I Am the Master of My Fate

pgibbo wrote: »

here you go. good listening

It's 70 minutes long, so if you don't want to listen to all of it; IM Mallorca and me are mentioned after 48 minutes.

RacoonQueen wrote: »

Ah I'm running Sunday - see you up there, was going to say I'll bring you over a slice of cake but you're probably too fat for that

I probably am, but right now I've only banned myself from buying junk food. As long as I don't buy it, I can eat whatever I like without breaking any rules.

Monday 5th December
a.m.
Run
70 minutes basic progression This was steady throughout. It became a slight effort on any drags, but I was always in control of things.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 15.03km

p.m.
S & C Totals: 1.0hrs – n/a

Swim
25m pool, coached session I made all the 50s during the main set, but I was getting closer and closer to failing, and I’d started using a pull buoy for the 100m recovery from set #4 onwards. I might have managed to bring a seventh set of them in on time, but I think an eighth one would have been beyond me.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 2,600m


Tuesday 6th December
a.m.
Swim
50m pool, (wore buoyancy shorts) This session was scheduled for tomorrow, but the one I was meant to be doing, called for a lot of fast swimming. After last night’s club swim, I decided I might be in better shape for fast stuff tomorrow morning. I opted for a session with longer sets, but less taxing push-off times instead. I was comfortably hitting the times without any pressure and I was actually getting faster as the sets progressed. The buoyancy shorts were obviously a huge help. But I think my kick is improving as well and this combined with the benefits provided by the shorts made it an easy morning in the pool; exactly what I was looking for in fact.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 2,700m

p.m.
Cycle
Turbo I’d fiddled around the resistance knob on my turbo before beginning this set and it wasn’t as easy to hold the same cadence as last week. I also wasn’t able to move up into the big ring for the second and third IM efforts and had to use the small ring and a cog on the cassette that would provide me with the same resistance. It was hard to replicate the resistance and I ended up settling on a combination that provided slightly more resistance than the opening effort. My cadence was consistent from the start to end of each of the three efforts, but I had to work harder than I did for the last few weeks to hold what felt like an IM intensity. I was more lacking it in the legs than the head this week.
Totals: 1.5hrs – 40.0hrs


Wednesday 7th December
a.m.
Swim
50m pool
400m warm up, The 24 hour postponement of this session seemed to be a good decision. I coped well with the faster paced stuff prescribed in the session. Although my times slowed over both the 50s and 100s, I was never struggling for any of them. Mentally though it felt like a bit of a slog and I was happy when I finished, more just to be done than for any other reason.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 3,050m

p.m.
Run
60 minutes w. 2 sets of {4 x 100m hill sprints} I held back slightly for the efforts tonight. This was prompted by a suggestion from my coach to do so if I was feeling tired. I didn’t feel 100% for both last night’s turbo and the swim this morning, so I was happy to be given permission to go easier and it made the whole run seem a lot easier.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 12.99km


Thursday 8th December
a.m.
Swim
25m pool, coached session I seemed to do better as this session went on and was beating a faster swimmer in most of the 50m and 25m sprints at the end. It was probably more to do with him tiring, than anything else. Order will be restore soon enough, but it was a good feeling touching the wall before him.
I’m coming round to Peter’s way of thinking that in order to swim fast, I need to swim these shorter distances fast. I might be better off forgetting about breaking 60 minutes for an IM swim and concentrate instead on breaking 15 seconds for 25m. The ability to do that should benefit me over longer sets as well, which in turn should transfer to longer race distances.
Totals: 1.5hrs – 2,750m

p.m.
Rest

Friday 9th December
a.m.
Rest

p.m.
Swim
25m pool, coached session I was comfortably hitting the times for the 200s and never finished any of the reps breathing heavily. There was one other guy in the lane with me tonight, but he was descending through the sets of 200s. He led out obviously, but drafting him was only really beneficial for the first 200 in each set. After that, he sped up and the draft was gone quite soon after I pushed off the wall. After swimming the second set of 200s quicker than the first, I was expecting a similar improvement for the third set or at least to be able to hold the same pace. I’m not really sure why my times slipped so drastically, but they did. I was looking to redeem myself by breaking 40 for at least one of the fast 50s in the final set. I tried just swimming smoothly for the first one of these. When that didn’t work, I gave it socks for both numbers 2 & 3. I was bunched after the third one and accepted it wasn’t going to happen for number 4 either and so it proved.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 3,000m


