A Solid Steady!

It is hard to believe that I am now through the other side of week 17 in the build up to Kona and less than two weeks away from the start line of the Capricorn Half Ironman! Time seems to have moved very quickly over the last couple of weeks!

So week 17 was a bit of a biggie - the last solid week before the training winds down a little going into the Capricorn! All up I swam 16km, cycled 370km and ran my way through 40km. The run volume was down a little after a big run week last week but what I lost in the run kms I made up for on the bike!

I revisited the 40km time trial this week which went better than it did 2 weeks ago! I had a few technical hitches at the start.....namely a flat tyre when I got my bike out of the car and then an exploding inner tube......and although I did almost verge on a complete sense of humour failure ultimately I figured it was better to get these things out of the way before the start rather than part way through!! I managed to pace the time trial better and shave a couple of minutes off my last attempt although I averaged the same power over all! My power comparative to this time last year is actually down by about 18 watts over this specific time trial distance so trying to figure out why that is has driven me a little nuts over the last week! I've been thinking about my weight, type of training and volume but nothing seems to jump out much! Perhaps my legs are generally just a little more tired!

The majority of the big bike kilometres were spent on the indoor cycle trainer! Not because the weather sucked but because I got taken out by a car at the end of the week - slightly hairy moment bouncing on the bonnet of a moving vehicle but miraculously other than a whack to the head and a sore neck I came off pretty lightly! I haven't been able to really turn my head completely to the left yet so I figured it would be safer to stick to the indoor trainer until I regained the ability to look both right and left!! I managed to set a new winter 2010 indoor cycle trainer record for myself......5 hours........which went surprisingly quickly with the radio playing in the background and a decent stack of fuel to go protein bars!

On the swim front I have been trying to push myself to hit faster send off times although I'm still lacking the umph towards the end of the bigger sets! I find swimming frustrating in that respect! I seem to spend so much time in the pool to gain just a couple of minutes in an Ironman swim whereas if I invested as much time in my cycling or running I think the relative improvements would be much greater! It will be good to get some ocean swimming in once I get over to the Capricorn race venue.....I'm just hoping that the wetsuit still fits :)

All up, depsite the bike crash, I was pretty pleased with the weeks training!