Life on Mars!

The biggest thing this week was the dust storm we had on Wednesday, bloody hell, what was that!! I actually got up to start my brick session that morning just after 4am, was on the bike for 75mins, opened the garage and the light around the street lights was red, unbelievable! 3km into the run I could taste and feel the grit in my teeth, and once home, I noticed my teeth were brown, and I was blowing brown gunk out of my nose! I was a little worried about the impact inhaling dust at those levels was going to have, but thankfully I have come through okay!
At least I know what it would be like for triathletes to train on Mars.....great to look at, crap to breath in! For once, I am sure most Sydney siders were jealous of those people roaming around with those masks on...I know I was!

Thursday morning was the last Bobbin head hill repeats with my mate Vlad. He is now tapering for the hardest race around...Hawaiin Iron Man (aka Kona). It was kind of sad as we have been doing these every Thursday for the past 3 months or so, through Winter, sub zero temperatures, wind, rain, fog, dealing with carcus's which smelt so bad they mad you gag as you rode past, Vlad nearly getting cleaned up on a corner ( I swear I saw his life pass in a flash, christ I shat myself, and he was calm as!), and now seeing all the bludgers out there now because its warm...where were you blouse's in winter huh???? I guess at least they are out there doing something, but they dont get the HTFU badges for missing the winter sessions!! I think however, I will probably do these repeats on my own at least once a month still, because the efforts really improved my strenght on the bike, however I still have a very very long way to go to be able to hold my own, and survive the Iron Man!

I was having Friday off this past week, so my Thursday at work was so full on I was not able to do the sun set (which was a tough interval set), so, not wanting to miss any sessions, i thought I would get up early on Friday, do my Thursday run set up at the Adcock Park Athletics track and then straight into the pool for the Friday swim set. Well, I did this. The run was a 20min warm up, followed by 15 x 400m, then warm down...I ran the 400ms between 1.20 and 1.25 with 1min rest between each one. It was really tough going, and made worse by the chill in the air at 5am! Straight into the swim for a tough 2.5km set, and I can tell you I was buggered!

Saturday was to one of the funnest sets I have done. Rollo set Eddie (Andrew C) and Jase and I a brick session consisting of 4 x 15km efforts on the bike with 3km run between each effort. All the efforts on bike and run were to be done at race pace ( and reiterared by Rollo - No Faster than IM race pace) He must have been aiming that comment at the other 2 blokes! Nature threw us a curve ball again, and we had windy and dusty conditions to deal with again, so we did 3 sets instead. I know my lungs were not feeling that great by the end of the 3rd set, but boy it was fun! Flat circuit with the wind behind for part of the lap and hitting over 40km an hour with no effort and holding that speed, it was awesome! Coming back into the wind was a bitch, but still....I felt great on the runs, kept my HR under 150 and was still running low 4min per km pace, and felt I could maintain that. In fact, each run I felt I got stronger and faster, so was really really chuft. After the 3rd set, I packed the bike away, and went over to Terrigal Beach to join Andrew M for a very rough ocean swim...man, the wind was howling, the waves were pretty big and it was a challange! we did it though, and as far as a training session for me can go....it was great fun, good learning experience and would be relaly chuft to do that again, minus the dust though! Saturday was almost a half Iron Man for me all up in terms of the distance and certainly longer in time (I hope ;-)) so am really happy with that.
I was up again at 4am this morning, doing some work on one of our production servers before doing 150mins on the turbo trainer to end another great week of training off. I am pretty tired tonight, but considering I have done some really hard sets since this week, including 2 huuuuuge brick sessions in 2 days, but this week is a recovery one so that will be good.

Andrew M is going to compete in the Gold Coast Half Iron Man this coming weekend, so all the best to him , he will smash it and do really really well! I look forward to hearing about how he goes.

In summery this week I have done :

Swim - 10km (3.5hours)
Run - 40km (3.5hours) (maybe a little more, but there abouts)
Cycle - 100km + 5 hours on TT (8 Hours)
Total - 14.5hours

That was truly 14.5hours of great fun, hard yakka, but every moment was enjoyable! I felt completely poked at times, but I find it easy to continue pushing myself, I find it easy to keep myself motivated, and I have this drive to be competitive, which I thought I didn't have, I dont consider myself competitive, but maybe thats because I have always played team sports, where as triathlon is all about yourself and what you do and how you do it, what you put in and what you want to get out...its all in your control, and I tell you what......I love it!!

For now, adious and hope your week ahead will be as fullfilling as this last one has been for me....sensational!!!!!