Good foundations

So thats my base work done. 200 hours and 3334 km of swimming biking and running in the bank. Now things get serious, race training starts and the next 12 weeks are crucial if I'm to hit my ambitious targets for IM Austria and be on course to be competitive at IM Wales in September. The London marathon is only days away and I'm desperately trying to put my ego to one side in order not to make an early withdrawal from the fitness bank. The TT bikes out and I've even managed to get some early tan lines with the recent good spells of weather tying in nicely with my long rides :-)

Swim

Continues to go well. No testing to report on but I did break out the wetsuit in the Lido last week. Getting a bit carried away I decided to knock out a couple of 1k's to see how things went. I was chuffed to swim these reasonable controlled at under 15mins. Had to take wetsuit off after these as Lido (London fields) is heated and was getting very uncomfortable. Open water swimming won't be far off so might test myself over 4k to see where I am then.

Bike

Its great to have the TT bike out and to have hung up the winter ride. Its amazing the difference in speed for the same effort while riding on the race bike. On a comfortable 210w average ride over a hilly course average speed is better by about 3kph. Im still getting used to new bike and TT position and slowly getting more comfortable over long periods with a couple of 5hr rides done. The 8hr ride planned for 22nd April (London to Birmingham) is certainly going to be a test though!

Run

I've had my first taste of putting race pace into practice over the last few weeks with a couple of long bricks. Running off a 5hr steady ride I've been managing to hold 4:40-4:45k's with an easy HR of <144Bpm. If can pull this off on race day It'll give me a marathon time of under 3hrs 20mins. Seems easy looking at the data now but I know I still need to build on my fitness and get things exactly right to pull this of at IMA.

I'll be running my 4th London marathon tomorrow (17th April) and I am determined to stick to the plan of 4:20 / k for the first 32k then best pace after that. I have to admit I'm finding it hard to resist chasing a time as I know others will judge my performance. In an attempt to save my ego I've been taking every opportunity to remind others that I'm not 'racing' the marathon and to reserve judgment for IMA and IMW where I'll be laying it all down.

Training /Family /Work Balance

Actually better, as I progress through my training plan I'm becoming better at managing my time. Even though the training hours are increasing I'm finding more time to do the family things like taking annie to the playground, chillin out with Katie in the evenings etc. I also think the longer days now the clocks have changed have helped. The next couple of weeks should be good as Katie is off work and is always happier when she has more time to train. We'll obviously be able to spend more time as a family over this period as well. Katie's also excited about her new bike (Trek Madone) which will be replacing the one which I managed to get stolen a few weeks ago :-/

Work is more 'settled' and I'm a little happier right now. Although our new shift system and working routines begin in May and I don't think its going to be easy adjusting to the longer days and the inconvenience of having to start work pretty much anywhere in london at 9:30 in the morning. I'm sure I'll have a winge about that in my next update.