A frosty start.

Monday 13th January 2014

Cycling (15.66 Miles / 01:10:27 / 13.60 MPH / HRZ 2 / Cadence 73)

Do you ever make a decision and then regret it about 5 minutes later?  That was me today.

I decided to ignore the frosty conditions on the roads today and carry on with my planned cycle in to work.

Alarm bells should have been ringing for me when I had to wheel my bike down to the end of our road before getting on as it was so slippy that there was no way I could have ridden it down the road.  Things didn’t get a lot better once I was on to the main road as the inside part of the lane was still frosty and I was forced to ride out in the lane a bit more than normal.

It’s funny how at these times you start to think things like, “what would happen if I just slid off and there was a car behind me?” – and other such cheery thoughts.

Thankfully I managed to make it to work unscathed and un-fallen but it was a very slow ride, mostly due to the conditions but also due to the fact that the traffic also seemed to be going really slowly and I had no way through it.

The ride back home again was much better and thankfully I didn’t really encounter any frost on the way back home.

In future I will have to give a lot more consideration to the safety side of winter road conditions, as one little fall could put my whole Ironman training in jeopardy – but on the same hand I can’t wrap myself in cotton wool.  Bad conditions often mean good training and character building.

 

Swimming (2150 M / 00:59:11)

Technique Session

Legs!  It’s all about the legs.

At least that what I was feeling like about twenty minutes in to the session this evening.

The usual warm up was followed by a session that was, for me anyway, really tough.  We focussed on kick drills at increasing intensity and this really exposed my weakness.  I have a very weak kick.

My full out effort at kick is about the same as some of the other guys easy efforts and it completely knackers me.  It makes me wonder should I start to build in a bit of leg strength work such as weights to try and build up a bit more?  It might help my cycling also.

Thankfully we moved off the kick drills and on to stroke drills with the Pull Buoy.  I love these, and it’s quite nice to see that my stroke is relatively strong as I can catch some of the quicker guys when we are just using our arms.  It’s clear to me that the continued focus on stroke combined with increased leg strength and efficiency is the way forward.