http://www.endomondo.com/embed/workouts?w=qrEQ3vc4M9U&width=250&height=400Probably one of the most boring things to do as a triathlete is putting hours into bike training during the cold months. Right this very moment it’s about -1 degree celsius here and there’s ice on the roads. Even the most fanatic of athletes must succumb to such forces of nature and move inside.
This evening I’ve done my first indoor rides on the home trainer – a 30-minute session consisting of 10 minutes of warm-up, roughly 15 minutes of intervals with 1 minute hard, 2 minutes to relax, followed by a 5 minute cool-down. It was great to get the workout in, and I can see how this type of training can keep the boring moments of the home trainer down to a minimum while reaping significant benefits.
The intervals will do well to improve strength in the quads, calfs, hips and glutes. Once the weather gets better I can start doing some distance work.
To get used to the aerodynamic position I will do all sessions using my road bike turned triathlon bike and the trainer used is the Tacx Swing my wife gave me years ago. It’s really been parked in the basement for the majority of its life, but I think it will come to extremely good use during this winter – I just have to get those trainings in!!
Besides that I’ve been doing an excellent swim training and an OK run this week. During the swim session, what stood out to me was about 300-350 meters at 1 minute per 50 meters. I guess I’ll be doing some intervals in coming weeks to see if I can get that below 1 minute per 50 meters consistently without killing myself (preferrably). Have a look at my most recent swims here.
The run was good too in the sense that I did most of it running fore-foot, so I can now start to see the light at the end of the tunnel with regards to being able to run for a full 8-10 kilometers on the front of the foot. Then I can start working speed and combining that with moving to half-marathon distance runs.
After a week of doing nothing at all while battling a cold, I finally decided to just train with the cold. So far it seems that I’m getting better by doing that.
Finally I’ve recently been on the phone with a good former colleague turned race buddy about the planning of the 2011 race season. Boy do I have a surprise for him. More about that later! 😉