12 Weeks To Go
Finally i can look forward to an easy week after going hard for the last 3 weeks. People often ask me what i do during easy week and what i intend to get out of it. This obviously differs for every person but i will try and give you a run down below.
Triathletes in particular do not treat rest weeks very seriously and i am probably one of those culprits. After doing a 2, 3 or 4 week hard block you need to give your body a rest in order to adapt to the increased load and allow your muscles to recovery and build. It also puts you in a better mental state to be able to start your next hard block fresh and perform better.
I find that running is the most taxing discipline due to its weight baring nature and causes the most fatigue and muscle soreness. Therefore, I heavily reduce my running load and intensity during a recovery week. This allows me to still maintain a moderate to high volume of cycling and swimming without feeling tired. For some people swimming may cause the most fatigue so I would suggest reducing the swimming load in this case.
You can see below that I was able to cycle and swim relatively well this week due to my decreased running load.
Monday 27/7
There was no way I was missing swimming this week despite a late night out at Cicconi’s celebrating Clare’s birthday. Well, 10:30pm is not that late but for us Triathletes it is well past Fat Cat’s bedtime. Again, I missed the first few hundred metres of the warm-up which resulted in a 4.2km session for the morning. I rode into work nice and easy and managed to sneak in a river loop on the way home. Lisa had prepared another dinner which was ready on my arrival, as she often does and we had a relaxing night at home for a change. The one downside of getting home early is that I have to put up with Home and Away but I can usually find something to do out in the shed instead.
Tuesday 28/7
After a relatively easy day yesterday I am already starting to feel good and the ride this morning was no exception. I rode into the city from home and joined up with the Narrows group for a lap around the river. The first 20km’s is always fairly pedestrian so I tend to sit in the bunch and get warmed up. The pace then builds as we start heading along the coast so I work my way to the front and try to do as many turns as possible. I did this until we hit Canning Hwy where I looked up and found the group had been held up somehow. I proceeded to work hard along Melville Beach Pde where I bumped into Lisa’s group then over Majestic and towards the Raffles. The peleton eventually wound me back in just before the Raffles and I was suitably stuffed at this point. I realised I hadn’t eaten any breakfast before the ride and it was starting to take its toll but I continued with the remaining riders to finish off around Shelley and back into the city for work. A solid 80km ride this morning with a few hard turns.
Instead of a hard intervals run session I met up with Glenn at Perry Lakes after work and we headed off for a 45min run through Bold Park. Although there were some hills the pace was quite steady at 4:45/km. During our travels we saw Lisa doing her hill repeats with a massive smile on her face, waving frantically and advising us of her new P.B. she had just done. Lisa, I don’t know anyone else that can do hill repeats and look that good?????
Wednesday 29/7
I actually woke up this morning feeling great and looking forward to putting in a strong performance at swimming. The rest week must definitely be working as I am usually tired before most sessions. Little did I know that we had a 1km time trial today but after finding out I was secretly looking forward to it. I posted a time of 13:35 just 5 weeks ago so I wanted to beat that and do low 13mins if I could. Thankfully the past 5 weeks of hard work paid off and I posted a time of 13:15. It was a morning of P.B’s today as Kim smashed her previous best by over 30sec to swim under 16mins and Chris who has only been swimming with us for 7 weeks went from 15mins down to 13:45! Although it wasn’t a P.B. for Lisa, 13:58 is a great time and shows what a few weeks of hard work can do. I haven’t seen Lisa swim this well for a few years and give it a few more weeks I’m sure she will be swimming even faster for the Worlds.
Just a cruizy ride to and from work today as I have the TWA Board Meeting to attend. Sadly it is my last meeting on the board after 2 years but I can say I will certainly not miss the 4hr board meetings. It was a great bunch of people to work with and I feel the board collectively has achieved some great results over the past few years. TWA delivers the biggest Half Ironman event in the country each year and has created a very successful junior development program. Not to mention the healthy financial state that the association is in. It’s just a pity Triathlon Australia can’t get its shit together and organise a half decent national series.
