Winter Training

What do you do in Winter?

I guess the first things to do are to critically analyse your season's performance and then consider what needs to be worked on to generate the greatest improvements for next year. For me, in very simple terms, it is quite straightforward. Based on my season review I need to work on better cycle endurance, ie be able to sustain a higher speed for longer. For next year though, I also need to add swimming and 'running' goals. With The Outlaw on 24 July 2011 being my A race next year, my 2011 targets are as follows:

1. Be able swim at a minimum of 2:00 mins per 100m for 3800m.

2. Be able to cycle at a minimum of 34kmh for 180km.

3. Be able to jog/walk at a minimum of 8.5kmh for 42.2kmh.

Easy to write down, but the hard work still has to be done.

Swimming. The next few weeks will be spent getting used to swimming again and I'm happy that I'm already swimming at sub 2:00 per 100m so just need to work on maintaining the speed as the distance increases. I'm under no illusion that swimming 3800m is my biggest challenge for next year. I also need to ensure that I don't overdo the swimming as getting fed up with going to the pool is possibly the biggest threat to my 2011 goal.

Cycling. Cycling will take a back seat until the New Year while I concentrate on developing my swimming and 'running' skills and general conditioning work. Weekly cycling in this period will include: one easy (as in sub 140 bpm) turbo session, starting at 30 mins but increasing to an hour over the next couple of weeks; one max sprint interval session done as 30 seconds max 4 mins L2 recovery; one LSD road ride (max 140 bpm), starting at 2 hours duration.

'Running'. The running is in ' ' because I don't plan on running, so whenever I say running from now on I mean my jog/walk strategy. Again, I can already achieve the speeds I have set and so I will be working on doing this for longer. You never know, as the weeks go by I may find that I can extend the jog intervals and reduce the walking, this could significantly affect my marathon finishing time. We shall see.

Conditioning. General strength work as well as core stability and flexibility exercises, something that is increasingly important as we get older and something that I am certainly guilty of not doing enough of throughout the season.

So there's my plan for between now and the New Year. I'm feeling very positive about 2011 at the moment and don't want to lose the enthusiasm.

Rest well folks.