This weeks Stats:
- Swim: 9,000m
- Bike: 150km
- Run: 35km
- Training Time: 12 hours
The travel related interruption to my regular routine was much greater this week as I headed offshore to South Korea to attend a wedding. It meant that there was a much bigger focus on training earlier in the week as time constraints limited my ability to train over the long weekend.
The week kicked off in typical fashion with a Monday afternoon pool session. Usually this is more of a recovery set thanks to fatigue from the weekend. I felt surprisingly fresh and felt even better when I hit the water. It was great to finish a Monday night set without having to drag myself out of the pool.
Despite the threat of torrential ran, Tuesday turned out to be a great session. We hit the hills around Vaucluse for alternating hill repeats, pushing hard enough to get the required strength/resistance training done without burning the legs out for what was to follow Tuesday night. The usual post ride roll around the beaches produced absolutely cracking morning shots showing the sunrise trying t
o force its way through the horizon. Tuesday night marked the first hit out at our new post daylight savings venue. Due to the upcoming long weekend, we did our usual hill repeat session. After a solid warmup we headed to a relatively short hill between Moore Park Road and Oxford Street. By the end of the 30 mins of hill repeats it fell more like a mountain than a 300m hill!
After another solid pool session Wednesday morning I had to cram Thursday morning’s bike session and Thursday night’s run into a morning brick session. We headed out of the park and did some TT efforts down to LaPerouse, which is far more undulating than the usual Centennial Park efforts. I followed up with a 1 hour run off the bike with a couple of small hills thrown in for good measure.
Friday was a rest day as I spent most of the day in transit to South Korea. After exploring Seoul on Saturday morning, I managed to get a quick treadmill run set in after getting the bullet train down to Ulsan. Trying to play tourist and triathlete at the same time can be a challenge. Sunday morning before the wedding I had 
a brutal set to do in the hotel gym. The set was 20 mins on the bike, building each 5 minutes followed by a 5 min run on the treadmill. That seemed easy enough until I had to repeat it 5 times! The first set was tough as it was hard just to get the legs moving. Things got better from there until the final set. Fatigue was setting in but I still managed to get through it. I was all set for a 1km test set on the Treadmill Monday morning but the body just wouldn’t co-operate. I’m now back on the train and heading for Seoul for a little more site seeing before heading for the Airport.
I fear the week ahead is going to be difficult with only 2 1/2 days in Sydney before heading down to Melbourne. Balancing the demands of training with travel was never going to be easy but I am enjoying the challenge. The goal is to get through the next week then have a two week mini build into Nowra Olympic Distance, which I will be going into as a training race with no taper.
The first of my three travel interrupted weeks almost went to script. For the first time I managed to stick to my training plan while on the road. Not taking my bike away with me meant that I spent a lot more time running, clocking up a record 60km this week.
Thursday’s run set was just as tough. As I had an afternoon flight I had to replace my usual short run off this bike with the Thursday afternoon run set. The set was a 3km warm up, followed by 400m hill repeats with a 2km tempo run and 1km cool down to finish. Sounds simple enough and doing it fresh I’m sure it would be. Doing it after 3km and 5km intervals that included hill finishes and it wasn’t as easy.
finish. Lucky it was easy to start, as the early start meant for the first 4kms I was running using my phone as a torch while looking at the GPS to make sure I was heading in the right direction. I felt pretty good through the first hour and a quarter. The second half of the faster 30 mins was a bit of a test but I managed to get through unscathed.
Celebrations after another successful race down in Wollongong were short lived and training resumed literally straight away. Sundays are usually our long ride day with a 4 to 5 hour ride, with at least a 30 min run off the bike. As the long course athletes who had raced had only ‘trained’ for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, we had to jump back on the bike post race and ride back up to Sydney. Didn’t seem too hard in theory, but theory went out the window the minute we headed off into a stiff head wind. A soul crushing 80kms and 3 1/2 hours later and it was finally time to relax and reflect on the race.
m up to really get the body moving we dived into a set of 18 x 100s. It consisted of one easy, one medium and one hard lap, then repeat. Only each repeat had an additional hard lap. By the fourth repeat we were basically sprinting 4 back to back 100s . It was a real arm burner!
After the fireworks of Thursday morning’s bike set, Thursday night’s hill repeat run session and Friday morning’s sprint swim session were much more routine ahead of what was a pretty big week. Saturday we headed South to Cronulla Beach. The main session was a long run with a twist. It started of with a 6km run south around the coastline and harder back. This was followed by a 3.5km easy run to the Wanda Sand Dunes where the pain was still to come. We were handed down the challenge of three hard efforts up ‘The Mexican’ which is a rather steep 50-60m dune with a steep 10m kicker at the top! There was plenty of burn in the legs by the end of it. This was followed by a 3.5km race back to South Cronulla Beach. The ocean swim that followed was certainly needed to cool down.
I can’t believe it is race time again. It feels like Geelong was only a week ago, but tomorrow morning I will be back on the start line for the Australian Standard Distance Championships. The fact that it is the Championships had little to do with me lining up to race again. When I first started racing, I was racing every 4 to 6 weeks but back then my training load was much lower. Coach has me racing a little more to keep the race practice up given the large gap between Geelong and Cairns.
It is amazing what a difference a week makes and after feeling very deflated after last Saturday’s bike session, I’m chomping at the bit to get out and have a crack tomorrow. Going down from Half Ironman Distance to Olympic Distance throws up one big dilemma: how hard can I go on the bike and still have enough in the legs to bring it home on the run. Despite feeling very fresh, Spot and I have agreed that it is best to go out a little conservatively and then take it from there. I will be racing another olympic distance event in Nowra in 6 weeks time so this race will give me some good data to work from.
davidjflanagan 