A Squash & Squeeze

Those of you with children will recognise the title....

Down to earth since La Santa with a beautiful 4.5 hour ride in the rain Monday.  The joys of having to go out rain or shine!!!  I contemplated 4.5 hours on the turbo for all of about 5 seconds.  Little brick run off the back of it and feeling OK.  Although the groin is still twinging a little so still keeping the run volume low and generally confined to treadmills or cushioned tracks.

Worried I am losing something on my run although felt a bit better about it after keeping up a good pace on the treadmill for an hour and a half this morning - a few days break from running now and out with the pulsed electr magnetic healing device.  Yes - all the mod-cons here, its actually a new product we are launching at work.  You wear it over the injury in bed at night and it speeds up the healing process.  Worked for my pulled calf so hoping it will work the magic on the groin.  As you can imagine though this ones a bigger injury!!!

Positively this has made me do more bike, my bike volume in KM over the last few months has been:
591
655
776
821
1246
1309 June to date....

As a result, Bike (my weakest discipline) has definitely improved.  Just need to get the groin 100% and establish running again in these last 14 weeks.  Scary! 14 weeks to go.

So back to the childrens title.....

Training is now circa 20/21 hours a week, tough to fit in with family commitments.  This weekend we have a family visit to Basingstoke, catastrophe for training!!!!   Mmmmm, if I set off at 6am I can get a 166km training ride and meet them there at lunchtime.  Win, win, and with the added bonus that the children get to play spot the plonka with a yellow jacket riding a bike!!!

Just hope the rain keeps off this time.....

Holiday & The Training Doesn't stop!

La santa was fantastic, the childrens swimming came on leaps and bounds with some proper coaches.  Harvey won the 400m at the childrens olympics and libby made friends with all the men in the green team, insisting on a cuddle from each of them at every event, dinner and breakfast, don't know where she gets that from, Emma??

Weather was great which allowed for some serious training volume, it was a luxury to get up most mornings and do an hours swim set in the sunshine (wish I remembered sun cream on the first day though), running is also coming back after the groin strain,  a few longer sets on the treadmill in addition to a couple of short transition runs on the track have gone well.  Will stick to the treadmill for the next week or two to help complete recovery and keep the impact low. 

The sports massage and back contortion with a Danish therapist called Thomas seem to have also sorted out my acheing back on the bike.  It now doesn't hurt until I have been riding for 5 to 6 hours, as opposed to the usual 2.5, hopefully on the big day I should be off the 180k bike and on the run by this time!!!!!

May be overly ambitious :-)

The real jewel in the crown though was the cycling, 500k racked up in 4 days riding.  Helped by getting lost on the first day and doing 130k instead of the planned 110k, a group ride with 4 crazy scandinavians who insisted on 7000+ feet of climbing within a 152k ride (all good training but I was suffering at the time, especially when Morten went past me uphill going "look no hands")

Groins & Things.

A good couple of weeks training following the race - 18 hours and 19.5, beginning to get tough to fit in the hours. Have had some 5am starts to achieve this!!!! - still, feels great at 7.30am going off to work having already completed a 2 hour session..

I have however re-acquainted myself with an old groin strain, fortunately this last week has been a 13 hour rest week so I have only swam and biked, laying off the running.  I wont run again until Friday in La-Santa, hopefully this will give it the chance to recover (feels good already, fingers crossed)

Cant wait for La-Santa, clubs for the children, a beautifull island to ride around, olympic facitiliets warm weather, and a massage - yes a massage, might even have two while there.  I can get the training volume up to the required 20/21 hours a week (theres one more build cycle after this which takes me to 23/24 hours a week for 3 weeks) then its tapering down dowards the race, keeping the intensity up but dropping the volume each week so the body is full of energy come race day - that's the theory anyway.

I am now riding the 116km round trip to work twice a week which is feeling easier each time.  Need to remember a long sleeve shirt though as the midgies are having a banquet on my arms at the moment.  Thought I was going to fast for them to catch me!!

Checked my wiggle account yesterday - scary!, wo one warned me about the addiction to spend new gear.  Who would of thought lycra tights and a comfortable saddle could mont up so much...........

Next post after La-Santa.