Do Your Thing!

Well week 8 has been a week of crazy times....the sort of week where one day it's Monday and the next time you looked Sunday has been and gone!

I've had my first big big week in terms of training volume since getting back into things after Ironman New Zealand, work has been busy and I've been putting the finishing touches to my AMP scholarship application that was submitted today! So lots of later nights and earlier starts than usual but I've ticked all the boxes on the training programme, turned up for work on the right days and nights and given myself the best chance I can at securing an AMP scholarship.... you have to be in to win! You can check out my online profile for my AMP scholarship application online using the link below!

http://www.doyourthing.co.nz/2010-00659/laura-clare-whelan

Training wise it has been a run focused week and my long run this week tipped the scales at 2 hours and 20 minutes! I managed to avoid the really big torrential downpours that I have attracted on every other run I've done this week but not the mud :-) I love the playground of the Waitakeres for running - so many excellent trails to discover with breathtaking views so I really relish the long runs out there on the trails which this week were in places knee deep in mud! I also had the 10km Run Auckland race at the end of the week so that was a decent hit out on tired legs!

I fear that I am starting to form an unhealthy relationship with my indoor cycle trainer thanks to weather bomb that lingered for most of the week! I had to schedule my long ride for Tuesday this week which was a day of torrential rain and high winds so I was once again relegated to the indoor trainer! I managed 3 hours 10 minutes before going insane and peeling myself off the thing! I'm really hoping that the weather brightens up a bit over the next week so I can get out on the roads again! My power targets for my interval cycle session this week went up a little and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were attainable - so I feel like the cycling is definitely coming back! Next week I've got a 40km cycle timetrial so that will be the perfect test to see where my power is and will help to set my power targets for the next couple of weeks!

On the swim front I have been focusing on technique and some strength work! I had a nice 20 x 200m set for my long swim this week which was again pretty solid but I held a consistent pace and send off time and got out of the pool feeling confident that the technique I worked so hard on during the Ironman build up is slowly coming back to me!

All in all a solid week of training! I'm starting this week which is another big one on a couple of night shifts so that will make scheduling a little tricksy and the post night shift jet lag will mean that I will have to cluster the harder sessions towards the end of week to optimise things from a performance point of view but hopefully by the time my 40km timetrial rocks around I will be ready to go!

Run Auckland - Race Report

Event -Run Auckland Race 4 - Milford
Date - Sunday 30th May 2010
Distance -10km Run
Time - 45:02 minutes
Age Group (30-39) - 5th
Overall Position - 14th

Well after a solid week of training that tipped the scales at 23 hours I had the Run Auckland Milford Race at the end of it! It had been a big run volume week and my calf had been a little niggely at the start of the week so I was a little nervous about what the morning would bring!

I had looked at the course map briefly the night before and it looked like an out and back with a segment of beach running - unfortunatley what the course map didn't show was the gradient of the course and not being familiar with the Milford area I arrived at the race start ignorant of what actually lay ahead! My first sniff that the course may be slightly on the 'vertical' side of things was when I bumped into a friend Simon at the start line who referred to the course as 'pretty hilly' - I would like to take the opportuity to correct that statement to VERY hilly!!

I seeded myself towards the front of the starting pack alongside the 40-50 minute 10km marker so that I would be starting with runners I could hang onto for pacing! Pacing is not my strong point for events like this that are a single discipline and much shorter than the usual distances I race - I have a tendency to get a little over excited at the start and head off all guns blazing only to hit a big wall of 'that was stupid' around the 4-5km mark!! I have deliberately selected a couple of short sharp 10km run races to try and address the pacing side of things and also to force me out of my comfort zone of the long distance endurance events!