Thursday 30/7
I was looking forward to finally getting out on the Thursday morning SRG ride today after such poor weather the last few weeks. I rocked up to see a small handful of guys waiting at the bus stop but it is the quality of the riders rather than the size of the group that counts. Most of the big hitters were there including Dan Gooch (Gucci), Owen Jones (Spider), John Gregg (Stinky) and Clint May with Spud and Rif hanging on the back. No surprises that team manager (Rod Fitzgerald) failed to show again but he assures us he will smash us all next week….. Clint did the majority of the work on the front for the first half of the ride and despite saying he would draft the whole way, Gucci just couldn’t stay away from the front. Again, I felt good this morning so I decided to push the pace on the hills around Pt Walter and Majestic. I couldn’t offer much on the flat sections so Gucci happily took the reins and pushed the pace up to 53km/hr before some young drafter on a TT bike jumped off the front with 500m to go hitting 58km/hr. A very solid ride today and a good hot-out before the Pinjarra Classic this weekend.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was to show up to running tonight and not have to do any form of intervals, especially hill repeats. Glenn and I jogged down to the coast and proceeded to run a steady 10km’s averaging 4:15/km pace. A few weeks ago this would have been quite uncomfortable but today it felt like a walk in the park and I’m really starting to feel some improvement on the run.
Friday 31/7
Woke up early today keen to get a whole swim session in and had to drag Lisa out of bed to join me. After swimming a solid 2km’s early Peter tells us that we have another 400m time trial this week. Not sure why we are doing so many but it can’t hurt. The arms felt a bit tired today but I managed to post a time of 5:15 which is 9sec faster than last week. Still, I didn’t swim much faster than my 1km pace so hopefully I can get that below 5mins in the next month or so. Peter always seem to make us hurt and today was no exception. After the time trial we continued with another 24×100m to finish with 4.8kms. Feeling absolutely buggered after that but thankfully Lisa offered to drop me into work and I have the rest of the day off.
Saturday 01/08
This morning was absolute heaven as i got to sleep in to 7am while Lisa was up at 5:30am for her long ride. I have to enjoy it when i can as it doesn’t happen very often and tomorrow the tables will be turned the other way. I eventually made my way out of the house for a 60min run along the coast towards City Beach and back. It felt like midday but there were hundreds of cyclists getting around and i was feeling left out not being out on my bike myself. The run wasn’t meant to be too hard with the race tomorrow so i settled into 4min/km pace and completed 15kms for the day. Only 1 session for today which feels very strange but i will be thankful tomorrow when my legs are fresh.
We spent the rest of the day trying to chase Karl Thorstensen along the Avon as he did his first decent but he was travelling too fast and we finally caught him at the finish line on day 1. 5hrs of paddling in 1 day is more than enough but i don’t know how these guys wake up again and do it all again the next day but even longer. Karl managed a very respectable time of 12hrs 2min for both days to put him in 48th in the long plastics category. Not bad at all for a first attempt and he even managed to stay in the boat for the entire day 2 section despite all the rapids.
Sunday 02/08
Woke up feeling great today especially after the easy week and looking forward to the Pinjarra Classic cycle race. A full race report can be found on my blog but in summary i was pretty happy with the result. Arrived home feeling absolutely smashed and thinking i might have tomorrow morning off in order to let the legs recover. All in all it was a pretty good week with 13kms of swimming, 360kms of cycling and 35kms of running and i even managed to cook 2 dinners this week. Next week is back to hard week again and JK promises to have some killer run sessions in store.
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Ups and downs
Great session this morning with Kim, Mick and Jasmin (WA’s female open triathlete of the year for 2009!) doing repeats up Reabold Hill. I managed 7 climbs which was good but the problem with hills sessions is your total km always seems so disappointing. 32km at the end. We also had a guest appearance this morning from our superstar friend Brad Hoskings! He is a bit of a legend around town for his huge ironman performances and sometimes, just sometimes, he outruns Sean in the longer races… at the age of 40. Impressive!
Here’s Brad, Kimmy and Jazz at the top of Reabold with the sunrise in the background
Look at their healthy flushed cheeks! Way to start your day 
)
As expected, homegirl Kimmy kicked my butt up the hills, as did Mick and Jazz. Hey, someone’s gotta be at the back right? I think I beat some walkers. Reabold is a very beautiful place to start your day, even if you are getting your butt kicked. Tempo run is on the cards for tonight followed by one of Sean and my favourite dinners, spicy sesame noodles yum! Might post a recipe and a pic if anyone’s interested. Happy Thursday!
PS The downside to this morning’s ride was it ended in tears. As I was riding home, some young guy in a black car didn’t look to his right while going through a roundabout and was literally centimetres from taking me down. For some reason, Perth drivers are crap at roundabout rules. PLEASE give way to your right, y’all readers and don’t make a young gal cry coz i did, it gave me a good scare. To his credit, once he realised what he’d done, he had a very guilty expression before driving on.
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Dadadadum dadadadum
This morning I really didn’t feel like going swimming, might have had something to do with it being 3 degrees outside and a whole lot warmer in my bed. But I got my lazy ass up anyway, with a sense of doom upon my shoulders.
