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 :-)