Having no fixed abode makes for some interesting logistics. Bikes in different places, moving between locations by different means has meant that for this weekends National Relays I’m racing my Indie. Here’s a piccie of it converted for racing. It has Oval under only tri bars, deep section front, disc rear, forward pointing seatpost and a compact chainset meaning my biggest gear is 50 x 12 – could be spinning that out this weekend.

Just finished our Rutland training camp and I’ve achieved most of what I wanted. Firstly was consistency. In the 4 weeks we’ve been there I’ve ridden over 2,200 miles only not riding on two days. I swum 90km and spent 21 hours in the gym. Running has not been quite what I’d hoped.

There are a couple of graphs showing swim and bike volume, load and strain for the year. The past couple of months have seen me training much much better than the same period last year. It’s not just volume but the actual pace I’ve been training at is much better. I’m feeling very fit and strong when out on the bike or in the pool. My schedule for the period to heading out to Kona (and after in fact) is sorted and I puts me in a great environment to push these two on further. I have a week longer in London, then a week in North Yorkshire, followed by 2 weeks at La Santa before a brief period in London and then off to Kona ! I can foresee good consistent swim volume which I know always improves my swimming plus the opportunity for solid hill work on the bike.

As for running.

That makes poor reading. Green is last year. At this point Wisconsin was imminent and I ran really well there. This years running couldn’t be much worse ! It is proving very frustrating and  it’s certainly a good job I enjoy training so much. Must admit I’ve been wondering whether I should just switch to bike TTing … only a passing thought. Whats happening is I get to about 15 miles a week, it feels good and lasts a few weeks then my toes start to hurt and I have to ease off. I’m at the end of the second cycle of this. Luckily my consultant has squeezed me in and I’m seeing it tomorrow. I’m currently just at the end of another off period and ran really well last night in my racing flats that I’ve used for the past couple of years. Quite happy running 5 miles through London in 39 minutes. I felt really strong. The problem is I can’t imagine my legs are conditioned enough to not fall apart in the marathon. With just over 7 weeks to go even if my foot has no problems going forward it’s going to be tight. I feel my focus should be to increase the length I can run one go as thats going to be the real limiter not my run speed. Whether that is practical we will see over the coming weeks.

In a bizarre twist I actually feel quite excited about the unknownness about it. What will happen when I try to run a marathon completely unprepared ??