Today was a semi-rest day before the weekend's higher volume sessions. That meant no early bird session this morning so my usual 5am wake-up became 7.30am and all I did before heading off to work was a few stretches and chiropractor exercises and downed a lovely cuppa tea.
Semi-rest days, like rest days, guarantee a handful of weird side effects:
a) I feel knackered and sleepy all morning (how does that happen after the longest sleep of the week?)
b) My hunger levels go absolutely freakin bananas - I guess it's tough to get enough calories in on the hard workout days, so the days when you take your foot off the gas a little, the body tries to catch up
c) Any training I do feels rubbish
Tonight was a one hour steady swim at Dubai Masters and when I dived in to warm up, true to form, I felt like my arms were made of concrete. As I swam more, I felt slightly better.
Fortunately, it was a very steady session and none of the other quick guys were in tonight, so I didn't get carried away racing. Our usual sessions are very freestyle heavy but tonight we did a lot of IM (i.e. rotating strokes to do equal amounts of fly, back, breast and crawl). Not really all that useful in the long run for triathlon, but a good break - plus, just one month out from Ironman, I'm not really going to improve my swim anymore so it's all about maintaining levels and keeping the 'feel' for the water.
I've spoken in the past about how much I've changed as an athlete, but especially as a swimmer, compared to when I competed as a wee whippersnapper. I was a sprint fly or back swimmer. A poor trainer with too relaxed (cough, lazy!) an attitude and little stomach for the fight. Now, triathlon demands a long distance freestyle swimmer, every session is a race and my favourite sets are the long but quick, attritious sets with little rest, where weaker swimmers are left behind and drop off the pace one by one...but for everything that changes, something else stays the same.
One thing that's stood still - almost literally - is my breaststroke! Being a good fly and back swimmer and decent enough freestyle swimmer as a teenager, I should've been a great IM swimmer. But there was my breaststroke.
In a race, I'd dive in and go hard on the fly, touching the wall a yard ahead of the rest of the swimmers..."wow," people would think, "he's taken this out way too fast." But I'd then spin, ballerina-like, around and push off on to the backstroke leg, reaching and kicking...the yard becomes two or three yards by the time I get to the other end. "This is amazing," the crowds would shout. "This boy is special." And then I'd turn and start the breaststroke leg..."is he OK..?"..."I think he's drowning!"..."Er, excuse me, should someone rescue the boy in lane 6 who's having a seizure?" "It's OK," my parents would reassure them, "that's just his breaststroke."
I look at people who can do breaststroke and they appear to be the same species as me. I think I have all the same body parts as them, and yet no matter what I do, I can't make myself move convincingly forwards using that stroke. They glide and surge..I bring my legs up and go two yards backwards, then glide two and a bit yards forward...it's tiring. I seriously think that, were I tasked with it, I could learn to fly quicker than I could learn to do a decent time for 50m breaststroke.
But I'm determined to put this to good use. Triathletes tend to be swim-bikers or bike-runners and I'm definitely the former. For the average Joe on the street, I'm not a bad runner, but my running is definitely a couple of notches below my swimming and cycling, which I find truly frustrating. But after Ironman, when I'm working on adding a bit of speed to the endurance I've built up in my running but starting to get worked up by the lack of results, I can look on the bright side....at least I'm not doing breaststroke!
One month to the day until Ironman Wales, people. Nervous, terrified, utterly psyched. But before that, this weekend marks my last truly big weekend of training here in the Middle East oven. Happy days!
31 days and counting...
Semi-rest days, like rest days, guarantee a handful of weird side effects:
a) I feel knackered and sleepy all morning (how does that happen after the longest sleep of the week?)
b) My hunger levels go absolutely freakin bananas - I guess it's tough to get enough calories in on the hard workout days, so the days when you take your foot off the gas a little, the body tries to catch up
c) Any training I do feels rubbish
Tonight was a one hour steady swim at Dubai Masters and when I dived in to warm up, true to form, I felt like my arms were made of concrete. As I swam more, I felt slightly better.
Fortunately, it was a very steady session and none of the other quick guys were in tonight, so I didn't get carried away racing. Our usual sessions are very freestyle heavy but tonight we did a lot of IM (i.e. rotating strokes to do equal amounts of fly, back, breast and crawl). Not really all that useful in the long run for triathlon, but a good break - plus, just one month out from Ironman, I'm not really going to improve my swim anymore so it's all about maintaining levels and keeping the 'feel' for the water.
I've spoken in the past about how much I've changed as an athlete, but especially as a swimmer, compared to when I competed as a wee whippersnapper. I was a sprint fly or back swimmer. A poor trainer with too relaxed (cough, lazy!) an attitude and little stomach for the fight. Now, triathlon demands a long distance freestyle swimmer, every session is a race and my favourite sets are the long but quick, attritious sets with little rest, where weaker swimmers are left behind and drop off the pace one by one...but for everything that changes, something else stays the same.
One thing that's stood still - almost literally - is my breaststroke! Being a good fly and back swimmer and decent enough freestyle swimmer as a teenager, I should've been a great IM swimmer. But there was my breaststroke.
In a race, I'd dive in and go hard on the fly, touching the wall a yard ahead of the rest of the swimmers..."wow," people would think, "he's taken this out way too fast." But I'd then spin, ballerina-like, around and push off on to the backstroke leg, reaching and kicking...the yard becomes two or three yards by the time I get to the other end. "This is amazing," the crowds would shout. "This boy is special." And then I'd turn and start the breaststroke leg..."is he OK..?"..."I think he's drowning!"..."Er, excuse me, should someone rescue the boy in lane 6 who's having a seizure?" "It's OK," my parents would reassure them, "that's just his breaststroke."
I look at people who can do breaststroke and they appear to be the same species as me. I think I have all the same body parts as them, and yet no matter what I do, I can't make myself move convincingly forwards using that stroke. They glide and surge..I bring my legs up and go two yards backwards, then glide two and a bit yards forward...it's tiring. I seriously think that, were I tasked with it, I could learn to fly quicker than I could learn to do a decent time for 50m breaststroke.
But I'm determined to put this to good use. Triathletes tend to be swim-bikers or bike-runners and I'm definitely the former. For the average Joe on the street, I'm not a bad runner, but my running is definitely a couple of notches below my swimming and cycling, which I find truly frustrating. But after Ironman, when I'm working on adding a bit of speed to the endurance I've built up in my running but starting to get worked up by the lack of results, I can look on the bright side....at least I'm not doing breaststroke!
One month to the day until Ironman Wales, people. Nervous, terrified, utterly psyched. But before that, this weekend marks my last truly big weekend of training here in the Middle East oven. Happy days!
31 days and counting...
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