Another p.b. bites the dust!

Managed to smash my personal best for the 3.8km Ironman distance swim in the pool by over 6 minutes, finishing in 1 hour and 20 minutes. Now this is by no means fast, but at  least it is now 6 minutes faster than it was.  Thanks to Gillian for her inspiring coaching - like I said elsewhere, if the teaching ever goes to pot, a career in inspirational speaking must be on the cards!!!  :-)

Actually looking back on my earlier attempt (back in June 2012) there were a number of spurious lengths in the data. Now, I'd love to swim a 25 m length in 11 seconds, but to date, that isn't possible so I can only assume my watch was 'learning' my stroke so some of the data is decidedly dodgy! However, last night every length was spot on, so now I have a true marker to measure progress moving forwards.

After polishing off a protein shake and a couple of cinnamon and raisin bagels (yum), I headed upstairs for an hour on the treadmill. Most of the session was a steady zone 2 run, so the standard 5 mph and 5.5% on the treadmill. Then at 45 mins a 10 minute zone 4 effort was inserted - raising speed to 8 mph and dropping incline to 3% to stop my heart exploding out of my chest!

Got off the treadmill feeling great, both physically and mentally. It's great to be back training again.

My pal Derek is off on Thursday to conquer the infamous Marathon des Sables - 5.5 marathons over the course of 6 days in the Sahara Desert. You can check out his blog - details are in the 'other great blogs' on the right of this home page!

So, when you're sitting there, stuffed as a proverbial Easter turkey and the scrumpled foil on the floor around your feet is evidence of several missing chocolate eggs, think of all those nutters out there pushing themselves to the max… It's never too late to join us  ;-)

Have a great Easter holiday folks!!!