I’m not a big fan of surprises, so i always steal a peek at Peter’s session before jumping in. It is always typed neatly onto a small piece of paper which he hides on or under his pull buoy. Pretty sure he doesn’t know there’s prying eyes, but hey, that’s how i roll. I’m sneaky and I like to be in the loop. No surprises thank you, unless it’s a really good present. And the squad ultimately benefits because I like to think of myself as Peter’s trusty assistant, filling in the others about what’s going on when they didn’t hear it the first time, because i already know what’s happening. Sean loves it when i do that, especially when there’s butterfly involved. Sometimes he regresses and pretends he no speak English when I say butterfly. No pain, no gain Prawn!
Anyway, the doom and gloom was quickly realised – 1000m time trial. My favourite. I felt nervous the entire warm up and prayed I would do a reasonable time, not get lapped by Sean and try to lap Kimmy (sorry Kimmy, i get my kicks where i can). Anyway, goal was to do under 1.25 pace (14.10) and somehow I managed a 13.58 which was a decent start to the season. I wasn’t close to being lapped by Sean and I did get Kimmy on the last 100m. Sweet. You can get me back on the bike/run, doll!
No training tonight and no Sean, he’s at board meeting, so I watched Home and Away without criticism and read my book. Lovely!
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Breakaway!
It’s not often I’m involved in a breakaway, lately I’ve just been desperately trying to keep up on group rides. This morning, with a decent warm up from home, my legs were feeling stronger than they have been (about time!). I was rolling turns comfortably throughout Point Walter until we got to Melville Parade, which is the last opportunity for hard roll throughs. Then who should turn up, but the husband! He rolled past us with a goofy grin and a big hello and before I knew it, the front guys put on a surge and jumped on Sean’s tail. I was up for a challenge this morning and after crunching my quads, managed to get up to them and finished the group ride off on a high, especially when I look behind to see we’ve dropped the rest of the group and I was the only girl to hang on. Beauty! Right time, right place perhaps, but it still felt good. I also got to ride halfway home with homegirl Nadia which was fun too. 61km under the belt, longest weekday ride since the Half.
Hilly run tonight with Markedo and Kimmy which was tough, especially when I had to pee halfway through the set. Fortunately, we were running in Bold Park where there are loads of bushes. Unfortunately I still managed to pee on my shoe. Nevermind, could have been worse, Sean has told me a few stories about bush number twos. Nasty. Ran 5.50 for the first, then 5.32 and finally a 5.24 on the last climb (sorry that’s probably of no interest to y’all readers but it’s a good record for me!). Sean cooked dinner tonight, yay! Lub you husband.
Introducing running crew from left to right: JK (supercoach), Sean, Markedo, Glenn, me and Kimmy
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13 Weeks To Go
When i started this program i had exactly 20 weeks till the World Champs in October, already it is down to 13 and i cannot believe how fast the time is flying by. In the past 7 weeks i have lost 3.5kg’s, most of which was put on while holidaying in Bali. My running has been going great under the direction of Jon Kappler and while my times in the pool aren’t fantastic at the moment i am relatively happy with my progress. Hopefully the last few weekends of riding in the hills will boost my cycling and this weekends Pinjarra Classic cycle race will be a good gauge. Here is a quick run down of last week’s training which was the last hard week of a 3 week block.
Monday 20/7
Had every intention of getting out of bed at 5am for swimming but after watching the tour and hearing the weather outside i just couldn’t do it. There was absolutely no resistance from Lisa so i slept-in and earnt some brownie points that would come in handy later. Missed sessions tally is now at 2 after 7 weeks of training! Rode into work and back to get some form of exercise for the day but nearly got blown off the road in the gale force winds.
Tuesday 21/7
Absolute crap weather again today so Lisa and i joined Glenn and Kim at the gym for a 45min spin class. These are fairly good sessions as they get the heart rate up but aren’t quite long enough and don’t seem to trnaslate to speed on the road. Definately better than staying in bed! Interval run was suppose to be on the old Perry Lakes track tonight but Dave convinced us all they had locked it up and we couldn’t enter. So we ran with the Marathon Club group on the grass and managed to pump out 7×1km efforts with a 200m float between each.
Wednesday 22/7
Somehow made it to swimming on time this morning! Lisa must have forgotten to hit the snooze button, but she took some angry pills instead. Word of warning, never do anything other than exactly what the coach tells you if you are swimming in the same lane as Lisa or beware the lane Nazi! I decided to swim hard freestyle in the main set instead of the 750m worth of butterfly the coach had programmed. Slack i know, but after attempting the first 50m of fly i was completely shagged and turned to freestyle instead. Boy was that the wrong thing to do and Lisa let me hear all about it. To her credit, Lisa did the whole butterfly set and it is no wonder why she is now swimming right on my toes. Biggest swim session so far with a solid 5km’s done today.
