Wednesday 13 February 2013

The first brick...

An eventful few days so far this week! Nick's great Chi-running course on Saturday, Monday off but rushing about all over, so would hardly call it a rest day and then on Tuesday I had my first proper VO2 test on the bike. I'll explain more about this in a separate post once I get my hands on the data. I'm scheduled to go back on on Friday to do another VO2 test but this time on the treadmill.

Tonight was the first brick session: a bike ride very quickly followed by a run. If you've never watched a triathlon before, get yourself along and check out the transition 2 area… this is where the triathletes who have already completed the swim and bike have to jump off their mean machines and start running. The first time I did this at the Stirling Sprint triathlon I thought I was having an out of body experience… my legs felt totally disconnected - I took a few wobbles before eventually getting the signals in tune so I could control my wayward legs!

Tonight I belted along on the bike for 45 minutes, pushing pretty hard at 90 rpm to maintain my heart rate around 140 bpm whilst trying to distract myself from the pain by watching the Man U vs. Real Madrid game on the telly. 45 minutes have never passed so slowly and the final few minutes seemed to drag until the magical 45:00 came up on the Garmin and I jumped off, removed my bike shoes and got the running shoes on. I started off at my usual 5% incline and 5.5 mph but this felt very slow coming off the bike so I steadily decreased the incline and upped the speed until things felt more natural. I managed to get up to about 9 mph keeping the heart rate in zone 2 until 15 minutes had passed and then it was time for cool-down and leg stretches followed by a protein shake.

Tomorrow I'm scheduled for another 1 hour cycle and a swim session so I suspect the alarm will be going off at 5:30 a.m. With that in mind, I'll sign off for now!

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