I had Monday off as a rest day.

Tuesday morning I went for a swim, just did some different drills and 100m and 200m intervals, all up totalling just under 2km. It felt good but I can tell my swimming needs some more structure if it's going to get anywhere so I think I'll have to koin a squad in the near future.

Wednesday morning I went for a 40km threshold cycle to get a benchmark time that I can
a) work on and measure up against and
b) calculate some kind of Noosa prediction from.
I got home in a very satisfying 1:17, which means my overall goal for Noosa is 2:30 (with splits of about 26-77-45).

Thursday I was going to do a hard interval session on the wind trainer but the bike just felt wrong on my shins again so I left it and did some core stability and strength stuff and booked the bike in for a service and proper re-fit next week.

Third time lucky - Noosa 1/2 1:36:53

After two "close, but not close enough" attempts - I well and truly smashed the 100 minute monkey today!

I didn't start off so well getting lost on the way there this morning but I eventually found my way and parked with enough time for a decent warm-up and some stretches (my most thorough pre-race routine to date). I lined up with Tesso and Clairie and the atmosphere was really positive.

I was feeling strong for the first 5.5 km and stuck with the girls, at about the 6km mark I was still feeling good so I started to sneak away. I was still feeling fine at the 11km turnaround but just outside the time I needed to get home under 95mins. I wasn't particularly worried because I've negative split the last two 1/2 marathons I've done, but when I got to about 15km my stomach started to feel sore and I couldn't seem to get rid of whatever it was that was putting me off. I kept to my original water plan (half a cup every second stop), and tried to distract myself but it just wouldn't go away, which meant I could not pick up the pace, even though my legs and body were feeling fine - very frustrating!

Anyway, I just kept plugging away and got to the finish before 1:37 - Very happy!

Sitting at home now I'm feeling very good and the stomach appears to have settled... guess I'll just have to experiment with my nutrition in my training over the next couple of months, especially if I'm going to be fuelling during the race at Noosa tri.

The vibe at this race was really good and I'm sorry I couldn't stick around much longer to socialise but I had to get back to BrisVegas to get started on some uni work. Thanks heaps to Tesso and Clairie for their pacing, and also Rags and IronPete for their cheersquad work.

The only other (moderately) funny thing I wanted to mention was that after the race I sat down to stretch and apparently sat on an ants nest. The little buggers bit me all over the back of the leg which was the last thing I needed after a run like that! Had to go and see the first-aid tent for what is a very lame race-day injury.

Today marks the last day of the running focus of my program, so tomorrow is a rest day, Tuesday, a drill set in the pool and Wednesday is the first day of the cycle focus.

Next big thing - Noosa tri!

Busy busy!

I've been a bit slack updating the blog this week (Ekka public holiday on Wednesday and the obligatory trip to the races for young members day - like every other person aged between 18 and 25 in Brisbane it seems!!!) but that doesn't mean I've stopped training!

After Sunday's long ride I took all of Monday off as a rest day and then started back on Tuesday with the focus being short and sharp as taper for Sunday's half mara.

Tuesday
1km swim with heaps of drills including catch-up and swimming with hands in fists. Felt really soft immediately afterwards but about an hour or two later it really kicked in and my arms felt very tired, and well worked! I'm going to make one of my two swim sets every week drill focussed and the other threshold from now on.

Wednesday
7.5km fartlek session around Carindale. Felt really relaxed and smooth.

Thursday
First session on the new mag trainer. Just did five minutes warm up, then 3 sets of five minute efforts with three minutes recovery between each and then five minutes cool down. Really felt like a good hard workout but only took half the time it normally takes me to expend that much energy on a ride.

Tomorrow
Easy five km run just to keep the legs turning over before Sunday. I've calculated the splits I need for the turnarounds at Noosa as 24:35, 49:20 and 71:50 (5.5 km, 11km and 16km) so look out 95 mins!

70km ride

Went for my longest ride so far today and it felt great. All up it took about 2hrs 45mins at almost 26km/hr. Very slow, but very rewarding, and thankfully I've fixed the dodgy adjustment I did on Monday!

The week ahead is very relaxed in preparation for the Noosa half next weekend.

It was also cool to watch the C2S highlights this morning, very motivating! Hope all those of you competing had a good run!

26km long run

Went for a long run from my house in Carindale to the West End and back today and it felt good. It's the first time I've run that far since training for the Brisbane marathon back in April and I'm definitely feeling it tonight. Average pace was 5:47, total time taken 2:28, which is slower than I was hoping for but given that it's a very hilly route, there are lots of traffic light stops, and I did some pretty hard hill reps yesterday I'm not disappointed. Feels good to be back at this distance...