Saturday 10th December
Run
40 minutes easy This was just a nice easy trot in advance of tomorrow’s race. I never looked at my pace and simply turned around and headed back for home once 20 minutes were up. I ran the return leg in the same manner without looking at my pace.
Totals: 0.5hrs – 7.56km

Cycle
Turbo It was fairly late in the evening when I started this. Probably a bit too close to the race tomorrow, but I’m training for triathlon first and foremost, so no way was I going to shelve a bike session to benefit a running race.
Totals: 2.0hrs – 55.0km


Sunday 11th November
Run
Warm-up
Easy jog w. 6 x 10 second sprints
Race
National Novices Cross Country Championships After a brief and not very effective warm-up, I lined up with a bunch of other Dunboyne athletes. I stood behind those I felt were going to beat me and before the gun went, one of them advised me to just go out fast and not worry about pacing things. He’s ran the race for the last two years and he knew it was going to be very difficult pass in the early stages of the race. This turned out to be a very accurate description of how things did play out. I was hoping to pace myself off one of the Dunboyne athletes, but hundreds of runners narrowing into one narrow stream, meant I lost contact with him immediately. Everybody went out hard and I just wasn’t ready for the surge. About 20 bodies got between me and him in a matter of seconds.
I simply couldn’t get round anybody and trying to accelerate back up to my club mate was impossible. I’ve never been in a race where I was surrounded by so many evenly matched runners and losing contact with my club mate probably didn’t matter a whole lot anyway. The field seemed to have found its natural order within 200m and the guys I was running beside were just as fast as me and were just as useful to pace off as the Dunboyne runner, still 20 bodies ahead of me, would have been. I was able to keep him in my sights anyway and he wasn’t pulling away from me.
The race carried on in such fashion for the three 2km loops. People might put in a surge and pull clear, but they never got too far away. By and large, those that passed me after the first 5 minutes, eventually came back to me. I made up several places on the last lap, one of which was the Dunboyne runner I’d been hoping to pace off at the start. He bet me pretty convincingly in an 8km cross country race this time last year, so it was good to get the better of him today.
The finish line came soon enough after this and I was pretty happy it did. It was a suffer fest from start to end, and there were several moments during the race I wished we were out on the road. But it was good fun looking back and considering everything, I don’t think I fared too badly. My overall pace matches that of my 10k PB on the road. It was 3.8km less I had to hold the pace for, but I was on grass today, and I wouldn’t have thought I was anywhere near this sort of shape. My coach also pointed out to me afterwards, it was achieved ‘with minimal training load and no specific hard work’. It has me looking forward to Rotterdam Marathon with increased optimism.
Next up is the Meath Cross Country Championships on Saturday, where hopefully I’ll run even better than I did today.

Cool Down Totals: 1.0hrs – 13.14km

Cycle
Turbo I kept this in a very easy gear and used it just to flush out the legs after the race earlier on.
Totals: 0.5hrs – 22.5hrs



Weekly Totals;
Swim: 5.5hrs – 14,100m
Bike: 4.0hrs – 117.50km
Run: 3.5hrs – 48.92km
Other: 1.0hrs

The race on Sunday has given me plenty of food for thought. Matching the pace of my 10km PB, has left me with a lot to ponder. For the first time since, I’m wondering did I really do myself justice in the two 10k races that were part of my build up to Connemarathon 2014. I don’t doubt that the high mileage program I followed for the marathon had me in optimal shape for the big day itself. And although I did 99.9% of the training in the 18 week plan I followed, I didn’t stick rigidly to the order in which the sessions was meant to be done. The week I set that 10k PB, I did a 29km run less than 48 hours before it. And I ran 6*500m at 5k pace, again within 48 hours of the next 10km race I did, a few weeks later. Looking back on it now, these decisions seem foolish and it’s definitely not how Pfitzinger & Douglas had prescribed the workouts. With a coach behind me though, I expect I’ll be making wiser decisions (well, they’ll be made for me) and I expect to become a better runner because of that.

rodneyr1981 wrote: »

You say you feel your 10km pb times could be bettered. What do you feel is achievable?

