about.  The showdown is about to happen - Ayto v's Mank v's Anti-Sport.  Winner takes all (the pancakes, that is).

Unless, of course Dave manages to finish his 10k race before us and goes all Cookie Monster style at the pancake stall.......then there will be hell to pay.

But there is always some Filthy Ronnies on the way home.

Train safe
Ayto

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