I also had my first non-race CR gear sighting (althought technically I guess it was a reverse sighting) as RITH gave me a wave and stopped his ride for a chat as I was leaving Southbank and heading towards West End. I was pretty much at the hardest part of the run (1.5km to the turn around) so it was good to see a friendly face, thanks mate!

Hill repeats

Just a quiet day today, went to a local hill and did four repeats going hard up and then easy down the other side and then hard up and easy down again back to the start and then repeating.
Big run planned for tomorrow, aiming for 24-26km in 2 hours...

Recovery swim

After a thorough course of icing last night the leg felt much better when I woke up today and it only got better when I went for my recovery swim after lunch. Obviously it was a good thing I called it quits when I did yesterday, it's looking like a far less dire situation than when I posted yesterday...

Now that I've got some mileage up in my swims I've sort of shifted to having one long slow swim a week and one speed/interval session. Today was the speed session so I did a 250 warm up, 10 50s on 45 sec with 30 sec recovery and then another 250 warm down. Was a bit of a cop-out in retrospect because I only did one km but it felt good and I was on a limited schedule.

Uhoh...

Still on a high from yesterday's race and feeling really good this morning I went out for a long ride today aiming for about 60km. My right cycling shoe hadn't been feeling quite right so I fiddled with the cleats before I went and pulled them forward a bit so my foot was a bit further back on the pedal.

The ride was going really well for the first 40km, I was under 1:30 (26km/hr) which is really good for me but as I passed the city and headed out to Toowong I started to get some pain in the bottom of my right shin. I thought it would pass, and I've had so many problems on my long rides and didn't want to lose another one, so I pushed on but by the time I got to uni it was realllllly bad.

I was now 48km into the ride and 16km from home... not good! So I turned around and just decided to cruise home as easily as possible but when I got back to Southbank (56km) and got up out of my saddle for a climb my knee buckled and started to hurt as well. By now it was clear I had done something serious so I got off and walked to the nearest cab rank and got a taxi home.

It's still sore now so I'm icing it and cursing my stupidity for pushing on when it wasn't feeling right. More importantly I'm also hoping I haven't jeopardized the Noosa half...

Obviously I'm going to have to take the bike back to the shop for a refit, but in the meantime the next two days are swimming and then rest days so I'll have time to leave it and see what happens...

B2B

Sunday was my first ever crack at Bridge to Brisbane and I had a really good run!

I got to the gateway at about 0630, walked along the side of the white and yellow starters in the little passage that had been taped off, got to the red zone at about 0645, stretched a little more and jogged on the spot. I introduced myself to another coolrunner who turned out to be PeterHorse and we had a bit of a chat and waited.

The race started a little bit earlier than planned but I wasn't bothered as I'd pretty much done all the warming up I was going to be able to do... I just started running when the people in front of me moved and had fun weaving my way up (and then down) the bridge. (My plan had been to just go hard for the first 3km and then just try and keep on that pace for as long as could)

I caught Tesso and Clairie at the 3km mark and said hi but Clairie wasn't well so we ended up splitting up.

So many people were cutting corners that they were blocking up their own short-cuts and I overtook most of them by staying on the course. The random musicians were really cool and it was fantastic to get a "go CoolRunner" from the one man cheersquad - Iron Pete, at about 10km.

I finished in about 53:20 with an all out sprint for the last 800m to stay a ahead of a guy I had overtaken at the 11km mark. This is about 4:26 pace which is right on track for a sub 95 minute half at Noosa - stoked!

1km intervals

First time I've done a session like this and I was pleasantly surprised. My times were 3:32, 3:39, 3:40. With the warm up and cool down total distance was 7km. I ran them on a 1500m loop, running the first km and then walking the last 500m as recovery.

I wasn't prepared for how much more havoc it wreaks on your gut! but I will be next time. I think I'll try them in a straight line next time too, and hopefully do 4 or 5...

The thingy...

Owen's blog - now remastered in glorious technicolour (I've included photos!)

Tuesday

Went for a recovery swim in the uni pool after the weekends efforts and did 3 x 500s on 9:30 each. With the warm-up and cool-down total distance was 1.8km. While the times aren't fantastic, they are better than two weeks ago which is very good news. I'm back at a stage now where I can incorporate some drills and some more complex sets rather than just doing 1500m freestyle every time I get in the pool!

Of course the more important thing that happened on Tuesday was that I got new shoes!

I went to InTraining and the guy there was really good. We started out with neutral size nines and just kept trying different pairs until the fit was right and the support was sufficient. It was really good because he let me go for a run outside in each pair to test them while he watched how my feet were landing in them. When we'd narrowed it down to two I tried one on each foot and the decision was: Brooks Adrenaline GTS 6 a mid stability shoe in size 10.5. :

Technically they're the "ladies" version but they fit me better because I have narrow feet so I'm just going to go with it. :P

Tuesday also saw the official arrival of my bike computer which I spent the first half of Wednesday fitting!

