Merry Christmas

I have nearly reached the end of the second base phase. All I have left is a 4 hour bike ride tomorrow morning. The weather is supposed to be pretty poor tomorrow therefore any riding is likely to be on a trainer. The idea of 4 hours on a trainer does not bear thinking about, luckily we will be flying to Toronto tomorrow which drastically reduces the time available for me to sit on the trainer and the coach has told me to fit in whatever I can.

Wendy and I are spending Christmas with relatives of mine in Canada. Christmas week rather conveniently falls on my recovery week and the Coach has amended my program to remove cycling and swimming whilst I am away as finding suitable facilities may be a struggle. I do however have a few runs and looking at Scott's Blog, a fellow Kona Challenger, the weather in Canada is a damn sight colder than here.

This build phase has gone reasonably well. After the second weekend I did find that my calfs became really tight and I had a bit of pain in my right calf (felt like it was bruised). The coach amended my schedule to give me a little extra rest and that seemed to do the trick. Last weekend and particularly this weekend I have had little trouble absorbing the training and although it is still very tiring I am feeling strong. Lesson learned is that sometimes you are better backing off on the training, or in other words run away so that you can fight another day.

The distances and times have gradually increased over this base period. Tuesday's endurance swim has crept up to 2 intervals of 1200m with a 30 second rest in between (with warm up and cool down I am over 3km a swim). The cycling is up to 3 hours on a Saturday and 4 (in theory) on a Sunday. The running has not increased much and remains at 1.5 hours. The busiest day by far is a Saturday. Today I awoke at 7am had a look outside and checked the weather on line. It looked as if the rain was going to hold off so I joined my Tri Team for a 3 hour bike ride (48.4 miles). The ride was actually very pleasant and the weather kind to us. I got home at lunch time had a quick sandwich and then jumped in the bath. It was now past 2pm and I realised that I was going to have to get a move on if I was to fit in my 1.5 hour run and some Yoga before we had to go out for the evening. I went out for my run at 3.15pm (luckily still not raining) and got home for 4.45pm. I did about 25 min Yoga and then helped Wendy get tea ready. We had to leave at 6.00pm to get to the Kennedy Center to watch the Nutcracker (nothing to do with cycling seats).

Amazingly everything worked out and we had a very pleasant evening. I cannot say that I am big fan of ballet but I did enjoy the show. The scenery, costumes and of course the music were great and the dancers were amazingly toned. Some of the audience were very well turned out and there were some very glamorous dresses and coats about. It reminded me of may last swim at the Sports club. It is in a very affluent area and the people here seem to have a great deal of disposable income. A good example was the lady swimming next to me who came out to the poolside not in flip flops but in a pair of Ugg boots.

I will probably not have a chance to post for a few days so I would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.