First Full Week Back ... Kind Of!

I thought I’d do just a quick update on my first “full” week back in training since Christmas and the New Year.  I’ve put full in inverted commas because even though it was the first Monday to Friday, it wasn’t really a full week of training.  I posted a picture on Facebook around this time last week showing my training plan.  I know that his plan is pretty full on but until I tried to follow it, I didn’t realise just how full on it is.  Needless to say, it has gone out of the window this week!  The evening sessions have more or less gone to plan as once again, working on improving my running has taken priority.  The only blip there has been on Friday night which I didn't do.  I managed to hurt my chest in swimming training on Thursday night and to be honest was a bit frightened to go running as I'd had trouble after that swimming session getting my breath back and was having some pains in my chest as well.  I did however still do the Park Run on Saturday morning and thankfully everything was fine and having spent 3 hours on the bike this morning, there seems to be no problem now at all.  Where I have struggled the most this week though with the morning sessions.  I think this is a mix of the tiredness of getting into running mixed with the fact that I’m still struggling to let go of my Christmas sleep patterns of staying up until around 2 o’clock and then sleeping through to 10.  I’m hoping this week will be an improvement with that and also with my eating.  Again, Christmas habits are proving difficult to beat!

On the upside though the running seems to be going well at the moment.  I’m never going to break work records, especially when it comes to speed but I’m slowly increasing the distances and I’m beginning to feel more comfortable on longer runs.  I’m hoping that the training session with the tri club on a Monday night will help with the pace but I’ve not got any particular time in mind for the half marathon in March, I’ll just be happy to finish it!  The first event I need to worry about my time is the half ironman in June so I’ve got time to work on that.  Speaking of half ironmans, the eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed the removal of the Ireland 70.3 from my wish list over on the right.  Unfortunately it has been cancelled for 2013 with the hope of it happening again in 2014.  I’m really disappointed about his because I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland and of all the events this year, that was the one I was looking forward to the most.  I guess I’ll just have to wait until next year.  For this year though, I still feel that I want to do 2 half ironmans so am looking into alternatives and I’ll let you know how things are going with that.

Finally, I wanted to let you know about an opportunity that presented itself to me just before Christmas.  I have been asked to take part in a 3 day, 300 mile bike ride around Mallorca in October.  This wouldn’t be connected to what I am doing in relation to this blog in that it would be to raise money for different charities to the St David’s Foundation but for me it was an opportunity that was too good to pass up on.  Everything is in the planning phase with it at the moment but I’m very excited about it and will let you know more as soon as the details are confirmed.

Hopefully the snow will stay away now so I can have a good second attempt at a full week of training!