Damian's Training Blog
Training for IM France

Still waiting for my Eureka moment.

Last year whilst training for Ironman France we had to go to hong Kong for 2 weeks as Kelly’s Granny wasn’t very well. I didn’t like the food much over there so for two weeks the only thing I ate was Fish, Lobster and Chicken (once I knew it was normal chicken and not a foot or something). I did manage to sneak off to McDonalds once in Kellys village but no one in the whole restaurant could speak English so I had to point at the menu. Too embarassed to go in there again.

Anyway long story short because my diet was so restricted I went from 14 stone to just under 13 stone in two weeks. Suddenly the bike seemed much easy going up hills I was running a lot faster. It was the moment in my training when everything became much easier, this year I am still waiting on that moment. A good bout of some sickness might do the trick this year!

Training for the last two weeks was a bit mixed. Got in my 6 bikes 5 runs and 1 swim. I know I need to increase the mileage on the bike, my long rides are still too small. The running is really starting to come on, I adopted the Heart rate training thing where you run at an average of 135bpm. Intially this was incredibly easy and I did a 30k run like this with no bother, in fact the pace was 6 mins per kilometer and it was hard not to try and run faster. Yesterday (two weeks later) I did the same run I was dying trying to breathe (still 135bpm) and the pace was just under 5 mins per kilometer. I’m going to revert back to my orignal theory that I have a funny heart rate and Heart Rate Training is not for me.

This week I’ll be happy if I can keep the running at the same level and increase the bike rides and get back in the pool again to some consistent level.