14 weeks to the Half Iron Man!

ON Wednesday night, just before we began our swim session, Andrew informed me it was 14 weeks to go before the Port Macquarie Half Iron Man. That was actually a pretty big shock to be honest...14 weeks is so close. The counter on my blog says '98' days...whoa! I think 14 weeks sounds closer than 98 days, but we are down to a little over 3months now, so its all getting pretty scary! I am expecting to be completing the Half in around 6hours....I know I am capable of doing each leg on its own at a reasonable pace, bit put them all togther....that makes it a completely differant challange...so i am going to be conservative. Also, I have never done this distance before, so have no idea how to compete in it, but I am starting to get quite excited!

The program I had for this week was tough, but great. Also, very interestingly enough Tuesday lunchtime's run had sprints in it....I used to do a lunchtime run called "Pain in Domain" which is a 6.5km run, consisting of 13 sprints ranging between 50m to 750m....its pretty tough, and I have not done one for 4months. Well, I jumped in groups 3 which is a 28min session. I handled it nicely, was pretty much 2nd in the group the whole way. The interesting thing to note here is I have done no sprint work for 4months, and yet I am probably faster than what I was when I was doing these kind of sessions. Rollo's training technique really do work! (he has since suggested that I dont run Pain in Domain, but do more controlled speed work)

Thursday morning I met Vlad in Turramurra, our session was hill repeats up and down this hill on a notorius road called Bobbin Head. we started at 5.20am, pitch black and pretty bloody cold to! Thank God my dad had sent me some Thermal Gloves which saved me I reckon (along with all the other layers I had on...probably 10 or so:-)) Its pretty tough going up that hill, Vlad powered ahead of me each rep, in the large chain ring, which showed the gap between us on the bike....its almost as big as the gap on the run! If you read this Vlad...at least I'll give you a hiding in the swim....;-) (Pity he will pastl fly past me 10mins later!)

An interesting thing I saw on t.v this week was some english program about people losing weight. They had this bunch of middle aged woman doing activities around the house and garden which would help them burn fat. They did an hour of hedge cutting and burned 300 odd calories, and then followed that with a big cup of chips...what was the point I wandered? Now, the point of this was I actually checked my calorie consumption for my epic ride last weekend and it was near the 4000 mark. Thats nearly 2 days worth of food I burnt off in 1 ride. Follow that up with my half marathon which was probably close to 20o0 calories and you can begin to understand the effort involved in maintaining your body and energy requirements to compete in an endurance race (not just the Half Iron Man). This morning's 2 hour run in the hills was 1600 odd calories....learning to cater for myself during the longer races is critical to ensuring I am successfull in completing them all.

So, onto the summery for the week :

Swim - 8.5kms
Bike - 1 Turbo Trainer session (60mins) + 40km of Bobbin Head Hill repeats (1.40hrs) I also dropped my long ride on Saturday
Run - Aprox 48kms (4.5hours)

All up, even though I dropped the long ride I still managed about 10hours of training this week

So the week ended with a long hilly run at 5.30am this morning which I loved. I am looking forward to this weeks program, and, its just a fortnight to the City to Surf....no tapering for that for me...I will be running on tired legs apparently which is okay!