Been sorting out a King of The Mountains competition for the Triathlon club. Going to do it over the course of 7 climbs. It will be based on points but each subsequent climb will be handicapped based on the current placings. Hopefully this will give everyone a decent chance at the jersey.

Over the past few weeks John and I have cycled the course getting details of the climbs. It’s a pretty tough little route – just over 40 miles but taking well over 3 hours to ride.  It got me thinking about how little hill work I did most of last year. I think I got rather hooked on mileage for quite a while and this resulted in a tendency to avoid climbing. This year I’m trying to get some decent climbing done. Over last year I gradually moved to being more interested in time in the saddle rather than distance. This wasn’t intentional it just happened. This focus on time means distance becomes less of a concern just something you note at the end of the ride out of interest. With the Fred Whitton weekend coming up and then Epic Italy getting good on the climbs is pretty crucial.

To get myself back into running a repeating a little challenge I did before Christmas but this time I’ve upped it a notch. Last Monday I started trying to complete 60 runs of at least 60 minutes in 60 days. This leads into my taper for Ironman Germany. So far I’m well ahead of myself (though I need to get some in the bag) – 2 runs on Monday, 1 Tuesday, 3 Wednesday, 2 yesterday and one so far today with another planned will put me on 10 runs in 5 days. I am feeling pretty tired but it’s a good feeling and it’s nice to see my running motivation returning.

I’ve finally got back into the habit of going to the gym. For a couple of weeks now I’ve done a couple of 1 hour sessions and now it feels like a habit – I really quite enjoy it. It’s quite a release from normal training since it’s so different from all the aerobic work I do normally. I feel this could be whats been missing from getting my swimming back to where it should be.