Saturday, January 15, 2011

There will be spreadsheets

(OK, so I borrowedstole the blog post title from one of my favourite bloggers - but I like it and more to the point it is true :)

It's been too long. Last year was slack, slack, slack - apart from a trip to France and the National Relays, I barely got on my road bike. Silly girl. Time to rectify that and find some focus.

I've done a few editions of Waveney sprint tri in the past (1 - 2 - 3), and marshalled a few more, so when it opened to club members this week I figured it was time to race again, and signed myself up before I could come up with some lame-arsed excuse. I've been swimming and running regularly, so it's not like I am starting from rock bottom.

Plus race day, May 8th, is 16 whole weeks away, which gives me time to follow one of the 12-week plans from the training bible plus 4 weeks extra at the start to build up a really good base. My overall goal is to beat my Waveney PB of 1:05:23. I figure that along the way I should also be able to crack my frankly dismal parkrun PB of 28:35 (if not my all-time 5km PB of 24:38), and lose a few kg as well - plenty of those to spare at the moment.

So, the plan is this.
  1. Follow weeks 5-8 of the level 4 sprint training plan ("modest initial fitness level; 6 workouts per week"), which is three "build" weeks and a recovery week.
  2. Follow weeks 1-12 at level 5 of the same plan ("decent base fitness; not just finish, but finish well; three workouts per week per discipline"). That's 3 weeks of "base", one recovery, three "build", one recovery, three "peak", and one taper leading up to the race.
I have a big spreadsheet where I am putting the training plan elements into a quick-to-read format. (I'm also tracking calories in/out, and weight. I said there would be spreadsheets, didn't I?). Next week's schedule is:
  • Monday: off-plan - hit the gym for some gentle strength and core work
  • Tuesday: swim - base intervals plus drills and kick
  • Wednesday: bike - (in the gym seeing as it's still dark when I'm not in work...) "hills", plus core
  • Thursday: swim - tempo intervals plus drills and kick
  • Friday: run - steady including short sprints
  • Saturday: bike - steady
  • Sunday: run - steady
I might change the order to find myself training buddies and do parkrun on Saturday - perhaps swap Weds/Fri and Sat/Sun.

So, goal for this week, 17th-23rd January: complete the above training plan! Eat to fuel the training, and stay hydrated. And keep blogging - I feel better for writing all that down, so that's a good start :)

5 comments:

Effie said...

Go Girl!

carla said...

Welcome to blogging!!!!!

Love

A blogger with zero spreadsheet skillz aka MizFit

Shauna said...

sounds like a plan stan! welcome back to the land o blog and very best of luck with your plans :)

Katy W said...

Thank you for the support, people! I'm raring to go on all fronts :)

Fit and Healthy said...

Love spreadsheets!! I've created one to record all my exercise and weight progress. Next step: Create graphs mwah!!!