Just over 5 hours of training this week, should of been 7 but life, hay fever and the half marathon next week kinda got in the way. This is good though as I’ve been training for months prior to official week one and having an easy week is good for you.
Today’s bike ride just 2.5 hours including riding up the brickworks and being bounced about by the wind. Beautiful up there.
Today’s training was an 8 mile run which was a nice change from the longer ones I’ve done recently. Next week is Wilmslow half marathon so this was taper time (joy).
I wonder what others do whilst running. My mind wanders, I think about numerous things in a weird all over the place mad dream like way. It’s quite therapeutic. Although the other thing I’ve found myself doing in the last miles is imagining I’m in a race and I’m placing in my age group, about to overtake the person in third place…. I think about finishing my Ironman in a good time….imagine running down that blue lined last 100 metres and throwing my arms in the air as I go through the finish line. Sometimes I think my thoughts are those of a deranged crazy woman and other times I convince myself it’s true and this positive visualisation will help me to be amazing in some way.
Deranged is probably more in the ball park though 😆
Got up and raced to the pool to get there before 6am. It’s crazy there and people hog lanes early and do not like sharing. Icy windows and some roadworks meant I arrived at 6.05 dam! I threw off my clothes as if you’d told me Brad Pitt was in the next room, donned my super speedy swimsuit and hat and pegged it around to the edge of the pool. It was only 6.10 hurrah.
Alas all the regular swimmers, mostly over 70 had shown me up as they were already in the pool doing their laps and ALL lanes were claimed. Unbelievable! How do they get in there so fast?
I got in a lane where the swimmer was slow in both that lane and neighbouring lane and wove around them back and forth for 40 minutes. Still I managed my swim drills, catch up, quadrants, high elbow and finished with 8, 7, 6 etc lengths with 15 sec rests between. Total 1800m at 2.07 mins per 100m. That’s the boring bit.
Took at least an hour for goggle marks to fade, one of the delights of swimming when you’re 51. Might see if I can find myself a new pair, maybe something sexier, black shaded ones hmmmmm… internet awaits..
Had a rest day yesterday. This was not supposed to be the case but after many many nights of interrupted sleep due to hot flushes added to my pollen tree allergy I found I’d reached a whole new level of tiredddddd. Went to bed last night at 9pm and struggled to get up before 7am….sigh
At least day I was slightly more energised and managed a lunch run of 2.5 miles and a visit to the gym after work. I wonder how long the impact of menopause goes on for but I’ve heard months and years and some have even said it never stops….ah what now? So the wonderful side effects include feeling b*****sed, waking up hourly through the night, feeling slightly nautious and then having a hot flush every 30-60 minutes, having a brain that has been removed and replaced by tumble weed, losing things, forgetting things and last but not least noticing that alcohol no longer agrees with you (boohoo!!) 😩
Still I will do my Ironman I will, I will and no annoying hormones are going to stop me even if they do prevent me from getting out of bed sometimes….. so if my dearest hubby should read this please please please pull me out of bed tomorrow by my feet and kick me out the door so I can go swimming before work. Ta very much, your wife x
I love my workouts with the PT and it’s even more fun now as my husband and I do the workouts together (ok that sounds wrong..). The highlight of the masochistic hour is feeling sick whilst doing multiple mountain climbers before throwing a medicine ball at the ground and imagining the ground is someone you really hate. No seriously the highlight is doing boxing intervals with your husband and sizing each other up 😉
Emma (our PT) manages to get us to work really hard, is excellent at planning progressive workouts and is super nice to boot. I highly recommend.
Following the workout, I should have consumed a super healthy smoothie followed by a nutritious meal, however, the veggie pie, chips and beans were just too tempting. Next time.
2300m workout done. Doing drills in a 50m pool is very tiring but hey we did it. And apparently my black swimming hat meets my husbands approval… 😏. The coaching at Manchester Aquatics Centre is excellent though. I’m working on imagining my arm is a handle or something like that….high elbow, turn the handle, touch the thigh…..ooh nursey
Recently my husband and I went to get swimming analysis done. They take a video of you from the front, side and below water level. It’s incredibly interesting and you get feedback on your technique, with drills to improve. Tonight we will go for a coached lesson and hope to work on some drills to improve. Here is one of my videos. Amazing what you notice and learn from these.
Thanks for joining me!
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Second week into Fink training plan (well my extended version that allows me to be ill, take holidays etc) and I’m feeling pretty good. Its still impossible for me to imagine being able to move after 112 miles on a bike let alone run a marathon but I have 7 and a bit months to go yet…
I decided to set up a blog to motivate myself . If I write I’m going to get up early and swim then I have to right?
So a bit about me…. I started running in my early forties. I wasn’t completely unfit but I found running helped my mental health as I was a little down at the time. It took me ages to build up to 5 miles as running simply did not come naturally at all. I was (and still am) slow but I was stubborn and kept going. I joined a lovely friendly running group ‘Styal Runners’ and even though I was always at the back I enjoyed it.
I signed up to races next, 5k’s, 10k’s and even half marathons. I never found it easy but it was fun seeing if you could beat your last time and I enjoyed the other side effects like weight loss and getting a trimmer figure.
Some years into running I decided I wanted to do an ultra. This was perhaps an odd decision in light of the fact I hadn’t done a marathon but I had read that people doing ultras walked parts of the race, carried rucksacks and ate en route. It sounded fun. My lovely friend Kay said she wanted do an ultra too so we both signed up to a 55k race in the Lake District. Several months later and we were off…….I’d like to say it was fun (Kay did), but on the day I didn’t feel as good as I had on our training runs and felt a tad asthmatic at times. Still even when races are hard from start to finish you still look back and think oh that was great! The views were stunning and we did feel amazing when we finished. Kay was much faster than me but she waited for me and we ran into the finish line together and beamed in our end of race photos wearing our medals proudly.
Since that ultra I have wanted to do another one but issues with my back have prevented this from being an option. I even had a dream to run a really long way on a self supported adventure but sadly that was not to be. I haven’t completely ruled that out but a few years on and I’m still having sports massage for my back so I’d say it’s definitely ‘parked’ for now.
So I turned to triathlon. The switching of sports is somehow easier on the body. I have found a true love for swimming and it’s easily the one that comes most naturally. I still run and have become a tiny bit faster over the years although you would still find me in the second half of the people at any race. I love love cycling but it has been my hardest sport. I have struggled with many fears, fear of traffic, fear of downhills (this one borders on a phobia) and any surface where I think I might slip. Still for some reason I still love it and when it goes well and you overcome a fear it feels amazing.
A few years ago I did my first (and only) half Ironman. I was tired on the run but I came away realising I could of done it faster. It’s hard to know how to pace your first race of this length. In terms of the overall ratings there was probably about 25% of people behind me in the swim, maybe 10% behind me in the run and I was officially the slowest cyclist in the whole race! This was surprising to me as I didn’t realise i was this bad but I guess it gives me something to work on!
So there you have my sport history. Well prior to all that I used to dance, jazz and belly dance. I miss it sometimes but there seriously are not enough hours in the week to go back to that on top of tri training.
Apart from that I am newly married, settling into Romiley with my husband (who also does triathlon but is seriously good on a bike), my 20 year old son (when he’s not at Uni) and sometimes my step son joins us too and we all eat our tea in front of an episode of Rick and Morty (really bizarre).
I’m enjoying life (well apart from when I’m fanning myself down from the 30th hot flush of the day). At least this doesn’t happen whilst swimming :-).
Lorna Runs 