So I said I wouldn’t drop off the face of the earth, but was
reminded by some loving relatives over Christmas that they had no idea what I
was up to since I hadn’t written for a while. J
So below I will outline some of the changes I have made to my training and the
shenanigans I have been up to for the past couple of months.
A couple of the big changes that I have made with my
training are that I am using a power meter, and I am logging my training. These
are two things that I have been told over and over to do but for one reason or
another did not. I cannot say I am in love with the power meter, mostly because
when it fails to calibrate (which happens at least once a week) I tell myself
how useless technology is and get frustrated with it. However, I am persisting
and will see how this benefits (or doesn’t benefit) my training in the long
run. It is interesting to note that even when I don’t look at my watch I am
very accurate with gauging what watts I am at. Logging my training is something
that I have generally been on/off with, because I never found a place that was
a)free and b)easy to use, in order to log my training (and found that it took
too much time- I have little patience). However, with some searching I did find
a site called triblogs.com that is fantastic, and using the basic version is
free. It allows me to put in a variety of different types of training (actually
a very extensive list), totals things up (time, distance) by sport and overall,
and can produce graphs and such. I am finding it very useful and it gives a
good eye-opener as to how much training I can handle and is easier to put some
structure to what I am doing.
I was at a training camp (at our pool in Waterloo, nothing
too exciting) with the varsity swim team over the Christmas break and it was a
ton of fun. Although only a week long it has been great to put an extra focus
on swimming for a bit and be with such an amazing group. I am working on
changing my stroke at the moment to have a deeper catch (so the opposite of the
‘high-elbow catch’ –which is what a lot of people tout as the best way to swim).
It takes more effort (likely because it is not natural to me), but when done
properly is definitely faster. So i’m having fun working on that J
 |
| deep catch |
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| high elbow catch |
And I am (once again) on the slow progression to getting
back into running. I started last week and will be trying a slightly different
approach than before, since I will not be racing for a while. The plan is to
only do easy running for 6-8 weeks to build up leg strength before adding in
any interval work. This is in addition to adding a lower-body strength program
to my training so as to hopefully have the muscles absorb the impact of my
running rather than it being transferred to the bones.
The plan for racing in 2015 is to focus on the Olympic distance
(non-drafting races) for at least the first half of the season, hopefully
getting my legs used to the idea of running hard without breaking on me.
Ultimately I want to be racing at the half-ironman distance, and with the
developments in the Challenge series it looks like it is going to provide some great
opportunities.
So I just have four months left of university before I get
the most expensive sheet of paper ever, and then it’s full-time triathlete
life!!!!!!!!!!! :D
