Aug/Sept/Oct Update.

5am and I'm up feeding one of the girls (no idea which one) So with bottle in one hand and ipad in  the other thought it was probabpy about time I checked in with an update.

Vachery Tri

On the 28th of August I toed the start line of my first olympic distance tri for more than two years at the Vachery Triathlon in Cranleigh. My intention was to swim hard to set a bench mark off the back of what was for me a very consistent block of swim training. I achieved this to some extent making my way round with the lead group and exiting the water close enough to get to the front within the first mile of the bike. Initially frustrated with my swim time, it turns out the swim was long, which given the amount of time I'd been spending in the pool was something of a relief. With very few bike miles in my legs I was surprised to be the first to arrive at T2 and even more surprised not to be passed during the tough cross country run. 1st place :-)

Charlton Lido

Maxifuel big south swim (4k) 8th September. This was a fairly low key event and again another chance to see how my swimming was progressing. I was hoping to get round in just under an hour. I was surprised to see 57:20 on the clock as i exited. I knew I was swimming well but would be kidding myself if I was to believe the distance was accurate. After speaking to the organiser he conceded that the distance was more likely to be closer to 3.8k which would make sense. Still fairly happy with that. A little trophy for 3rd Snr M as well. You can probably gather I spent a fair bit of time focusing on improving my swimming over the summer. Mainly due to the fact I've had the use of Charlton Lido over the summer. A 50m heated pool less that a mile from my front door. Sadly the Lido is now closed for further refurbishment but will hopefully reopen in April 2013. In the meantime I'm back to my dingy local 23.3 pool :(

On September the 21st I headed up to Human Performace Unit (HPU) at the University of Essex for some lab testing. With everything else that's been going on this year this was the first opportunity for me to meet with Dave Parry who heads up the HPU and its Race Team. I started off the day with body composition testing followed by bike and run tests (results summary below). Results were pretty much as expected really. With only 3 weeks of moderate training in the bank the results were never going to be spectacular. Anyway I now have a clear bench mark of fitness and accurate training zones to work from to make the most of every single session over the winter months.   

Testing Summary

Kent XC League R1

I've now shifted my focus to running and have been logging some steady miles to lay down a base ahead of either the London or Paris Marathon in April 2013. The Cross country season has started and I had my first race for Cambridge Harriers on 7th of October in the Kent XC league race at Swanley Park. Reasonably pleased with 35th place amongst a mostly strong field of runners. October also brings the start of 'lappers' 8 weeks of 10 X 1k (just over actually) with only 30 second recoveries. A pretty brutal session but one that results in serious fitness gain. Plan is to record and post each weeks splits to monitor performance which I'll try and update here.

That pretty much brings me up to date. My Ironman race entry fund is building nicely and hopefully I'll have my name on the start list for Ironman Wales 2013 before December.  I'm off back to bed...