Glass man to Ironman

In a bid to try and get faster I bought a heart rate monitor to work out which zone I am in for each type of run ie long slow, interval or tempo. So this morning I decided to do a 8km run (was tempted by 10km but dont want to risk injury since its been a while since last did a 10k)....now, going by the test I did a few weeks back I estimated my max heart rate to be about 202 going by some advice on the triathlon forums, this puts my long slow run heart rate to be about 131-151bpm. After about 5-8mins into the run I was struggling to keep my heart rate down, it was more 160-166. So I slowed down even more to the point I felt like I was going to just do speed walking!! didnt feel all that good, so I stuck at 166bpm with what I would class as a steady jog, not pushing it at all and just taking in the sights from up the top of the hill, (beats running along a busy road on my other 10k route with all the traffic fumes!) Any niggles? Well so far the bottom of my calfs feel abit tight, so wil

Swim = 11:45 - Errrghhh! :-( T1 = 1:45 Bike = 34:19 - Wooo go Tri Bike! T2 = 0.36 Run = 21.50 - Not bad, cramps ruined the start. Well thats it until next year, I have really enjoyed my start into the world of Triathlon! Met some great people at the races, always friendly people to chat to while waiting to get in the pool or setting up your kit in transition. Thanks to my friends and family turning up to support and cheer me on, its been great and cant wait to do it again. So what now untill next year? Well for one thing swimming is going to be my main focus to get it around 8mins at least! almost 12mins is a joke and no BS, all front crawl, no breaks ect....going to try an go at least 2x a week, focus on the breathing and trying not to hyperventilate which is making me tense and loose my rhythm. Bike, well fingers crossed we dont have a sh*tty winter like last time so I can get out every now and again, just on the safe side im going to take the slicks off my MTB and put

So how did it go? Considering how busy I have been,lack of constant training, illness an a few niggles I am impressed with a time of 1h 10mins. My initial print out slip its put me down as 58m 44sec in T2! But got a text later this evening confirming my official time :-). Well the swim was crap for me, bolted off from the word go and was pooped by 6-8laps and had to resort to abit of BS between laps, plus the 3 other people in my lanes was doing it and trying to overtake them doing FC just knackered me out. 11mins 45sec. I need to seriously put some pool time 2-3 a week if I have any hope of doing an Olympic distance tri next year. Bike section had lots of ups and downs and a few good downhill sections to get some speed up. Hardly any traffic on the roads so that was good, over took a fair few people which made me happy, love my new bike, just still having probs with rear gears popping out of sync, still 34mins 19sec overall, chuffed. Run section, major cramps in both calf muscles!

Last day before the Southwell triathlon and things are not looking there best...weather forcast is rain for early morning and slight thunder storms!! gutted, to top that off when I got out of bed this morning, I felt the dull pain in my achilies tendon again and the niggling ache in my hamstring. A few minutes stretching looks to have ease the muscles abit, so I will have to wait and see how it goes tomorrow. Just checked my bike over to make sure it all set and the rear deraileur is not changing the gears correctly...ffs, so got to get that tuned up later. So my plan for tommorow is just to enjoy myself and use it as good practice if it does piss it down, crack open a can of MTFU and get the race done :-)...plus I cant be an Ironman if I wuss out to rain and a few small niggles ;-)....roll on tommorow!

With less than a week before Southwell Triathlon my achilles tendon has started to play up again, all because of landing funny on the stairs at work! (See what I mean about being a glassman?) While trying to run up the 5 flights of stairs I slipped on the edge of the step and felt a pull in my calf/achilles, didnt think much of it due to that fact I had DOM's in my legs from the Saturday run. Come the next morning, even breaking into a slight jog I felt it twinge and pain...Not good! So decided to rest it for the week to let the DOMs subside and see how bad it was. This morning it feels ok, so just going to leave the running until next sunday on race day, I got a PB of 21.16 for my 5km which im really happy about but maybe pushing it after not running for 3-4 weeks may not of helped I guess I was just thinking about going fast and working out my max heart rate, ready to start training with a HRM watch on interval and tempo training. Link to Run:- http://www.endomondo.com/work

Been really busy past few weeks so not had a chance to update my blog, so quickly doing it now on my lunch break. So far I have managed to get some SPD's and shoes for my bike (the missus kindly let me have my birthday presents early to get used to them :-) ), took a little while to get used to them but I can see how they can benefit me on the hills and getting the power down, so far ive not fallen off or got stuck on them at the lights....but I guess there is still time!. Training has been slow, did a 5k run on saturday evening with a PB of 21.16 trying to work out my max heart rate (time to start doing tempo runs and interval training in hope of getting some sub 20 5k's and sub 40 10k's next year, ive been on a plateu for too long on these runs so need to up the game and break them barriers. Swimming is coming along nicely, still getting abit tired but that my fault not going more than once a week. Soon as winter hits Ill be heading for the pool more and working up to