It's hard to say, as I've never concentrated on the distance. To answer your question, all I have to go off is my marathon time. I know it's a crude instrument, but inputting my marathon PB into the McMillan Running Calculator, gives me an expected 10k time of 33:13. My marathon PB was set in Connemara, which is certainly not a fast course. I don't know how much faster I would have been on a flatter course, but the winner that day, Philip Harty, ran 2:29:16. This was after running a PB of 2:21:53, in Berlin, the previous September. It's hard to imagine I would have been capable of running over 7 minutes quicker somewhere else, but looking at the results of other runners who raced that day, makes it somewhat plausible. Another person ran 13:10 quicker in DCM the previous October, then a third guy for whom I can find results ran 5:49 quicker in DCM 2014. I know I can't say with any certainty how fast I might have gone in either of those races, but it's not too much of an assumption to say I'd have ran quicker on a fairer course. Were my marathon PB 3 minutes quicker, McMillan predicts a 10k time of 32:35; were I to have broken the sub 2:30 barrier, then it says I should be capable of running 31:58 for 10km. All those imagined times for a marathon are still smaller improvements than the three sample athletes above had, so dare I dream?

I accept the McMillan calculator has its failings, but it's hard not to look at my 10k PB of 33:52 as being very ordinary on the basis of what it says.

Monday 19th December
a.m.
Swim
50m pool I felt okay, never superfast, but the fast parts during the 500m reps felt smoother and faster as the session went on.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 2,700m

p.m.
Run
80 minutes basic progression I was slower overall than for the same run last week. I was well inside my target paces though and it was never a struggle. It was foggy and cold and although I had no incidents of slipping on a frosty/icy path, it was something I was slightly worried about.
Totals: 1.5hrs – 17.11km


Tuesday 20th December
a.m.
Swim
25m pool I was swimming the 100s at a very easy effort level, trying to get rid of some of the ‘low hanging fruit’ my coach pointed out to me. I was told to expect to swim slower before these changes became ingrained, which was somewhat reassuring this morning, as my times for the 100s started off at around 1:50, but steadily drifted out as the 10 reps progressed.
All swimmers had to use the diving pool in the NAC this morning. It’s not a nice pool to swim in and currents pushing me into the ropes on the way down and out into the centre of the lane on the way back wouldn’t have helped with fast times either.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 2,900m

p.m.
Cycle
Turbo This was another solid turbo session. I’ve taken to doing my turbos without a fan as of late, which in theory should prep me for the humidity I’ll have to deal with in Kona, but it makes it harder to judge the efforts and once again my cadence dropped by 1-3rpm from the first to the last effort.
Totals: 1.5hrs – 41.0km


Wednesday 21st December
a.m.
Swim
50m pool I was in the diving pool again and the currents were once more a nuisance. Knowing this and in anticipation of the slightly more challenging swim conditions, I wore buoyancy shorts this morning.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 2,800m

p.m.
Run
60 minutes w. 4 x 30 seconds & 4 x 20 seconds hill sprints Totals: 1.0hrs – 13.84km


Thursday 22nd December
a.m.
Swim
25m pool, coached session I’m pretty sure this is the fastest 400m TT I’ve done, the previous best time I can find being 6:15. A 2 second improvement is not much, but at least it’s an improvement. The first 200m of the TT felt very controlled and it only really started to pinch when I made the conscious decision to kick harder from the halfway point. Perhaps pushing harder earlier would have been wiser or maybe I should have been thinking about my arms rather than my legs.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 1,950m

p.m.
Cycle
Turbo Totals: 1.0hrs – 27.5km


Friday 23rd December
a.m.
Rest

I started my Christmas holidays yesterday, so not having to go to work made this a true proper rest.

p.m.
Swim
25m pool, Thankfully the currents were not as strong in the pool today, as they had been for the previous two mornings. I wasn’t supposed to be looking at the clock, but I reckon my pace was a bit up and down from judging my progress against the people in lane beside me.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 3,250m

S & C Totals: 1.0hrs – n/a


Saturday 24th December
Cycle This was a real solid effort, and the most f*cked I’ve felt after a long cycle since IM Mallorca. I was determined to get through it without taking calories on board, which I did, but it took an awful lot of resolve. I drank 1.5L of High-5 Zero and 0.5L of water, but still lost over 2kg of weight from start to finish.
Totals: 3.0hrs – 93.0km


Sunday 25th December
Run Early Christmas morning run done down in Roscrea. All’s good with the world.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 10.83km



Weekly Totals;
Swim: 5.0hrs – 12,300m
Bike: 5.5hrs – 161.50km
Run: 3.5hrs – 41.78km
Other: 1.0hrs

I’m a good bit behind with this log, so my next musings will come when I get it up to date.

