So much for a Race Schedule

Should have known, as soon as I "plan" my race schedule for 2012 I get an email informing me that our company's annual management conference is the same weekend as the Prestige Ultra in February, so much for planning your races three months ahead.

Above is the Garmin Connect download of my run on Thursday, one of those runs where it just felt great and the longer into the run the more comfortable I felt.

Even thou I'm right in the middle of the Holiday season I am enjoying my training and to be honest it's been a while since I've been this committed to training. Think I found some Mojo going into the new season building towards IMSA 2012.

One of the reasons may be that I am taking two weeks leave during the first two weeks of January. We are going down to KZN to our holiday flat, just as all the holiday people return to the inland.

Spoke to my coach and we are going to bump up the training intensity and have a mini Training Camp just before IM70.3 during my two week holiday down at the coast. Running and Biking is sorted, just need a swim coach to help me with my technique. Really looking forward to some serious training and where I don't have to start at 4am to be done before going to work.

Training from last week looked something like this, no high volume but heavy interval/intensity stuff:
Monday: Run-1h00, Swim 2000m
Tuesday: Bike 1h30
Wednesday: Swim 2000m
Thursday: Run 1h30
Friday: Bike 1h30
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Brick 4hr (3hr Bike, 1hr Run) Swim: 1 hour

Good training day for a Monday

Had a good training day today for a Monday which is always hard after the weekends training. It started with an early morning swim session to "recover" after the weekends training. It was 3x300m, 3x200m, 3x100m, 3x50m, swimming each interval faster than the previous one during each set.

This evening it was an one hour endurance run and I am really happy with my run form lately. could maintain a 4:35min/km pace without pushing too hard and keeping the heart rate in the zone.

One thing I am happy about is having a coach who is not one that sent you generic programs but analyse your Power/Pace Data and schedule training accordingly and also change your schedule should things not go according to plan.

Been with CTS coaching now for just over 18 months and I am so happy with my coach. After my below par performance on the bike at 5i50 in August me and my coach discussed it and decided to focus on the bike especially when it is a hilly course. I can really see a big improvement on my bike these last few weeks without neglecting my run.

I also did a Retul bike fit about a month ago, something I should have done a long time ago. Almost the case of trying to get the perfect fit and then you start all these little tweaks only to move further away from the perfect fit.

Reminds me of the comic where the guy thinks his table is too high and decide to saw of a few inches of each leg but then ends up with an uneven table. In the end he ends up with a table without any legs, almost something like the picture below.

Finalized my race schedule (if there is such a thing as finalizing a schedule for an age grouper) for the first few months of 2012 but can still throw in some smaller races.

Look something like this:
22 January: IM70.3 South Africa
28 January: Xterra Buffelspoort( moving over to the dirty part of Triathlon)
19 February: Prestige Ultra( Half Ironman)
25 February: Xterra Grabouw
11 March: Buffelspoort Ultra ( Half Ironman)
22 April IM South Africa

The picture at the top was Kim's birthday cake last week. As a surprise and joke I asked my mother the morning of her birthday to quickly bake her a cake with a TV and the satellite TV remote for the evenings get together.

Kim quite enjoy watching TV and I don't think there is too many people who's memory of the decoder are full from all the programs recorded and as she delete a program she watched she records a new one.

Good to be Back

When family and friends start asking why you don't blog anymore and you're excuse is "I'm too busy" you know you need to get back at it. Especially if you're the one telling everybody who say they don't have time to train, that you need to make time.

Well I need to make time to blog again. The last few months were just hectic and what I thought would be a "normal" racing season turned out to be just insane.

Apart from work that kept me busy we decided to move to Trichardt, the town I work in and put the house on the market in Witbank. Traveling everyday more than 100km's one way to work is not easy and "wasting" more than 2 hours a day on the road is not very productive. Having the house up for sale has put some extra strain on me.

Well things didn't work out as we planned and after two serious buyers pulled out and we reached the end of 2011, we are not moving anymore.

Don't want to rent property and get someone to rent ours. We've done that some time ago with one of our properties and it was a disaster. We also don't want DJ to be worrying what will happen.

The whole idea of moving at year end was to give DJ a smooth transition from primary to high school. Instead we have now enrolled her at Curro Private school in Witbank to begin her high school career. While I'm talking about DJ, just need to share this with you.

At the Merit awards evening of her school beginning of November, DJ made us so proud. She was named best Academic learner, Most versatile learner and most promising Hockey player of the year and also received the subject prizes in eight of the nine subject for the learner with the highest grade mark. she also received the prize for best Revue learner.

Below is a picture of her with all her trophies just as we got home after the awards. Her average for the year in all of her nine subjects was 90% with her best subject being Social Science with an average of 98% and her lowest grade was 84% for EBW.

Therefor I am biting the bullet and will still travel next year, the house is still in the market but we will wait patiently and what happens happen. I've done my 20 hours plus training in the past and was traveling then so it is just a case of getting back into the routine and focus again.

On the Triathlon front it is going OK. After the 5i50 race in August I did the Afriman long distance duathlon in October and finished on the podium in 3rd place in my category and 11th overall. Then it was time for the 11Global race at Sun City. It was an Olympic distance race and I missed the podium by 20sec and finished 4th in my age group.

What was encouraging is I had the best run split by almost 3minutes in my age group and my biking was on par.

My next race is Ironman70.3 South Africa on the 22 of January in East London. Didn't do the race this year due to my knee opp but looking forward to having a go at the very challenging race course.

Well enough for today, another post tomorrow about my racing schedule and plans for 2012 and also about the advantages of working with a coach.