Diary of an Ironman 22 weeks to go

Toys – I often laugh about the number of toys the guys have to play with in their training. Twenty years ago, I could not have believed that a guy could be running along the road in the suburbs, being tracked by three or four satelites in space???

I personally don’t have the need to be tracked by satelites when I train, I don’t need to have music playing through my head phones, but I had a brief look around at my own collection of toys and, I am a bit of “a boy” myself.

I have been using my Power Tap wheel on my weekly bike interval session. Because I have another six weeks before I start my serious Hawaii buildup, I am not doing any endurance base building cycling at the moment. I do one interval workout on the mag trainer, using my Power Cranks . Both are great training tools. The Power Cranks help me build efficiency into my pedal technique, while the Power Tap measures my progress. I am setting bench marks at the moment so when I start training seriously, I’ll have figures to build on. Three hundred watts seems to be my AT at 163HR.

It seems the old addage which suggests as you age, you lose a heart beat every year off your max HR, is flawed. At my age (sixty one in four weeks) I am still able to reach a max of 178 on the bike. I don’t do it too often, I figure when you don’t have a lot of bullets left, you don’t waste them.

Another toy which I have recently been experimenting with is Power Breathe. It’s a simple little gadget which you use to exercise the muscles which expand your lungs. It’s a mouth piece which doing a set of thirty breathes each morning and evening is quite tiring. It simply restricts the volume of air allowed through it with a valve. I am prepared to give it a good go and see how it helps my lung capacity. It’s just one more of “those little things” which might just help me be the best I can be.

Another toy which I have found to be very effective is the Body Blade. It’s a six foot long piece of fiber glass with a handle half way along. The gym which I use at the swimming pool has two of these gadgets. I have been using them three times a week to my physio therapist Ben Ward’s directions. Ben tested my strength and flexibility in a range of obscure positions and recommended some exercise to improven my flexibility and strengthen the small muscles around my shoulders, to prevent injuries in the future.

When I told Ben I had access to the Body Blade, he was excited and prescribed a few specific exercises for the blade.

We have been running three times a week as a group training for the Gold Coast Marathon. It’s a nice change to the well worn routine of cycling on Wed, Fri and Sunday mornings. When we go back to the cycling routine it’ll be interesting again.

I have found over the years, it’s good for the whole squad to change things every now and then. The same routine week in, week out, may be consistant but the lack of variety can cause stagnation and lack of progress.

Our current running program is already showing positive results in the athletes who are taking part. And if there’s an enthusiastic atmosphere in the squad, this lifts me. I’m sure if I trained alone all the time, I’d need to have a lot more motivation.