Test Week

This week is a bit of a hard week to write about. Nothing exciting happened. I trained alone and it was test week.  I set up a time trial for 1km swim, 15km ride and a 5km run just to check where my fitness is at (it appears my fitness is still hiding).  My plan is to do the same time trials every month and with a little bit of luck I can see an improvement each month.

My swimming is going better than I thought it would be, I no longer swimming like a brick….. it is more like a paver now (still poor but progressing) Bike is awesome over shorter rides but I need a lot of work once clicking over 100km and running is still short distance as I am still getting my shins right.

I have had my head stuck in books of late with reading "Swim Workouts for Triathletes", Joe Friel’s “Your Best Triathlon” and now just started Joe’s other book “The Triathlete’s Training Bible”. Each book is great and I highly recommend them to anyone.  With the help from these books and Richard Whitefield, I have put together a training program for the 14 week build up to ironman Western Australia that is on Sunday 4^th December.

My weight loss is stagnate, nothing has changed unfortunately. It has been harder than I thought trying to get back onto counting calories again. Chocolate has it in for me. 

This week’s training was 10 hours

Swim: 3 sessions

Bike: 3 rides

Run: 3 with one being a hill intervals

RPM: 1

Yoga: 1

Gym: 1 (Poor efforts)

Weight: 85kg

Just got my new 2XU compressions in the mail and about to test them running up and down David Street. It really isn't that much fun David's street. - Killer

Pulling a stupid face after my Bike Time Trial,  I thought I would risk looking like a tool (well more than normal) and take my aerodynamic helmet out….. (the face doesn't help matters I know)

After the Time Trial. I thought I would take this photo not to show you my bike but to give my security company a plug…. In every photo this week you will see my Valiant Security logo in it somewhere…. Get onto it people. http://www.valianttasmania.com/



No Frills Training Week

Last week’s training was a little bit more respectable then the week prior. I trained a few times with Luke who always seems to bring out the best in my training. I hope one day to talk Luke into triathlons cause I recon he would kick arse at it.

My weight loss side of things was going along like a steam train having lost another 2kg by Thursday then it derailed quick smart and in a hurry. I have been watching the calories so closely that by Thursday night I just couldn’t take it any longer. I began to eat like a diamond and didn’t stop till Sunday I ate us out of house and home.  I put back on one of the kg I lost but boy it felt good to eat crap again for a few days.

The big ride for the week was suppose to be 160km but I thought I would be a  bit of a girl and cut it short (some of the unexpected hills took the wind out of my sail) so the ride was actually 130km with a brick session on at the end.  No matter what anyone tells me about brick sessions, I really don’t enjoy them that much.

I went and had a massage for the first time in about five months and man was it great.  The lady told me that my gluts are extremely tight (probably the reason I run like I have a stick up my rear end) I am going back next week for her to rip into them again.

Training for the week included 13 hours

Swim: 3 swim sets (should have been four but spend time with the kids)

Bike: 3 rides

Run: 4 with one a hill session and the other a brick session

Gym: 2 full body sessions

Yoga: None, I went for a quick swim instead

Renee took this photo of me stretching before killing White Hills…. Ok White Hills almost killed me

Saw this security sign in Birralee and thought that someone took the time to actually paint such a crap sign…. I bet they thought it would work as well (I couldn't see any CCTV, I thought if the cameras were as good as the sign then it most likely wouldn't be working anyway)

I like to spend my Saturday nights at the car wash cleaning my bike….. “this guy has an awesome life” you are telling yourself…. A little sad I know

First Time Ironman

I started up FirstTimeIronman.com about two weeks ago dedicated to telling the stories of triathlete’s first Ironman and 70.3 experiences.

Before I completed IMWA, I would search the internet to read people’s blogs who have completed an ironman so I could learn as much as I could from their races (things like don’t eat KFC the night before – poor bloke).  I thought it would be great to start up a website that focuses on this. 

After registering the domain name and got a cheap hosting package, I got cold feet with the whole idea. I thought I have only invested $150 into the site, I haven’t lost much, I have a lot on my plat currently. Until I was working one night and I was board shitless and thought I would chuck my story and pro triathlete Guy Crawford’s blog about his first Ironman (I asked him a couple of months ago) on the site, hit live and see how I would go. I sent the word out on Twitter and Facebook and within a week, I was getting a good volume of traffic on the site.

