I freely admit that I have been very distracted of late. With the car blowing up, work placement, holidays, and a personal distraction in the mix, it's been a mentally exhausting few weeks. However, these four gremlins are now all off the table, hooray! I get my car back tomorrow, my work placement is done, the holidays are behind me and the personal distraction is going nowhere fast so has been duly canned. It's back to reality with a loud thud.
I have nine weeks and two days until my big event, so it's back to a single point of focus: my half ironman. I met with my skills coach Ash at uni today, to go over uni stuff as well as my training (which is uni stuff too!). Ash advised me to work backwards from the event date, get a wetsuit ASAP, work in three week blocks (moderate week, hard week, light week) and not smash myself too much.
My trainer wrote me a program earlier this week but it's too much too soon; and too hard, too fast. Ash and I had a chat about it and feel that three main training phases now form the game plan; being endurance, strength endurance and then strength. I need to be careful not to injure myself in the strength phase, but after that I can do some speed work if I have the time and really feel I need it.
My focus for the half ironman has to be on finishing inside the alotted time, not on blitzing the field. Completion, not competition. Pacing, not racing. A million other cheesy lines which will become mantras over the coming weeks. Just get me over the line inside 8.5 hours with a smile on my face at the finish line and I'll be stoked! That's all I want.
So, tomorrow I get my car back. Now I can go places with it (and the rest of my gear) like to my next tri on Jan 23. I didn't really want to be riding all the way to town, ferrying to Devonport, riding to the tri, doing the tri and then going back home via ferry and my bike. It's like 60km extra on top of a tri. I don't think so! I can also go join the semi-local masters cycling club and ride with them on weekends, do rides a bit further away for a change of scenery, and the like. And, I can go to Taupo to watch my friend Sean do Ironman. Awesome!
I swam today, and was meant to run tonight but it was after 7pm when I got home and I was starving. I was stuck in meetings all day, then went straight to uni so hadn't eaten since noon. Not a good plan for me, I was a cranky cow by the time I walked in the door tonight. I'll either run tomorrow morning first thing, or drop the session in favour of walking home from work on Friday night (about 22km). We'll see!
Anyway, must head for bed as I'm exhausted and have a potentially very early start again tomorrow.
Ciao.
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