A few days before the Puffing Billy I came down with cold. With Elaine not being in good shape and myself still recovering from calf soreness we decided to give the Puffing Billy race a miss. I've beaten the train the last 2 years and was looking for 3 wins in a row. To make missing the race a little easier, the train went ridiculously fast this year with only 45 runners going faster. So even if I was in peak form, there is no way I could of beaten it this year. My friend Andrew (who did the 3 Peaks Challenge) had an awesome race beating the train and finishing 25th overall.
Both my calf and cold slowly improved (neither as fast as I would have liked). Then we started a special Run Program with ex Olympic run coach Tim O'Shannessy. Last year we did a similar Run Program with Jan Rehula who won Bronze in the Triathlon at the Sydney Olympics.
Jan's program last year involved lots of drills and exercises. It was an 8 week program and it was only really the last 2 weeks that involved any significant run volume. I was expecting similar this year, but Tim's sessions have been 1 hour of running (a lot of it quite fast) followed by 30 minutes of drills and exercises. This is not a bad thing, it is just that at this point in the season my legs are simply not conditioned enough for so much intensity.
Predictably I pulled up sore in the legs from the first 3 sessions (last year I pulled up sore through the core region after the first 2 sessions). It would take me a week to recover from Tim's session and then of course we would run fast again and the cycle continued. My plan for doing easy runs every day was simply not happening.
On a good note, my swimming was coming along better than expected. This does not mean I was swimming well, but rather I was increasing the distance covered in each session quicker than expected. Hopefully this will lead to swimming well later in the season.
Below are my training stats for the last 5 weeks:
Apr 27 - May 3
2 runs - 8km
1 swim - 2km
no rides
May 4 - May 10
5 runs - 24km
1 swim - 1.7km
1 ride - 49km
May 11 - May 17
4 runs - 22km
2 swims - 5km
1 ride - 68km
May 18 - May 24
4 runs - 20km
2 swims - 6.3km
2 rides - 96km
May 25 - May 31
6 runs - 44km
2 swims - 5.9km
1 ride - 100km
As you can see it has only been the last week that I have been able to get in any run volume. Even though I'm happy with 44km for the week, I was originally planning to be up to 60km a week by now.
A better time for Mike who raced the Busselton 70.3 (Half Ironman). He finished in 5h06m18s, a 9m17s improvement over his attempt at the same course last year. Even more impressive with the very interrupted lead in and the fact that the swim course was measured long (costing about 4 mins) and the conditions on the bike were worse than the year before.
Not only was Mike was faster, but he felt he covered the distance a lot easier. One of the main areas we have improved with Mike is his running. Before signing up with me Mike pulled up sore from most training runs and struggled to get in 3 runs a week. The first thing we did was bring his training run speed way down, and then had him running every day. With the slower speed he was pulling up from every run without any soreness, meaning he could run far more often and build up a much higher weekly run mileage.
Mike also did running assessment with an external party, and they gave him a few technique changes to work on. He found that implementing the new run techniques and running slow were not compatible. So we modified 2 runs a week to be technique intervals. This meant running for 1km with the new technique followed by a slow kilometre and repeat. For the majority of his training this was the only intensity we scheduled and he was already setting new PBs in fun runs. With his interrupted schedule (overseas trips) in the 6 weeks leading into Busselton, Mike was limited in the amount of running he could do. So we started to introduced more Threshold runs. Throughout all of the Mike's training, he never experienced leg soreness, something that plagued him before.
