Early Winter Training

So, I've not blogged since May... In the early part of the 2013 season I was enjoying blogging and sharing my experiences of training and racing, but when performances slipped, I was less to keen to share my results and simply stopped blogging. Since then I have completed a season with both of ups and downs, and am into winter training to prepare for the 2014 season.

Heading out on fourth leg at Leeds Uni Relays

Whilst training steadily away, and trying a few different things, I haven't been quite as consistent with training as I would have hoped. The difficulty of this is that I often find myself comparing my training to that of the same time last year, and as I've had a few bouts of illness, and missed training through an inconvenient uni timetable, and essays and deadlines, end up thinking I'll be making less progress than I should. Interestingly, when checking my Garmin training files and comparing total training hours, my October and November were both within two hours of the same two months in 2012. Recently I have done a few "training races", with varying degrees of success; I raced 3 times last weekend the first of which was at the BUCS short course swimming champs in Sheffield, where I used the 1500m as a practise for the 1500m swim I regularly race in Olympic distance triathlons. The race went well and I swam 16.55, a PB by over a minute, and a pleasing result showing my swimming is still gradually progressing in the right direction. The second race was a 2mile leg at the Leeds University Relays with two of my house mates and training partners. Unfortunately I ran the fourth leg, after a great start by Gordon, Liam and Gordon again, put me into first place with a decent lead, I wasn't able to hold onto the lead, struggling on the tough course, blowing dramatically two thirds of the way round, and being chased down by two strong runners; I brought home the team in third position. The third race of the weekend was my debut cyclocross race in York, which was a fun but tough experience, where I enjoyed the different style of racing and finished a distinctly average 38th position! It was also nice to catch up with my old coach Mark who was doing the timing for the race, who I've not seen in a long while.

The other race I have done recently was in November at the BUCS duathlon champs, where I finished a solid 9th position, first home for Uni of Leeds, helping the team to Bronze. I was happy with my splits which showed an improvement from the previous year, despite probably not being as fit as the same time last year, and I rode a strong 22.30 for the 10mile bike leg. Full results can be seen here: BUCS Duathlon 2013

Now in my final week of University before finishing for Christmas I'm looking forward to getting in a couple of weeks of proper consistent training, like I feel I was doing most weeks this time last year, then a nice Christmas at home with the family before heading away to Spain with some of the Leeds Tri Centre group for my first training camp abroad through new year into early January.