Treadmill Pyramid Intervals

A while ago Triathlete Europe tweeted about how to make the most out of your treadmill workout. One workout they suggested was a form of pyramid intervals, in the format of 1-2-3-2-1-1-2-3-2-1 with equal rest inbetween, and that's the workout I decided to do today.

I started with a 6 minute long warm up and then I kicked off my intervals. The article suggested the pace should be 'hard' so I cranked the speed up to 14.5 kilometres per hour, or 4.07 minutes per kilometre. The first minute was fine ('Is it already over?! Oh!') and during the first rest I did question if the rest really should be as long as the previous interval but during the 3rd interval at a, for me, high speed I definitely started to agreee with the length of the rest.The first five intervals felt pretty good and the last five weren't too bad either (at least not in restrospect....) but I had to work to complete the session and focus on a good technique towards the end of the intervals. I finished off the session with a few progressive kilometres and by the time I was done I was suitably tired and sweaty.

After my running I did 3x200metres front crawl, focusing on technique, and although swimming still isn't my forte I did notice that I have become a better swimmer in the last few months (even if it doesn't feel like it!). Maybe there is hope, after all...

Comfortably Uncomfortable

The muscle in the picture is comfortably uncomfortable today...you know that niggling soreness that tells you that you've done some sort of movement that you're not used to. For me it's yesterday's back stroke stroke practice that did me in - not that I'm really complaining. I will continue to complain about my sore calves though, ow!

Bounce Back In Style

After yesterday's slightly disappointing session I wanted to do something hard today, to bounce back in style. The preparation for today's training was a world of difference from yesterday - as I'm on a day off today I had a good lie in, a good breakfast and then I got on my bike to cycle to the West End to do a treadmill run with progressive pace increase. I could have gone to a gym in the East End, but I find the 35-40 minute cycle to be the perfect warm up before a run, not to mention that the sun was out and I wanted to catch some vitamin D.

Once at the gym I got on a secluded treadmill and got going. The plan was to do a one kilometer warm up and then increase the pace every third kilometer until I had done 15 kilometers. The first 10 k's were easy, with the pace only going up to 11.5k/hour. When I hit the 10k mark I increased the pace to 12k/h which isn't very fast even for a Captain Slow like myself but as I'd already done 10k my calves were struggling just a little bit. The two last kilometers, from 13 to 15 k, I ran in 12.5k/hour pace and they were actually a bit painful. I didn't feel like I was dying of tiredness in the way you sometimes do when you do a really tough interval session, but the accumulated distance and the ever increasing pace had taken its toll - even if the speed wasn't great towards the end, it had progressively increased for a fair few kilometers.  I felt tired when I was done but very happy with both the distance and my execution of the session...I did leave it all on the field (treadmill) today!

Ian, Me and that Eureka Moment.

Today it happened, that eureka moment when you finally get what your coach has been shouting at you for months! After having had moments in the past where I almost wanted to cry in the pool I today felt a bit like Ian Thorpe on the picture above. At the swim course I attend we do loads of drills and this afternoon we were doing a drill where we were to imagine pilling a zipper up along our sides, all the way up to our shoulder, before lifting the hand out of the water and completing the stroke. After a length of that coach Martin asked us to swim back and all of a sudden my body position improved heaps and I rolled much more smoothly, allowing my breathing just that tiny bit more of time that it needed. When I reached the end of the pool I (almost) punched the air - it felt like a proper breakthrough in my front crawl training. At the end of the session coach Martin told me that my stroke was 'beautiful' and I don't think I've ever been more genuinely happy for a compliment...front crawl for me has been/is blood, sweat and tears but maybe, just maybe, I will conquer it!

Swim or Sink?!

Well, I'm not that quite rubbish a swimmer - I've been swimming breaststrokes since I was 5 - but front crawl is an altogether different story.... I never learned as a kid, attending 'swimming school' in the north of Sweden in the middle of May meant many cold and miserable memories and not much inspiration to learn more than the bare essential. As I've been running and cycling more over the last year I've started to dream about completing a triathlon so last September I enrolled at a swim course at the Central YMCA in London to rectify my non-existant front crawl. Poor coach Martin had to drill me over 8 weeks - and not only in front crawl! At the end of the course I had not only learned how to front crawl but also improved my backstroke and started with butterfly....the man is, in short, a miracle worker! My front crawl still wasn't great, especially not when left to my own device. Over Christmas I gave myself a break as my confidence was taking a bit of a beating in the pool just because I didn't feel like a I was making enough progress.