Monday 2nd January
Swim
50m pool I wasn’t looking at the clock, but it felt like I was moving well.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 2,700m

Run
80 minutes basic progression This was on the usual loop I use for all my nightly runs when I am down in Roscrea. The start of the two blocks that called for an increase in pace fell at nice times, as they both happened on downhill stretches. This enabled me start off at a pace above what I was aiming to hold and I finished off both efforts comfortably inside my target paces. These runs need to start feeling like a piece of p!ss though and that wasn’t the case today.
Totals: 1.5hrs – 17.37km


Tuesday 3rd January
Cycle
2 hours steady I did this cycle from Roscrea to Nenagh along the old N7, it’s 90% uphill out of Roscrea and the North Tipp Co. Council seem to have laid the hard shoulder with the intention of providing as much rolling resistance as possible to cyclists. The road smooths out once you cross the border into Offaly, but it’s very annoying up to then and almost infuriating when it’s combined with a headwind, which was the case today. I was quicker over the second half of this ride, but this was down to the tailwind I now had rather than any extra effort I put in.
Totals: 2.0hrs – 58.39km

Run
50 minutes easy I was supposed to swim this evening, but I was still down in Roscrea and my experiences of swimming in the local leisure centre are mostly negative, so I swapped it around with an easy run that was scheduled for tomorrow.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 10.57km


Wednesday 4th January
Cycle
3 hours steady (This was the plan at least.) I hadn’t ridden in any sort of mountains for quite a while and I decided today was the day to rectify this. The mountains of choice were the Slieve Blooms. The climbs aren’t as tough as Wicklow, nor the descents as tricky, but they are all I have within riding distance of my home and to be honest I wouldn’t have fancied anything more challenging anyway.
The weather wasn’t too bad starting off, but by the time I got the mountains it had started to rain. It wasn’t that heavy though and I was well wrapped up, so I wasn’t going to be soaked. It was foggy at the top of the mountain and visibility was poor. Combined with the slick surface, it made for a cautious descent. I wasn’t going to make up any of the time I had lost climbing and I felt a strong sense of déjà vu of ‘The Lost Sheep’ last September. Thankfully I’d more on than a skimpy tri-suit and today’s slow process of descending had no impact on my position in a race. Still I wasn’t particularly enjoying things and the sooner the road levelled out, the happier I’d be. When this did happen, I arrived in the village of Kinnitty.
Planning to get through the three hours without taking any calories on board, I’d set out without fuel. I scrapped this idea when I got into Kinnitty. Along with water, I’d always planned stopping for, I bought a sports drink and a Snickers and stopped at an old country shop. I consumed both outside the shop and hopped back on my bike in slightly better mood thanks to the sugary pick me up.
From here, it was simply cycle to Birr, then turn onto the N62 and I’d be on the road home. I was rolling along nicely when I saw a sign for Kilcormac. I thought I’d be a little bit short of my three hour target if I just went straight for Birr, so I took the turn for Kilcormac with the intention of getting back on the road to Birr once I got there. I seriously underestimated the distance this was going to add to my cycle and when I reached my initial three hour target, I was only after getting out of Birr and still over 10 miles from Roscrea.
Not that I was working overly hard, but I couldn’t have been arsed carrying on pedalling at the same intensity and after pressing the lap button on my Garmin for a third time, I eased up and pedalled on home at a much more leisurely pace.
Totals: 3.5hrs – 97.07km

Swim
25m pool After finishing my cycle, grabbing something to eat and rather hurriedly packing my car, I drove back up to Dublin. Had Peter Kern’s swim sessions not being starting back up early tomorrow morning, I would have left it until the morning and endured the trials and tribulations that can sometimes come with swimming in Roscrea Leisure Centre. I knew a 130km drive on top of the 100km cycle wouldn’t have me in much humour for anything overly taxing. To even work up the enthusiasm to switch on my ignition, I planned out a very easy set in my head. Not having a swim to dread, kept me in reasonable humour throughout the lonely drive back up. It was late enough when I started, so the pool was quiet and I had the lane to myself.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 3,000m