Due to the interest from the amount of age groupers and a number of pros, I am getting the site built by the good team at Itag Media (they do good work, they built two websites for me and both look awesome) I hope to be running a few different features off the site that should make it a little more unique.

So time to plug the site: you should all have a look at the site www.firsttimeironman.com and follow the updates on Twitter @firstironman and let me know what you think and if you can come up with any suggestions to help improve the site please send me an email timothy@valianttasmania.com

I come armed with excuses

Another big week killed my training. Worked over 70 hours again (the joys of owning your own business).

I have just switched to a 24 hour gym.  It was a hard as the owner of the gym I have been going to has been good to me but unfortunately I can’t go and workout at midnight. The reasons for joing a 24 hour gym is 1) It is open 24 hours, 2) It is located on the bottom of a killer hill so once a week after killing a small part of my legs in the gym, I can run up and down David Street. My mate does it and he told me that it is more a mental thing then physical pain but when I did it last Thursday my legs were killing me (the same pains as if I was running the last 5km for a marathon)

I have really been watching what I have been sticking into my mouth. Thanks to Scott’s blog on Calorie Counting. Calorie Kings tells me I should be eating1850 calories a day (I normally have this amount for lunch) I have been doing my best to keep it around this 2000 per day. You would think it would get easier as each day rolls on but it is bloody hard.  I have always eaten what I like and I am famous for the amount of food I eat.  I have this joke that I eat for ten men but it wouldn’t be that far off it. 

I have always trained to keep my weight off and the moment I slow down or stop, I start to look like the side of a bus. To give you an example, I stopped doing…. Well everything but work in 2001 and I went from 82kg to 100kg in no time at all. I lost that and just a few years back I stopped cycling for ITB pains and I went up to 95kg. I stayed at 95kg for a couple of years and two months before IMWA last year I lost a 10kg. after IMWA I jumped up to 90kg and just in the last two months I have gone back down to 85kg.  I would like to shed another 5 to 10kg before December (wishful thinking)

What little training I did do was defiantly enjoyable. I trained for 6.5 hours.

Swim: 3 sessions

Bike: 1 (yup I know, very poor)

Run: 4 runs

Yoga: 0

Gym: 1 lower body session

Body weight: 85kg (17% body fat…… I am a big fatso whale)

We had some rain early in the week. This is some farmer’s entry. I had to turn around shortly as the road was also under water.

P.S. I’m a fatso whale

Last week kicked off awesomely with Monday being a big day of training with four training sessions. I was thinking a big Monday would set the rest of the week up as I have a little bit to do at work and then my Dad was coming down to Tassie to train with  me over the weekend. 

My old man decided in late December last year that he wanted to take on an Ironman after watching me in IMWA.  Ever since I can remember, my Dad has always been fat and extremely lazy. It seemed that every Monday he was starting a diet and by lunch time, he had broken his diet a couple of times.  When he told me that he was going to train for an Ironman, I thought that this man has lost his meatballs.

Due to being overweight, he had a bad back and was popping pain killers like M&Ms. Mum would even have to help him out of bed every morning and sometime would need to give him a hand getting off the toilet.  We all thought that he would wind up in a wheel chair within the next five years

He went out and got himself a new road bike and started off by only riding 5km and slowly built it up. He is now running and swimming and in last eight months since starting to train, he has lost 35kg and is looking great.  He hasn’t taken any pain killers for about five months and he has just now got himself a Giant time trial bike and is booked in for ironman Australia in May next year. He probably has another 10kg to lose before being at a good weight.

Training with him is always fun but there isn’t really any quality in the training sessions as he is slower than me and I am more or less just spinning my legs around.

My eating habits last week have been the worst in months. I put on the 2kg I lost the week prior.

This Week’s training:

·         Swim: 3 sessions

·         Bike: 5 rides

·         Run: 2 runs (very poor effort)

·         Yoga: 1 sessions (this near on killed me, hard)

·         Gym: 2 full body sets

I took this photo my the old man and myself riding through Nile