What Now ?

For the last 6 months our training has been focused on the World's race in London. The 3 Trail Running races and the Hazelwood Triathlon in the leadup were all designed to prepare us for the London Sprint Triathlon. After a 2 week break of no training (I did sneak in 2 runs), our focus is now directed at the Challenge Melbourne, Half Ironman race in February. Personally I will also be aiming to set a PB at the St Kilda Olympic Distance event in January (3 weeks before Challenge Melbourne).

Ignoring all the work we did before London, we are now back in a base training phase. Lots of easy paced sessions as we build up mileage. The next 6 weeks will be fairly unstructured as we train more by feel. I'll aim to run most (if not all) days and the distance of each run will be determined by how I feel at the time. Hopefully this will enable me to build my run mileage back to up to around 60km per week - this approach worked well in April, May and June. However this time I will also try to get in some more bike mileage (much easier now the days are getting longer and warmer).

Elaine will probably remain at 3 runs a week, but concentrate on building bike mileage and more importantly getting in consistent weeks of training. Some people get in 1 or 2 weeks of huge training then disappear for a month. The real benefits of training are only seen after consistent weeks of good training. Once you build momentum into your training the results start to appear.

At the moment we have identified 3 leadup Triathlons before Challenge Melbourne:
  Noosa, Olympic Distance (1500/40/10)
  Elwood Gatorade, Sprint Distance (500/20/5)
  St Kilda Gatorade, Olympic Distance (1500/40/10)

Noosa is probably the most iconic race in Australia (and very well known world wide). We are treating this race as more of a Bucket-List event (and QLD holiday), looking to enjoy the atmosphere rather than expecting a good result. So we won't do any Olympic Distance specific training in the lead-up. Instead we'll race off what we get done in the base training phase.

In the past we've tended to avoid the Gatorade Triathlon series, but have changed our minds this year. XOSIZE has pulled out as naming sponsor of the other Triathlon Series (now called Team-Up TriSeries) meaning we will no longer receive free entries. Race 1 of the Team-Up series is a week after Noosa and Race 3 is a week after St Kilda so their events simply don't fit into our race calendar very well (we need more than 1 week to recover from an Olympic Distance triathlon). However race 4 of the Team-Up series has been designated as our Club Championships, so we will probably make an effort to do that race (3 weeks after Challenge Melbourne).

However the Gatorade series organisers are still doing things that annoy us (almost as a way of reminding us why we have avoided their races in the past). Both Triathlon Series are offering a 10% discount on entry for all members of our triathlon club. The Team-Up Series offers this discount for the Series and Individual races, but Gatorade only offers it for Individual races. Guess who is no longer signing up for the Gatorade Series entry. Seems a pretty silly strategy to me, and it means Elaine and I will probably not bother entering the last 3 Gatorade races.

We are also planning several special ride events (all before Xmas):
  Bayside Bright Camp - 3 days of riding over mountains
  Kinglake Ride - 115km ride, 2 big hills
  Bayside KOM (King Of the Mountain) - 52km very hilly ride in the Dandenongs
  Ben Griffen Classic - 120km ride with KOMs and Sprint Points