July over, still 7 months to go.

So what lessons lie in July.  One that was really brought home to me was to take it when you can get it.  On a number of days planned workouts go by the wayside because work or another last minute change interferes.  So I am looking to be more adaptable, in particular to use the lunch hour whenever possible.  I’m not a great morning trainer, mainly because I can hardly walk when I get up in the morning, so lunchtime represents a good opportunity for me to make the most of the day.

In summary July was not a bad month but not a great month, a familiar story I know.  The levels of work are certainly still going in the right direction.  The last 3 weeks had long runs around the 12km mark, which is not too bad given that only 6-7 weeks ago I was barely able to hobble 5km.  Over the month of August I hope to get this long run up to around 20km.  The cycling has been steady with regular rides around the 100km mark.  For August I want to push this up to around the 130km mark.  This will have to wait for 2 weeks as the next two weekends will be taken up with a business trip to Denver.  While this will be a great trip it will certainly eat a big hole in the time available for training.   On the plus side Denver is a mile high so a few days of altitude training for me.  I’m sure it will make no difference whatsoever apart from being hard to train while I am there.

Anyway the third leg of the race is the swim and this is where I really have been falling short.  On average only one swim a week and no efforts over the 3km mark.  Swimming is a sport where technique and rhythm are crucial and this can only be built by a consistency in training.  This needs to be a real focus over the next 2 months. 

In a previous post I mentioned the software I use to record my training (SportTracks).  One good thing about doing this and bringing all the information is that it allows you to look back and spot the sort of thing from above.  How often, how far, how hard – all questions to be answered to determine if progress is being made.  One of my favourite views in the software is what is called training load.  This comprises a view of long term training (condition) and short term training (fatigue).  The following image is the view of the chronic training load, or condition.  This is effectively the “average” training load for the last 45 days.  The good thing about this view is you can see the pronounced increase since March 2011 when I made the decision to enter Ironman.

So since March this value has increased from mid fifties to early nineties.  So this indicates that I am theoretically close to twice as “fit” as I was back then.   All very interesting, and probably feels about right when rating how I feel after the longer runs and rides.  I’ll post another update to this in a month or so and include the other measures.