Week IM – 17 : The Joy of Noticeable Gains

I’d usually take a rest week on the 4th week of every month – doing half the distances at a higher intensity, but I decided to keep it long after the lax week last week.

 

We went for an 80Km spin similar to this one on Saturday. It was a great route, one I didn’t know until now – thanks Brian Duggan!

I’ve had a bit less time in the mornings this week so two of the sessions I’d usually do in the morning, I did in the evening. One of these was one of the 2/3 weekly weights sessions. I’ve been loosely following a weights program from here.

The basic guide of it was to get a baseline of weight that you could do 20 reps of in relative comfort for all but the last few. Once you had your base line, weight should be increased every month or so, at the same time as decreasing reps per set, but increasing set numbers with higher rest times between sets. I’ve been following this without a huge amount of thought for the last 4 months but I realised on Wednesday that I was lifting comfortably 3 times the weight I was when I started, and doing three/four sets where I had been doing two. Let pull-down for instance, I’m doing 4 x 16 x 40Kg where I had been doing 2 x 20 x 20Kg.

This seems like quite a substantial gain. Am I twice as “strong” as I was when I started? I’d imagine it’s closer to the truth to say that I’m twice as good at lifting these weights as I was when I started. Even then, it was a great realisation to see these gains. I see noticeable improvements in my strength in the water in the last month or so, which I mostly attribute to the weights.

As for the cycling and running, well I haven’t gotten injured yet so the muscles are doing their job. That’s probably the biggest gain I could have hoped for.

Week IM – 18: The Break

This week was a week off. I was skiing in Sweden. A week “off” isn’t in the training plan I’ve been following, but I felt safe enough taking it. I still consider myself to be on target.

It’s interesting to think that such a high volume training plan could absorb a week with a lot less work and remain unaffected. I think it will though. I wonder where the point is where one too many breaks throws performance into an un-recoverable spiral, where you’d be below the point where training could get you up to the level of the race you’re aiming for.

It essentially all comes down to discipline. The more disciplined you are, the more you can deviate from your training plan – that is; if you postpone a workout early in the week, will you fit it in on Friday morning when you’re tired, before the other workout you had planned? It’s generally easy to tell the people who would – and funnily enough it’s the people who’d never postpone a session to begin with.

I got to the gym in the hotel in Stockholm on Friday and got one good session in, at least. As well as two cycles on Saturday and Sunday when I got back. No swims left the weekly total at a restrained 86Km bike and 14.5Km running.

Week IM – 19: The Short Week

It was a 5 day week this week as I’m heading off to Åre in Sweden for a week later today.

I decided not to take a rest week in the last week of February as was in the plan, because I knew these two weeks would allow for a lot less training. I did notice the difference in the first two weeks in March. I was getting the same distances, but not as well. I’ve been doing a 1000m Time Trial in the pool towards the end of each rest week, each month to keep track of progress. In the February TT, which I did just in a normal week, I swam it in 19:43 which was more than a minute slower than January (18:35). That’s a good vindication for the taper before a race (doing a lot less in the few days before a race so the body has time to overcompensate for all the training).

I’ll be skiing and climbing next week so hopefully that’ll be a good chance to let the main triathlon muscles recover and build some others that may play a part.

Week IM-20: The Physio Necessity

Having grown up playing team sports, I was never a stranger to physios (as in physiotherapists), running onto the pitch with the magic sponge and such. I’m always surprised at people who go to their doctor (or worse, just ignore) knee or back pain when often it’s just a tight muscle a physio could sort out in a few minutes.

And so, when the knees started to get sore after the long cycle and run sessions, it was to the physio I went. It’s now become a regular occurrence, every 2-3 weeks. One perspective is that physios allow the body go further than would otherwise be possible – loosening out muscles that would naturally become unusably tight when you push farther than their natural limit. Another perspective is that once you get used to going to physios to loosen out muscles, you become dependant on them. Runners in the 70’s never had physios and they were fine (..apart from the arthritic knees upon retirement in their 30’s).

Either way, it has been very useful to have the luxary of a physio who can trace certain problems to specific tight muscles and loosen them out. This week, one of the quads on the outer side of both knees had tighted up. I noticed afterwards that I wasn’t stretching it when I was stretching my quads. She loosened it out over a very painful 30 minutes.. I always seem to forget how painful those sessions are! 30 minutes pain for 6 days 23.5 hours of looseness, it’s a good trade off.

The big swim was on Monday this week – 16 x 100 meters @ 84% effort. I averaged 2:10 per 100 meters. With warmups, that was 2.4km. I did 19km of running over the week, broken into 3. I’m still trying to keep the running to short and frequent.

The cycle on Saturday was a 70km spin down to Blessington and Lackin, which worked out well. It took just over 3 hours. The weather was good, although it’s still cold. There’s still snow on most of the mountains.

The weekly totals. Twenty weeks to go:

Week IM – 21: Psychology Benefits of Sun and Rugby

This was a big enough week. Two long swim sessions on Monday and Thursday and one short speed recovery day on Wednesday of 500m swim and 5Km cycle. 4:25 on Saturday between bike and a run.

I did just one weight session this week but I’ve been concentrating on stretching a lot again. Stretching and the foam roller to make sure the ITBs don’t stiffen up again. It seems to be working. My knees were a small bit sore on Saturday after the run but were fine again by Sunday. Perhaps the Irish victory over England in the 6 Nations had a part to play in this quick recovery also. I’ve never underestimated the psychological influence on the physical aspects of the body. Brain Training for Runners is basically a book on how to use your head to improve your body.

He uses techniques such as mental queues that you implement in training to keep your concentration on certain aspects. For example to practice 10km runs where you concentrate on “falling forward” to avoid heal striking.  He also categorises different types of feedback (say subjective (“that was 8 out of ten in difficulty”) versus objective (heart rate, power)) in a constructive way which allows you to consider all forms of perceivable feedback to get the best gauge on what’s going on. Basically, too often people rely solely on HR.

It’s recommended quite a bit - or maybe more, it’s done quite a bit by long distance athletes, especially runners- to take anti-inflammatories during or after long runs to prevent the knees becoming inflamed. I’ll consider this in the future for longer runs. I’ve also been advised that dehydration and AIs don’t mix well, so to take a lot of fluids at the same time.

Saturday was a relatively big day of 4 hours 25 back to back. That was 3 hours on the bike followed by a 1:20 run – 14Km at an easy pace.

Here’s the bike route:

The weather was really nice for this one, which was great. Physiologically, it makes a huge difference when the sun is shining. It’s substantially easier keep going on long cycles, as opposed to the mild frustration that just doesn’t go away when you’re cycling into wind and rain.