It's very cool (if a little bulky) and has speed, distance, average speed, max speed, riding time, temperature and a couple of other random funtions as well. Apart from having to mount it on the front wheel instead of the rear (the wireless connection doesn't reach more than a metre and my lanky frame means the distance from my handlebars to the rear is just outside that!), meaning I can't use it on the mag trainer which is on its way, it seems to be working fine and they way I see it, for the ridiculously cheap eBay-price I paid for it, even if it only lasts a couple of months it was a good deal so I'm happy!

Wednesday

Rest day, fitted computer and did core stab/strength sesh again.

In answer to Jen's query, this session is just a mix of some upper body stuff and some of the excersises we did in the high school cross country team. It's not set in stone but an example is:

1. 15-20 push-ups

2. 10-15 sit-ups

3. bridge hold for one minute

4. 10-15 sit-ups on right side

5. 10-15 sit-ups on left side

The next three are done with dumbells, I don't know the real names of the excersises but basically it's five reps of each exercise:

6. Stand with arms at side, dumbells in hand, raise arms straight out to horizontal on a count of 10, and hold at horizontal for five seconds. Lower back down on another count of ten.

7. The next is starting with the weights on the front of your legs and raising up till your arms point straight out in front of you at shoulder height, hands on top of the weights. (works triceps) Hold for the same counts as number 6.

8. The last one is the same as seven but with hands under the weights instead of on top. (works biceps)

I do all 8 three times. The focus is on really slow and steady movements, the slower the better. A lot of them are probably pretty superficial but they work for me so... whatever. I mix it up by holding weights when I do the sit-ups or doing them on a swiss ball, just to keep it interesting...

If you've got a training partner you can do some cool stuff with a medicine ball as well. Try facing each other, doing sit ups alternately and throwing the medicine ball when you're at the top of the sit-up to your partner at the bottow of theirs...

Thursday

First ride with the computer and run in the new shoes and it went very well. I rode 25km and ran 5km. Ride was very cold but I managed to stay in the saddle for most of the hills and it seems to be getting more natural than a couple of months ago. The shoes were realllllly good support-wise but need some running in/softening up.

Finally, in answer to Wobbly's question about the bike tyre convertor... Bascially it's just an adaptor you fit to your bike tube that converts it to the same valve as the one on a car tyre so you can use the pumps at service stations (provided they're not bl**dy solar powered!).

(I tried to get a picture up but it's not working atm, will try again next time!)

Tomorrow will be 1km intervals in new shoes, really keen to see if I can get under 4 mins... ciao!

Bike 40 km, Run 21 km

Sunday

I went for my highly anticipated ride on Sunday morning and had got through about 15k when I noticed my front tyre wasn't hard... I'd pumped it up the night before but it obviously had a puncture and was slowly going down as I rode. Not a problem this time I thought, I have a backup plan! Just need to get to a servo, fit my nifty convertor to the tyre and pump it up! (I didn't have enough time to replace the whole tube, and I figured if it had taken 8 hours and 15km to go down the first time, surely just a bit of air in it would get me home...) Except the first service station I got to had a solar powered air pump and there hadn't been enough sunlight yet!!! (what, do people only get flat tyres in the middle of the day?) So I asked where the next nearest service station was, and rode as carefully as possible (the tyre wasn't flat yet, just soft) Got there, pumped it up and was off again, except by this time I had wasted so much time and was already on a tight schedule to get the kms done in enough time to get to work that I had to abandon my proposed route and just head back to my suburb and cruise around for a while. So I ended up doing some loops around Carindale to boost up the kms before calling it a day.

Obviously having the convertor isn't enough and I'm going to have to pick up a little pump... (Lesson learned x 2)

Monday

I had planned to go for 30km on Monday but after about the first 12 I really just wasn't feeling it. My shoes were feeling really "flat" and I was just feeling off so I pushed as a hard as a could for the next 8km and then finished with some Rocky-esque stair repeats. My shoes have been feeling a bit tired all week and as a result the soles of my feet were starting to feel sore at the end of runs, but this was the first time I've been for a long continuous run since that feeling started. When I got home and realised that I had just done my 600th kilometres in my shoes (and it's been 10 months since I got them) it became clear that it was time for new ones!

So in all my weekend training was messy but good. My ride, while not as long as I'd hoped meant I ended up doing some fast intervals around my local streets which is something I haven't done much of before and felt really good. My run, while not great, showed me that I clearly need new shoes, which is something that despite budgetary considerations I just can't avoid, so I'm going to head over to InTraining today and just grin and bear it!

Another positive is that my bike computer arrived on Monday afternoon so I'm off to pick it up from the post office today!