Jogged in to work from Subiaco in the morning then did a solo tempo run in the afternoon around the bridges. 10km’s at 3:37/km pace then straight to North Perth for a massage. Tried out Luke Ballin at the Loftus Centre for the first time and the massage was excellent. I will be going back there for sure.
Thursday 23/7
The weather this week is going from bad to worse and my training is heading in the same direction. Missed the ride this morning but was probably a good thing as i started to feel signs of an ITB injury on the ride into work. Nothing too serious yet but will have to keep an eye on it and focus more on stretching. 3rd missed session! After having the morning off i rocked up to the evening run session feeling pretty good. Another session of Reabold repeats with 12mins effort in total. Doesn’t seem like much on paper but after doing the same session the last 2 weeks i can say it is one of the hardest run sessions i have done. Young Jack had to sit out a couple on the first attempt and Cam Muir recieved a rude awakening when he came down this week after being in France for the past 7yrs. It was a relief to get that session over with but i am nervous to see what JK has in store for us in the next hard phase.
Friday 24/7
Thankfully Lisa was much more subdued at swimming this morning, maybe due to the fact that i was doing what the coach instructed. 400m time trial on the cards today and i managed to swim 5:24, not overly fast considering crazy Paul in the next lane almost lapped me to swim 4:52. I usually have Friday afternoons off but due to the bad weather mid-week and missing a key ride i took the TT bike into work with the intention to get in a session on the way home. Somehow Lisa didn’t pick up on this and i thought i was going to get away with it until she phoned me at 4:30pm asking (i really mean telling) me if i was going to visit her sick Nanna after work. There was no easy way of getting out of this one so i broke it to her the best way possible and left work with a very guilty conscience. Must have been Karma but i realised halfway home that i had no keys to get in the house and had to wait out in the cold for 20mins before Lisa arrived home. Took the washing off the line for redemption but it was going to take much more than that to get back in the good books.
We had dinner out at Ria’s in Leederville with Lisa’s parents Linda and Paul and was one of the nicest dinners i have had in ages. The food was extremely tasty and the portions huge. We actually had left-overs at the end which is unusual for me and i couldn’t physically eat any more.
Saturday 25/7
I had a 1:40min run on the program this morning and was going to run 50mins from Scarborough to King’s Park then meet up with the Stadium mob run and do another 50mins or so. Lisa had 50mins on her program and was going to meet me in Kings Park but i forgot to mention to her that i had food in the car. Don’t worry i thought, i would see her at the start of the run and get my food then, but halfway there things started to go wrong. I only left myself 40mins to run the 12km’s to King’s Park and was cutting it pretty fine when my stomach started to react to the previous nights dinner. I stopped for several minutes trying desperately to hold everything in, praying there would be a toilet up ahead and getting some very strange looks from people walking their dogs. There was no way i was going to get away with ducking behind a tree and thankfully i made it to a loo in Shenton Park somewhere. The rest was history but lets just say i walked out of there 2kg’s lighter and feeling a whole lot better. Unfortunately i missed the start of the mob run and my opportunity to re-fuel so i desperately chased them around Kings Park trying to find Lisa. I finally found Lisa and Kim after 17km’s and staggered back to the car for a quick gel. I managed another 7km’s to bring the total to 24km’s for the day at an average pace of 4:16/km. Pretty happy with the end result as it was my longest run so far on the program. Finished the day off with a quick swim in the afternoon at Challenge and headed out to Stuart Reside’s and Vanessa Whitehand’s engagement party that evening.
Sunday 26/7
Finally some clear weather so Lisa and i both headed out for a long hills ride with the Stadium Group this morning. Missed the start after having to stop for a pee and chased the group for the next 10km’s into Welshpool. Glenn Martinovich, Cam Muir, Mikey Gee and myself all deviated at the bottom of Welshpool and headed up Crystal Brook Rd for an extra challenge. After getting halfway up i was seriously regretting that decision as the climb kicked up to 11%. We turned left at Welshpool Rd and decended the hill just to turn at the bottom and climb Welshpool Rd straight after. Glenn was not looking too impressed at the top but we continued on and did the Patterson Rd loop around Pickering Brook before re-grouping in Kalamunda. Having done some long hills rides the last 2 weeks i was glad this one was a bit shorter but i still felt suitably smashed by the time i arrived home.
