Winter training

Now that the bulk of winter training is behind me, including a 4 week training camp / holiday at Club La Santa in  Lanzarote, I thought it was time for a blog update.

At the end of last season I identified 3 things I did well, so of course it makes sense to keep doing those things, and so far so good.

I’m following my coach’s training plan pretty much to the letter, so consistency is good. I’m still looking after myself, keeping on top of niggles with physio & massages, getting plenty of sleep and rest. Alcohol intake is minimal and my weight’s under control.

There’s still ~4 months to go before IM Lanzarote but it’s never too soon to start planning details. One thing I learnt from the recent trip there was that I’ll need to change my hydration strategy in order to drink much more frequently. So I’ll be testing some aero drinks bottles that allow hands free drinking.

My 2011 post-mortem also identified 3 things I wanted to work on for 2012. The first was swimming technique, so I had some video analysis done in the endless pool at Royles in October. I also went to a swim clinic in November, with more video analysis and individual tuition.

Based on this, I’ve subsequently been swimming on my own, focusing on specific drills, and using my wetronome to increase my stroke rate. I’ve also been able to stick to the specific paces dictated by the program. I’m really enjoying my swimming at the moment, and the benefits from 3 quality sessions a week are coming; I definitely getting faster.

Running technique was something I also wanted to look at. So, using an HD video camera Jacky filmed me running on La Santa’s track. To my untrained eye my technique doesn’t look too bad, but just before each foot strikes, I lift my toes up! This explains why my big toes make holes in my running shoes.

It means however that I do heel strike, and I can’t believe that’s particularly efficient. There’s not much I can do now, but after IM Lanza I plan to work on this over the summer, using the Kinetic Revolution plan; I might even sign up for one of their clinics.

Meanwhile, our 4 week stay in La Santa over XMas/New Year was a great opportunity to get a solid block of running done in warm weather. This did me the world of good and I finally got over all the calf niggles that had been plaguing me all autumn.

Another aim was to continue getting stronger on the bike. A no brainer really but in order to increase my power, I first needed to measure it, so I had a Powertap built into a training wheel allowing me to monitor power output on rides and turbo sessions. This has been really interesting in itself – generating loads of data to analyze - and as my training program progresses I’ll be able to track performance more accurately.

The La Santa trip was also a great opportunity to get plenty of bike miles in; I took my TT bike so spent plenty of time re-adapting to riding in the aero position, as well as recceing the IM course. It’s going to be pretty brutal so seeing it in the flesh was really important;

So, the bottom line is that so far my winter training has  gone really well, and I’m in good shape and well motivated to push on with the build phase of the training plan.