So the starting hooter sounded and I got carried over the timing mat in the early surge and around the perimeter of the reserve we started in before hitting the streets of Milford! So here is the point where I learn that Milford is a rather hilly place - less than 1km in we are heading up a very long steep hill that seems endless! Short downhill before hitting the second climb as gnarly as the first and so it goes on for 10km! My legs begin protesting to the relentless gradients at around the 7km mark so it's a matter of head down and hang on to the small cluster of runners ahead that are keeping a solid but even pace! Soon enough I can hear the music of the finish line and both me and my legs are happy to have made it!

Quick glance at the watch to register the 45:02 minute finish which I am pretty pleased with considering the course - 4:30 Kilometres - a little off the 4 minute pace over the same distance I enjoyed in the build up to Ironman New Zealand but week 8 back into things and I'm happy with the result! Not quite so happy about the swim and bike I now have to get through before the run of night shifts I start tonight - there will definitely be a pair of skins under the scrubs tonight for sure!

So this week it was back to see my nutrionist Alison Rainbow at the Results Nutrition Centre and time to face the scarey scales and fat 'pinchers'! This year at Ironman New Zealand I had raced at a body fat percentage of 9.2% which is lowest I have been since I started seeing Alison 18 months ago. I had been keen to race at a lower fat percentage than the previous years 12% so that I could see what sort of effect this would have on my performance and 9.2% certainly worked well for me! I have however become increasingly aware that aswell as being lean from a fat precentage perspective I need to pair this with a decent muscular mass which I am lacking! So my focus for my session with Alison was to talk about how I could make gains in muscular mass without the expense of fat percentage!


However before looking at the longterm I needed to deal with the 'now term' and face the fact that my fat percentage was now in double in figures again! No surprises there then! It is important to gain weight post event to aid the recovery - I'm prone to picking up stress fractures when I'm light so a couple of kilograms in the post event weeks is not a bad thing! However, now I'm back into it and focused on my two big races in the coming months, the Capricorn Half Ironman and Kona, I need to start to bring the fat percentage back slowly so it is back to counting the calories and chomping my way through the protein! I will be back on the scales in a fortnight and then we will be addressing the muscle mass side of things!! Watch this space!


Training wise it has been a bike focused week with swimming as the second priority! I've knocked out just over 11 hours of cycling and 15km of swimming so I am feeling happy with both of those stats! I was relegated to the windtrainer for my long ride this week thanks to the gale force winds and torrential rain that has hit Auckland with a hiss and a roar! It seems that winter has arrived all of a sudden and I have spent the week reaching for my polyprops and thermal run leggings that have been gathering dust in my bottom drawer over the summer!


Hopefully nicer weather will be heading our way again soon :-)

Hello Easy Week!

Wahhhooooo! Hello to the easy week of training! After my first few weeks back into the swing of things and a number of weeks with back to back baseline timetrials it was nice to see the 'Easy Week' appear on the training programme - the focus of which is rest and recovery! Perfect! So all the sessions this week have been low intensity aiming to tick the boxes and get to the end of it feeling recovered!

Easy weeks are good oppertunities to take stock of where you are at and what still needs focus! The gym remains a challenge to factor into the training schedule around the shift work! So I have been making a concerted effort to get there and to book some one on one session with Paul my personal trainer at the Olympic Gym! It's a fine balance between getting what you need to out of gym work, strength and power, and leaving yourself unable to perform optimally in all the other sessions you need to tick off for the week! Each swim, bike, run session comes with performance targets of their own so if your arms are so fatigued they can't make the prescribed swim send off times, or your legs are too fatigued to hit the power targets in a cycling session or a required run pace then it becomes a bit of a false economy! Some Ironman athletes have never seen the inside of the gym and others couldn't imagine a training programme without it! We are all different! Personally I need to work on my strength so the gym is the ideal environment to focus purely on this however hitting my performance targets for the week is something that as an athlete I value to a greater extent so I am not believer in leaving my muscles so fatigued that they can't function for the next 3 days optimally! I've found using a recovery stack after the gym helps to combat the gym hangover the next day and also working with a trainer that understands the complexity of my schedule!