Consistency
(Aside: Just before I started writing this I was gazing with adoration at my default icon, which is a comic-style drawing of Aeryn Sun from Farscape. Killer cheekbones. Shame about the whole way her character was kind of ruined towards the end of the series. Which made me think of my FAVOURITE character who that happened to which is of course Scully and then HOW DO I NOT HAVE A SCULLY ICON. and so this has been rectified. and I should investigate these ones for future use perhaps.)
(Anyway this is actually a post about sport and such. sorry for the misdirect.)
Well it is nearly the end of May and I am still going to triathlon training. I've actually enjoyed it more than ever, undoubtedly because there are no early morning sessions during the week, and the club is in a "technique + volume" phase, which means most stuff is done at T3 - basically no fast work at all. (T5 is like sprinting, T4 is around race pace for a short race I gather.) And with that I've just finished a week with my biggest amount of running yet (26km/3 hours) and already made it my biggest month of running yet (65km/7h20). 65km! But in a month that's only 2 or 3 km a day. It's actually not that much. If I add a couple of days of easy short runs by myself, I could easily do 30km a week.
I will get to it. I signed up for the 10K Run Melbourne (mid July) and I am enjoying training with this goal (sub-hour) in mind. We did a 5K time trial around Albert Park and I got under 30 minutes (second such result) which is a good sign.
Last week's sessions were: 8km with Run Melbourne training group ("tempo" run? constant pace, fast for me), 6km with T-A (technique focused session), 12km with T-A (long run).
The main thing I am appreciating from the club at the moment is learning the value of consistency. We never do sessions (especially in this phase) where you go all-out and end up laid up for 4 days following. It makes a difference, to just go along reasonably and be able to attend all your sessions one after the other, just showing up. "Experts" love to give advice like "More is more" (in training intensity) and "if you train slow, you will run slow in races", which are probably true for people that are established runners, but for beginners I think simply getting this habit, learning how to run without hating it, getting your body used to running for longer and longer distances and times, is so important. So I am really enjoying this and thinking about the "10,000 hours" idea and liking that I am on my way.
5:45-6:00 is my race pace at the moment - it's other people's warm up jog pace - and I can see that in a few months my race pace will be definitely faster - and I definitely remember that when I started I couldn't do that at all.
My swim time trial was 10:43 for 500m which confirmed me as a "lower intermediate" within the club which I was pleased about. Swimming drills I find a lot harder than running, though. I find it super hard to do swimming drills at a decent pace. There must be something about the rhythm of a normal swimming stroke that I find difficult to do without.
One thing I have been doing barely none of with the club is cycling. I missed the cycling time trial :( and haven't gone on any of the Saturday long rides. It's the fact that they start early, and also I'm a little apprehensive about bunch riding. They keep going on about knowing the rules and signals etc (focusing on safety) to the extent that I feel like even as a beginner I'm supposed to show up knowing what to do. And I imagine riding close with others and somehow causing a massive stack. Yet, I'm pretty sure the way most people learn the norms is by actually showing up and observing. There was a quarterly team meeting this evening and they exhorted the importance of these long rides as key training sessions. I think that's right... they also said they are having more groups so that each bunch only goes out around 12-15 people. And I ran into one group coming back last Saturday and there was only like 8 of them, pretty manageable. So.... I should do that.
It's also that while focusing on running and adding more running training to my week, I am not that inclined to simultaneously add cycling. And I cycle at least an hour a day like 5+ days a week...so in some sense my cycling fitness is OK. The bike is also my strongest leg. Yet being in the saddle for 2 or 3 hours is pretty different to 30 minutes, and my lovely road bike would enjoy seeing the road occasionally. SO: we'll see.
I know some of my friends are in awe at my training, yet at the club meeting I felt a bit in awe at how seriously they take it. It was not wrong for me to be categorised into a group labelled "Fun", even if it feels a little insulting. (c.f. other groups which are named after the target race distance.) The handout recommended that at this point we be doing 2 sessions a week per discipline, add 2 strength sessions a week, and by the end of June be up to 3 sessions a week per discipline. I don't see that happening. 2 swims is OK (especially when one is a social one), 3 runs is OK, 1 cycling (the long Saturday morning ride). That would be pretty solid for me.
Another thing that is nice about my club is that it is clear that the coaches come from within the club. I like that; it's not like other types of fitness things where there is a sharp divide between the instructors and the plebs. They celebrate successes, not just world championship positions but also first races (an eternal new wave of newbies) and marriages and babies and such. I guess if you actually were doing 6 or 9 sessions a week you would get to know your fellow athletes pretty damn well. There are apparently 220 of us though! Which explains why in total I might "know" maybe 20 athletes at a kinda similar level as me, but at any given session I might only see 1 or 2 of them. (But it's great that I nearly always see someone I'm kinda friendly with now! It's almost like... I'm making... friends! Takes forever.)
TO CONCLUDE: I should start doing some strength stuff. Like 30-40 minutes twice a week type thing. Core muscles and such. Need to keep up the hideous plank. Dear reader, do you have an awesome book/website/Android app to recommend to assist with such a thing? I'm thinking something which has photos or diagrams. (All the Runkeeper apps appear to be iphone only sadly.) Also I'd like things that are more about bodyweight as although I have in the past enjoyed doing weights things at the gym, it doesn't seem worth joining one just for this. I picked up a few books from the library. Is Pilates a plausible idea here??