Took Lisa out for lunch up at Yelo in Trigg that afternoon so that she would let me paddle later that day. It ended up being a very short session with Kim and Karl doing 35mins from Sorrento SLSC but it was still worth the hot chocolate at the end.
A solid week with about 18hrs of training and still married! I will have to make a few dinners next week during easy week and rack up as many brownie points as possible as the next 3 week block is going to be a big one.
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Goodbye tour, hello pillow
Thank god the tour is over. We all love it, but my gosh, does it take its toll when you’re getting up at 5am and not hitting the pillow until nearly midnight. This morning we got up in a bleary-eyed fug, due to the final stage to Paris, for swimming. Our squad is brilliant and we are honoured to train with the legendary Peter Tanhem (22-time Rottnest solo swimmer) and other swimming champions in their own right. Every morning Peter serves up a surprising slice of pain. It’s nearly always different (apparently he has a selection of hundreds of sessions that he has created over time) and it always hurts, a lot, even when you get to the point where you get results while flexing in the mirror (that’s Sean, not me… ok occasionally it’s me). A main set series of 500m got me to 4.2km this morning, although ahem, I believe Sean got in 4.1km. That’s 1 to me, 13,756 to Sean. Good start!
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Word from the wife
Introduction to Lisa’s corner
So athletic prowess at the elite level is really interesting, right? I love reading about those at the top of the tree and how they went about getting there. The aim is for Sean’s blogging to hopefully enlighten y’all in that sort of way. On the other hand, there’s me! Not so elite, yet with plenty of goals of my own such as successfully chatting underwater, revealing the highly toned six-pack that has shyly hidden for years and of course, competing at worlds myself in the 25-29 age group category with some degree of competitiveness. There’s also the support role I play to my new husband which is equally important. So my blogging attempts will enlighten y’all on the fun, tears and tantrums of getting my age-group ass to worlds while making sure my devastatingly handsome, forever training husband not only gets to worlds, but seriously dominates. And he will!
PS Add your comments at the bottom of the page with anything interesting you have to say about your own training, questions, quests for the truth (sometimes Sean tells white lies, for the good of the people or himself- they’re usually really funny too) or just to tell us what you think of the blog.
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Welcome and Introduction
Many people in the past have asked why i don’t have a website and now that i finally have my act together i have people asking me why i do want a website. Previously i haven’t had anything interesting or worth writing about but with my inclusion in the Australian Elite Team for the Long Course World Champs later this year i thought this would be as good a time as any to start. My intention is to write a weekly update of my progress leading into the World Champs and any race results along the way. To try and keep it interesting Lisa will also be writing a weekly blog from an age-group perspective and with her superior journalism skills i’m sure it will make the site worth checking out from time to time.
A huge thankyou must go out to Kelly Exeter who has helped set up the site for us both in such short notice despite being very pregnant and due in less than a weeks time. That girl never seems to stop working and i wish her all the best with the birth. My bet is on the baby being a boy but we will soon find out i’m sure.
After completing the Busselton 1/2 Ironman back in May i enjoyed 4 weeks of very cruisy training followed by 2 weeks in Bali. I found it very difficult taking a forced break when i was feeling so fit after the half and not wanting to let anything go before my build-up to the worlds. But the rest did me a world of good and i returned feeling more motivated than i have ever been, albeit a few kilo’s heavier. It took 2-3 weeks to get back to my previous form and i have seen a steady improvement ever since. My program started 20 weeks out from the Worlds and now with just 13 weeks to go the big day is approaching very fast.
I have made a few changes to my routine this season, most notably employing the services of a run coach (Jon Kappler) who is assisting in writing my program. While i swim with a structured squad and train with a few groups cycling, my run has always been all over the place and i usually do most sessions on my own. I realised this could be my biggest area of improvement so Jon is writing a weekly run program that fits around the rest of my sessions and i am already seeing some massive improvements. The Joondalup State 10km road champs in 3 weeks time will be my first test and i’m looking forward to posting a P.B. Swimming has been going well after joining Peter Tanhem’s Rottnest Channel Swim group at Challenge Stadium, and NO i am definately not swimming to Rotto. It just happens to be a great bunch of people and Peter always knows how to make you work hard in the pool. It fits in well around other sessions and there are some amazing swimmers there. The cycling has been hard over the past few weeks with the bad weather but i am looking forward to improving on that and this weekend will be the first test down at the Pinjarra Classic.
Well, i hope you enjoy reading the blog and i will be updating on a weekly basis as i count down to the World Champs. Feel free to make comments if you wish or write me an email if you have any specific questions you want answered.
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