After a strong start to the season with podium finishes either side of the European Sprint Duathlon Championships in April it took me a while to get back into things. In the space of a week in June I got a bit of a kick when I produced my slowest time for 3 years at the Two Castles 10k and then missed out on going under the hour for a 25 mile TT by a couple of seconds. Both results were still good although not at the high standard I set for myself.
I straight away got myself back into a more structured training plan knowing that I had a triathlon at the start of July as an added bit of motivation. Sherbourne Triathlon went well although I felt my swim let me down a bit as normal and ultimately cost me not only a podium place but also the win. I posted the fastest bike split and 3rd fastest run and finished in 5th just over a minute down to 1st place. My swim time was about 2 minutes slower than all 4 of the people that beat me!
Knowing that I had a couple of months till my next races I decided I really needed to do something about my swimming and decided on a complete change in approach. Rather than try and get a couple of sessions a week in the pool I was going to try and get in the pool as often as I could and just do 10-15 minutes of swimming. This would be more in line with the way I train for cycling and running and would still mean that I was spending twice as long in the water during these sessions than I would hopefully be spending in the water on race day.
Into September and I had 2 sprint Triathlons, Southam and Warwickshire. Southam is pretty much as close to a home triathlon as you can get, the second half of the bike course makes up most of my 7.5 mile commute to work so I know the roads very well. For the first time ever during the swim I felt like I was being held up by slower swimmers and had to tap a number of feet to let me past. Clearly this got to my head as I somehow managed to swim 450m instead of 400m, despite this I still posted a swim time that I would have considered normal only a couple of months earlier. The bike section went well and I pushed hard all the way having learnt that I can still put out a good run without really having to hold anything back on the bike. As a result I got the fastest bike split split again and managed 2nd fastest on the run despite the inner sole of my trainer creasing as I put it on and getting a very bad stitch in the last km. I have to mention Dave Lane who came second by 2 seconds, great competitor and it was good to talk to you after the race, also really pleased for him as he managed to win Daventry Triathlon a couple of weeks later to make up for being beaten by such a small margin.
The Warwickshire Triathlon is not really one that plays to my strengths as it has a short bike section, although it has given me some of my best results over the years. Things were not looking good when I saw Rich Shephard on the start list and despite all his injury woes and lack of training he still won the race quite comfortably. From my perspective the race went well, my swim was my fastest race swim ever despite me not feeling that it was as good as I felt it could be which is giving me great confidence for the future. On the bike I was flat out again, I knew I didn't have to worry about holding anything back especially since it was a shorter bike course, unfortunately I only managed the second fastest bike split just over a minute behind Rich Shephard... Out onto the run and I felt really good although annoyingly missed out on going sub 19 minutes by getting 19 minutes exactly for the 5k run, meaning that I had the 3rd fastest run split and came 3rd overall. Despite only finishing 3rd I knew that it was still a good result and I was 2 minutes clear of 4th place so am already looking to see how mush more time I can shave off my swim for next season.
Hopefully this current run of form will carry over for the next few weeks as I try and qualify again for the European Sprint Duathlon Championships next year. After the 2 qualification races I have 2 off road duathlons in my calendar including Sherwood Pines Duathlon where I need to make up for the error I made last year.
As always thanks to the guys at Giant Leamington Spa for making sure that I have as fast a bike as possible and Nuffield Health Warwick for all the help with my training.
No comments:
Post a Comment