Blowing up at the Bay

Sat: Bay Run, 10.93K in 1:03:06 - Awful run. Pulled the pin early.
Sun: Ride, 41.6K in 1:47:47

I had a pretty rough night on Friday - I spent most of it with a mate trying to get my internet connection working, and during this frustration I developed a nasty episode of heartburn.

So I wasn't feeling very chipper on Saturday morning when I parked the car at Leichhardt rowing club on Saturday morning and headed off. I added a little deviation into the bay run to bring it up to 11K (who am I kidding, I took a wrong turn). I never settled into this run. It just felt more laboured than 5:45 pace normally does. I did notice on my lap of the bay that they were giving away free espresso at Drummoyne rowing club.

When I finished the first lap I took a drink of Staminade at the car and started on my second lap. About 500m in I felt some bits of breakfast in the back of my throat and decided that another lap was going to do me no good whatsoever, so I turned around, walked back to the car and drove to the other side of the bay for my free coffee.

Sunday found me in much better health. I had planned to ride with the Hills tri club, who do a club ride starting about a K from where I am now living, but they had cancelled today, so the plan changed to about 40K of local exploration. I had also fitted a new long seatpost that I picked up yesterday, so I spent 15 minutes before I got going getting that right.

About ten minutes in I was riding up the street I am living on and I passed the Striders, obviously mid-StAR. I saw a Coolrunning cap amongst them and called "Go Coolrunner, go Striders!".

Soon afterwards I stumbled onto a circuit that had been set up for the Bicycle Australia show that was being held at the Olympic Park. I thought to myself "this is pretty good!" as I joined a large group of riders on a course that was being marshalled and kept traffic free. I'd say it was about a 15K loop, so I did it twice and kept a pretty good pace.

On the whole I'm happy with this ride. It felt comfortable, and while it was far from quick (23.2kph) it wasn't really slow and there weren't many breaks for traffic.

Gronk has asked me about the 1K intervals, so I thought I might go into a bit more detail about them.

I started doing them after talking to Craig (my mentor/former neighbour) about my program I told him that I was focussing on the Central Coast half and that I was currently doing 400m intervals. His advice was that it would be better to try to go fast for a bit longer and suggested 1K.

I decided that it made sense so I replaced the 400s with 1K efforts with a 2 minute standing rest interval. This might be a bit soft on the rest, but I felt this would allow me to get through the session without messing myself up.

I do them using the Garmin, which has an advanced workout feature. I've set it to beep at me to start an effort, beep at me to finish the effort and beep at me if I go faster than 4:30 pace and beep at me if I go slower than 5:00 pace. This is 15 seconds slower than I was doing my 400m intervals.

The coming week is going to be a rest week. It was what I had planned anyway, but this was only confirmed when Saturday's run turned to poo so spectacularly.

I have decided to give the triathlon a miss. Plu was right - I did know the answer myself. I have put the focus of my training solely on getting a good time at the Central Coast. Entering a longer event a fortnight before, even if I tell myself I won't go hard (liar!) would be stupid. There will be triathlons next year.

I'm coming up with a detailed training plan for the last few weeks leading up to the Central Coast. I'll post it a bit later.