Mike’s Middle Distance Magic: starting to finally get in the mood for training!

Been a pretty good week. Training getting back on track even did the long bike! Albeit one hour shorter than planned but I actually got my arse on a bike and felt good for 1 hour 45 mins! Things are looking up!

I’m biking at about 20w less than I was at my peak last summer and I know I can get back to that early January if I put my act together. Even though recently I’ve only been biking once a week, the bike workout I’ve been doing has been purposeful and right on the power needed. If anything keeping it to the top of the zone and feeling like I could give more if I wanted!

The long bike has been a shocker for the past year, as if you read my blogs you will already know. Well as a positive for this week I got my arse on the bike and at least did something. That something was right in the power zone needed with a good cadence and decent heart rate for the level. Now it was 1 hour 45 mins I managed. A whole one hour shorter than it should of been but I know I can do that extra hour next week. And I will do it! Now I’ve got my mojo back I’m actually looking forward to getting on the bike! I don’t know what has changed but something has which has twisted my mindset to I HAVE to do that session to I WANT to do that session! Two four letter words with very different meanings!

Onto the run and things are again going well. I cocked up the fartlek session slightly! It’s a session I’ve done a few times last year and I really enjoy it and felt it really helped my running last year. I looked back at what pace I was doing the efforts in last year and it was 7 min miles. So I thought I’d be over the moon if I can simulate that this time of year! So I started off at that pace and felt good, the one minute efforts I thought I’d up it slightly , ended up being around 6.45 pace. And I held this for all of them! I finished the session feeling great and thinking wow am I running the best I’ve ever ran! Well I looked back at the previous sessions again and then something dawned on me! I was supposed to the RI at a zone 2 jog pace, ahhh i did them all walking as the other session of the week the RI was walking. Dam, reality struck! I’ve got this session in next week and will do it right this time!

Swim is the same as always feeling ok and getting some “feel” back in the water! This session was a technique session with paddles and pull buoys! I don’t own paddles so couldn’t complete this as planned and just did all the drill sets as pull and concentrated on the catch.

I can’t comment on the long run yet as that’s planned for this evening, the weather is shocking but I now have a buff, tights and gloves. I have no excuses and I will get this session done!

– Mike Catton

Mike is training for some triathlons and half Ironman in 2019. Check in next Monday for his next article about his training journey.

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