ALSO: One of the guys in the club wrote this article which I enjoyed - First Time Ironman - The Ten Hardest Things (also his email to family & friends about the race itself).
(Anyway this is actually a post about sport and such. sorry for the misdirect.)
Well it is nearly the end of May and I am still going to triathlon training. I've actually enjoyed it more than ever, undoubtedly because there are no early morning sessions during the week, and the club is in a "technique + volume" phase, which means most stuff is done at T3 - basically no fast work at all. (T5 is like sprinting, T4 is around race pace for a short race I gather.) And with that I've just finished a week with my biggest amount of running yet (26km/3 hours) and already made it my biggest month of running yet (65km/7h20). 65km! But in a month that's only 2 or 3 km a day. It's actually not that much. If I add a couple of days of easy short runs by myself, I could easily do 30km a week.
I will get to it. I signed up for the 10K Run Melbourne (mid July) and I am enjoying training with this goal (sub-hour) in mind. We did a 5K time trial around Albert Park and I got under 30 minutes (second such result) which is a good sign.
Last week's sessions were: 8km with Run Melbourne training group ("tempo" run? constant pace, fast for me), 6km with T-A (technique focused session), 12km with T-A (long run).
The main thing I am appreciating from the club at the moment is learning the value of consistency. We never do sessions (especially in this phase) where you go all-out and end up laid up for 4 days following. It makes a difference, to just go along reasonably and be able to attend all your sessions one after the other, just showing up. "Experts" love to give advice like "More is more" (in training intensity) and "if you train slow, you will run slow in races", which are probably true for people that are established runners, but for beginners I think simply getting this habit, learning how to run without hating it, getting your body used to running for longer and longer distances and times, is so important. So I am really enjoying this and thinking about the "10,000 hours" idea and liking that I am on my way.
5:45-6:00 is my race pace at the moment - it's other people's warm up jog pace - and I can see that in a few months my race pace will be definitely faster - and I definitely remember that when I started I couldn't do that at all.
My swim time trial was 10:43 for 500m which confirmed me as a "lower intermediate" within the club which I was pleased about. Swimming drills I find a lot harder than running, though. I find it super hard to do swimming drills at a decent pace. There must be something about the rhythm of a normal swimming stroke that I find difficult to do without.
One thing I have been doing barely none of with the club is cycling. I missed the cycling time trial :( and haven't gone on any of the Saturday long rides. It's the fact that they start early, and also I'm a little apprehensive about bunch riding. They keep going on about knowing the rules and signals etc (focusing on safety) to the extent that I feel like even as a beginner I'm supposed to show up knowing what to do. And I imagine riding close with others and somehow causing a massive stack. Yet, I'm pretty sure the way most people learn the norms is by actually showing up and observing. There was a quarterly team meeting this evening and they exhorted the importance of these long rides as key training sessions. I think that's right... they also said they are having more groups so that each bunch only goes out around 12-15 people. And I ran into one group coming back last Saturday and there was only like 8 of them, pretty manageable. So.... I should do that.
It's also that while focusing on running and adding more running training to my week, I am not that inclined to simultaneously add cycling. And I cycle at least an hour a day like 5+ days a week...so in some sense my cycling fitness is OK. The bike is also my strongest leg. Yet being in the saddle for 2 or 3 hours is pretty different to 30 minutes, and my lovely road bike would enjoy seeing the road occasionally. SO: we'll see.
I know some of my friends are in awe at my training, yet at the club meeting I felt a bit in awe at how seriously they take it. It was not wrong for me to be categorised into a group labelled "Fun", even if it feels a little insulting. (c.f. other groups which are named after the target race distance.) The handout recommended that at this point we be doing 2 sessions a week per discipline, add 2 strength sessions a week, and by the end of June be up to 3 sessions a week per discipline. I don't see that happening. 2 swims is OK (especially when one is a social one), 3 runs is OK, 1 cycling (the long Saturday morning ride). That would be pretty solid for me.
Another thing that is nice about my club is that it is clear that the coaches come from within the club. I like that; it's not like other types of fitness things where there is a sharp divide between the instructors and the plebs. They celebrate successes, not just world championship positions but also first races (an eternal new wave of newbies) and marriages and babies and such. I guess if you actually were doing 6 or 9 sessions a week you would get to know your fellow athletes pretty damn well. There are apparently 220 of us though! Which explains why in total I might "know" maybe 20 athletes at a kinda similar level as me, but at any given session I might only see 1 or 2 of them. (But it's great that I nearly always see someone I'm kinda friendly with now! It's almost like... I'm making... friends! Takes forever.)
TO CONCLUDE: I should start doing some strength stuff. Like 30-40 minutes twice a week type thing. Core muscles and such. Need to keep up the hideous plank. Dear reader, do you have an awesome book/website/Android app to recommend to assist with such a thing? I'm thinking something which has photos or diagrams. (All the Runkeeper apps appear to be iphone only sadly.) Also I'd like things that are more about bodyweight as although I have in the past enjoyed doing weights things at the gym, it doesn't seem worth joining one just for this. I picked up a few books from the library. Is Pilates a plausible idea here??
ALSO: One of the guys in the club wrote this article which I enjoyed - First Time Ironman - The Ten Hardest Things (also his email to family & friends about the race itself).