Thursday 5th January
a.m.
Swim
25m pool, coached session I used a pull buoy for a lot of the stuff today. The reason being; I’d what I considered a much more important cycle to do later on. I moved fast on occasion, but without ever having to gasp for air at the end of a length.
Totals: 1.5hrs – 3,550m

p.m.
Cycle
3:15 w. 30’ @ 5 RPE & 4 x 8’ @ 7 RPE In my hurry to get back up to Dublin last night, I’d forgotten to pack a couple of things. One of these was a pair of winter cycling boots. However well I would have managed until I was back home without the other forgotten odds and ends, there was no way I was undertaking any January cycling in anything other than Gore-Tex boots. After Peter’s swim, I went for breakfast in Java in Ballycoolin with other members of the swim group. When rush hour was over, I made the return trip to Roscrea. Doing the cycle here would give me more daylight to play with than had I waited until I had driven back up to Dublin. Plus, the stretch of the old N7 between Nenagh and Borris-in-Ossory (which conveniently bypassed Roscrea before the M7 motorway was built) was ideal for the session I had planned.
I pretty much just said hello to my mother, took my bike out of the car, went up to my room, put on my cycling boots and started the cycle. I hadn’t been particularly looking forward to this session from when I’d seen it loaded on Training Peaks at the start of the week. The four 8 minute efforts were to be done at above ironman intensity, which on my tri-bike in the summer months would yield me an average speed of about 37.5kph. Not having cycled this fast under my own exertions for a long time, I found it pretty daunting.
Anyway, when it came time to do the efforts, I did a U-turn and switched direction for each alternate one. None of them seemed any easier than the last and I finished all four with a feeling of failure. It would be easy look for excuses; winds that never seemed to be in my favour, lumpy surface, climbs that came at precisely the wrong moment, but it’s no coincidence I only remember these things when I’m struggling. My legs were jaded and I simply had nothing to give.
This certainly wasn’t the best session I’ve ever done. The cumulative effects of 260km of cycling in the previous four days had obviously taken its toll. Part of me wonders might it have been different had I followed my coach’s plan exactly to the letter, by not swapping around the midweek run and swim, and also by not carelessly adding an extra 40 minutes to yesterday’s spin. Neither of these things added too much to my training load, but I think the whole week’s training was all leading up to this session and I made a balls of it.
Totals: 3.5hrs – 94.19km


Friday 6th January
Day Off

This wasn’t a rest day as such. I’d a night out in Galway planned with college friends and told my coach to factor this in. I was supposed to swim, but procrastination put paid to that. Rather than stressing about fitting in the session and trying to make it to Heuston for a 1 o’clock train, I postponed the swim until tomorrow, which was intended as my rest day.

Saturday 7th January
Swim
50m pool Yesterday’s postponed session done a day late
I was still hungover from my night out in Galway and to make things easier I wore buoyancy shorts. I wasn’t feeling in the groove and every length got more and more arduous.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 3,300m


Sunday 8th January
Run
1 hour 15 minutes with four 10 minute blocks of increasing pace 77.8kg showing on the scales this morning shocked me into getting out the door without a bite to eat. Overall, I was slightly slower than for the exact same run last week, but the faster parts were faster. This was probably more due to poor judgement and the fright my weight this morning (exactly three months and a day from Rotterdam Marathon) had given me. The run was okay considering everything, and no way will I allow myself get this heavy again until I’ve raced in Kona. After that, all bets are off.
Totals: 1.5hrs – 17.83km

Run
60 minutes steady My legs were heavy and much like yesterday’s swim, this felt like a chore.
Totals: 1.0hrs – 12.98km



Weekly Totals;
Swim: 4.5hrs – 12,550m
Bike: 9.0hrs – 249.65km
Run: 5.0hrs – 58.75km
Other: 0.0hrs

rooneyjm wrote: »

Do you think the dynamic of your relationship has changed since you qualified for Kona

For me, it changed the first time I beat him in a race. Passing him was similar to Rocky Balboa realising Ivan Drago was human after all.