Press-up with leg lift
Keep your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Gently lower your body, keeping a straight line from your head to ankle. While lowering your body, lift one leg up from the floor. As you push back up, return your leg to the floor, then repeat on the other side.

One leg bend to overhead reach
Stand on one leg and maintain a slight bend in your knee to activate your glutes. Tip forwards from your hips and reach for the floor. Come back up into an overhead raise, remembering to swap legs when you’ve done one rep.

Lunge to rotation
Take a step forwards and allow your toes to point slightly in. Maintain an upright position and rotate your body across your front leg. Repeat on the other side.

Side leg flop
Lie on your back with your knees in the air, then place your arms at either side of your body to stabilise yourself. Keep your knees together and rotate as far as you can. Go back to the neutral position and rotate to the other side.

Bicycles
Lie on your back with your knees raised. Keep one elbow on the floor with your hands on your temples. Bring your raised elbow across your body and your opposite knee towards it while extending the other leg. Then perform on the other side.

Box superman
Assume a box position with your hands and knees under your shoulders and the hips respectively. Then bring one elbow to the opposite knee and extend the arm and the leg in opposite directions. Repeat on the other side.

Lateral lunge
Start with your feet facing forward, take a step out to the side and lunge down, keeping your shoulders and your hips square. Come back up and perform the action on the other side.

Dorsal raise
Lie face down on the floor with your hands at your temples and your shoulders relaxed. Take a deep breath in, lifting your chest off the floor. Hold briefly, then gently lower to the floor breathing out.

Thought I would post these as they are a great work out which doesn’t need require a expensive gym membership, plus it means I don’t need to track the video’s down all the time.

Obviously you should do however many reps you feel comfortable with and then build up over time.

Press-up
Keep your hands just wider than shoulder-width apart and brace your abs. Keep your shoulders down and maintain a straight line between your head and ankles as you perform the move.

Wall angel
Keep your feet about four inches away from the wall and maintain a slight bend in your knees. Your buttocks, spine and the head should all be against the wall as you press your arms up it.

Clock squat
Stand on one leg and reach forwards, using your arms for balance. Come back up and stabilise, then go out to the side, again using your arms for balance. Come back up, then go out to the rear and stabilse. Up again and to the other side. Repeat with the other leg.

Alternate-feet squat thrusts
Keep your hands just slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and brace your shoulders and abs to keep a straight line down your body. Bring up one knee up as the other hip extends.

Plank
Get into a bridge with your elbows directly underneath your shoulders and your hands out in front of you. Keep your abs braced and a straight line from your head to your ankles.

Side crunch
Lie on your back with your knees raised. Keep your hands at your temples with your elbows back. As you rotate upwards, keep one elbow on the floor and bring the other elbow toward your opposite knee.

Split squat
Assume a stride position, keeping your front foot bent slightly in and your body upright. Take a deep breath, bending your back leg down and exhale on the way up. Alternate legs to maintain balance.

Dorsal raise
Lie face down on the floor with your hands at your temples and your shoulders relaxed. Take a deep breath in, lifting your chest off the floor. Hold briefly, then gently lower to the floor breathing out.

Tonight’s session was a good warm up with drills, needed considering the temperature. Then 200, 400, 600 and 800 meter run. These where to be of similar pace all the way through. We then went back down, 600, 400 and so forth, however these where to be slightly faster than before.

Instead of looking at pace all the time I consentrated on a heart rate of around 160 – 165. I found this quite sucessful.

Garmin Data

Tough ride this morning, 35-40 miles was in a single gear, think I chose too heavy a gear. I also don’t think I haven’t fully recovered from being ill, found it quite hard to breath. It just felt like I was taking half breaths all the time? So at about 50 miles I told the group to go on without me so I could spin back at my leisure rather than holding them up.

Apart from that I think riding during the week is paying off, I actually felt pretty good all the way around apart from not being able to breath as heavy as I would like. Obviously fatigue kicked in at about 55 miles, but I think that’s pretty good considering I haven’t ridden more than about 40 miles in quite some time.

Garmin Data

Took it easy tonight as my legs are hurting from last night, plus Rob has a pretty decent ride set for Saturday.

Garmin Data

The new TTG run set started tonight, bit of a poor turn out, but hopefully that’s just because it’s new?

Garmin data

Legs are quite saw now!

Winter training is now in full swing! It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted as I’ve been trying to figure out quite a lot of Wordpress stuff, that’s all sorted now so here we go!

Since Germany I haven’t really been training that seriously, last years tri season is a mixture of high’s and low’s, my running has come on loads in last 12 months, but unfortunately not at the end of a tri, so my main goal next year is run a good race at the end of a tri. To achieve this I must sort out my nutrition as it is the bloated stomach that is slowing me down and stopping me run a good race. I know I can run a good half marathon as I have done two in the last couple of months, Bristol was a new personal best (PB) of 01:44:28, then on the 25th October repeated this success by topping the that with a new PB! At Stroud I got 01:43:44. So on my long rides this winter I need to simulate race nutrition, mixing it up until I get the right combination.

I have also been busy sorting out a winter bike, I really didn’t feel comfortable riding my new Orbea all through winter as it will ruin the expensive groupset, plus if I dropped it I would be gutted. Luckily a friend from the Tri Team Glos (TTG) was selling his Giant TCR Composite ONCE for a very good price, so I just had to sort the rest, easy right?! Not at all! Finding a groupset at a good price was a pain, but all came good and I’ve been riding for a couple of weeks now. I had some major issues with the gears which turned out to be a stiff link on the new chain, so I wasn’t too pleased with the service from Striking Bikes.

And here it is!

On Sunday I attended a planning your training year seminar with Andy Gardner, this was a great session, it really cleared up some the points I know I need to focus on for next year. I have a few events upcoming over the winter, I thought entering some events will keep my focussed over winter.

I’ve also started riding home from work, I’m only doing this in the evenings as the journey really isn’t pleasant in pitch black at 6am, thanks to Rich for giving me a lift in when my car is at work. On these rides I’ve decided to keep in a single gear which will hopefully increase my power output over time? This should also put me back to where I was in terms of cycle fitness which I feel has really suffered since I started taking it a bit easier.

Commute Home

That will do for now, I will hopefully post a bit regally from now on?!

I did a 90min HRZ 1/2 run today, I find these runs quite dull to do, I was supposed to do a 110min, but it kept raining all the time and I got back to near my house and decided to call it a day.

View interactive details on Garmin Connect

I also did an hours swim set, as these sessions are coached I never really keep track of we do, but this was a particularly hard set.

View interactive details on Garmin Connect

Training today was a 45 mile ride around Gloucestershire with group 2 of Tri Team Glos, I spent quite a lot of time on the front in very windy conditions. We did one major hill, I’m still finding my feet with new bike thus I wasn’t first to the top, however I was catching them! Maybe next time!

Rest day! No training today.

But seeing as this my first training post here is my weeks training;

Saturday 11th – Upton Olympic Triathlon, 02:40.
Sunday 12th – Should have run for 100min but I hurt foot on the 11th, thus no run.
Monday 13th – Commute to and from work, 50M round trip
Tuesday 14th – Hill reps, 10m warm up, 6×3m HRz 5, 3m recovery
Wednesday 15th – 1h TTG swim set
Thursday 16th – Commute to and from work, 50M round trip followed by 20min 10K pace run