Baseline Baseline!

Well week 2 has been a little shock to the system with 2 'nasties' thrown in to the mix! Nasty number 1 was a 1500m swim timetrial and nasty number 2 was a 25km cycle timetrial! All in all the system got a very rude awakening this week as I attempted to rally the go fast fibres and record something semi decent for the baseline tests!

I was lucky enough to score a lane to myself for the swim timetrial at my local haunt that is Mount Albert aquatic centre so on the plus side I wasn't having to navigate around social swimmers! The cycle timetrial was on the indoor cateye trainers and my tactic for the baseline was simply survive to the end without blowing up! Mission accomplished....I'm still here to tell the tale! My power was, as anticipated, down on the Pre Ironman recordings and I was just under a minute slower but all in all I was pretty pleased with how they both went!

I've had a sore foot again since last week and finally dragged myself to see Deno my physio for a look at it! Looks like it is a combination of grumpy tendons and a grumpy toe joint so I was one very relived possum that it wasn't a stress fracture......the prospect of another injury riddled few months was not very appealing! Deno thinks I should be as good as new in a few weeks so fingers crossed it all goes to plan!!

And So It Begins!

And so it begins again! The end of week 1 back into training after the big break to recover from Ironman New Zealand and my mind is firmly focused on the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii!

Having now been through the process of getting back into training after racing an Ironman several times I am always surprised that I forget how hard it feels just to get through the shortest and easiest of sessions! This is probably not helped by the fact that I am now several kilograms heavier than I would care to admit after 3 weeks of over indulgence with my Mum!

The sessions have been short and easy aside from a sneaky 400m swim time trial the coach sneaked into the programme this week! That was a pretty ugly affair however I appreciate that now is a good time to start setting some baselines for the Kona build up - things can only get better!

Despite feeling sluggish and rather wobbley I do feel very focused on the next 6-12 months having sat down with Tony (my coach) last week to go through a long term plan for my transition to professional racing next season. We have a clearly marked out plan with events, goals and build up targets - having this marked out means that we are both on the same page and moving forward together in the same direction! Exciting stuff!