I’m now into week 3 of my training plan for Outlaw and currently I’m 12 and 0 in terms of sessions. Good for me as there were definitely a few I might not have done had I not had a coach peering over my training diary.
More after the jump.
Swimming is going pretty well given that I only really swim during races or a couple of sessions before one and I can feel myself getting stronger as I try out the drills. However it should be noted in 4 sessions I’ve swum a total of 3700m so I’m still short of race distance and that lot took around the hour and 40 I’m optimistically hoping to do the Outlaw swim in.
Cycling has been split into two structured turbo sessions in the garage on a Wednesday morning and two longer rides on Saturday. Luckily so far I’ve had two nice Saturdays and got two good sessions done. The first was a 90 minute ride on a pan flat course in Zone 2 and on the aerobars. By far the longest I’ve ever spent in that position and it wasn’t helped by my damn seat slipping again meaning it was 2 inches lower at the finish than at the start. The second ride was a revelation, a 45 minute ride in Zone 2 followed by 3 hill repeats of 10 minutes each. However this was to be done over-geared at around a 70 cadence. I ended up doing 11 minutes a time due to the fact that had me arriving at a logical turning point but all 3 were pretty evenly paced. Most surprising was that the best effort was only 4 seconds down on my Strava PB for the same segment and that was one I really went for with nothing remaining in the tank when I got to the top. Almost froze to death on the 3 descents after the climbs, now I know why Tour riders layer up for their descents.
Running has been going Ok – all by heart rate and all a lot slower than I would normally run. Learning to run in Zone 2 is odd but I’m really noticing that I find it hard to get back into that zone after higher intensity intervals. That should come as fitness improves I guess but as it stands I’m not going to be putting in a sub 3 marathon in Nottingham.
Week 3 started today with another swim session that I really had to force myself to do but I’ll mention that in my next update.