WEEK 5

Coming to the end of week 5, I got severely demoralised and wanted to give it all up. Somehow I got over those feelings and when someone phoned me up to do a 10km run at very short notice i.e. 24hrs I said yes.
I would have been happy just to finish as I'd never ran over 5km. I was aiming to do it under 1.20hrs so I was happy when I finished in 1.03. This helped to renew my enthusiasm and I am back in proper training.

Week 3

Not much happening, same as previous weeks. Biked for about 40 mins and 2 hours in the gym. Swam for about hour and a half. Found a way of combining a dog walk with the run and killed 2 birds with one stone.

The bike consisted of cycling to the swimming pool, doing a 600m swim. Then biking back. When I checked the computer I had hit 40mph at one stage, obviously that was one of the down hill sections.

Week 2

A bit of a slower week on the training front. Two sessions in the gym working on strength, plus some swimming again. This time just practicing technique, in the words of Bart at the moment my swimming 'both sucks and blows at the same time'

Finished the week with an easy bike ride around the course where the triathlon is being held nice flat and smooth, 10 miles in all. But looking at the lake I will have to swim fills be with fear.

Week 1 The end of

The end of week 1, more swimming and a run. My swimming sucks big time, so I am now getting some coaching as currently I struggle to do 100m doing front crawl. Though I managed to swim 750m (backstroke) in 29mins.

Luckly the run was n´t so bad, not sure how far I ran, the distance will be measured next time.

Now looking forward to a day off then week 2.

Week 1 - Bike maintenance

Normally I ride a mountain bike. I have decided to dust off my road bike which I have n't ridden for about 10 years. It's still in a good condition but a few things need to be replaced. The brake and cables have all rusted and siezed up.

So far I have ordered a load of parts online to replace parts and upgrade others.
So far new pedals, new cables and I have also decided to upgrade the down tube gear shifters to some intergrated STI levers. It would have probably been cheaper to buy a new road bike from ebay with what I appear to have spent so far.

Week 1 Swimming

Down to the local pool, to see how far I can actually swim. I managed to swim 800m though it wasn't pretty a bit of front crawl, a bit of breaststroke and a hell of a lot of backstroke.

I am happy that I can swim that distance, it's the most I have swam in my life (I think)! That's a personal hurdle cleared, now if I can improve my times and technique I will be a lot happier.

The Start

My gym instructor suggested for a challenge to enter in to a triathlon. Up for a new challenge I said yes. I now find myself with a group of friends in training for our first event. The event itself is a 750m swim, 20kM bike ride followed by 5km run.

Race day is June 2009 which leaves about 12 weeks of training, I am not to worried about the run or the bike ride,but the thought of swimming 750m in open waters is daunting. I am a very poor swimmer with a poor technique, this is where most of my training will be concentrared on.