18/01/16

It’s been a while! Christmas and New Year are now distant memories, except for the hangover of a little too much good food and drink, culminating in making myself particularly poorly on Christmas day.

Apparently months off of alcohol mean you can’t quite deal with red wine like you used to (apologies Mum). Then to rub a little salt into that particularly hungover wound I then became ill off the back of it, a shot of the “male cold” (obviously infinitely more debilitating than the female equivalent). Now usually I swear by my daily dose of multivitamins with a high dosage of zinc, and since taking them regularly I can honestly say I’ve had about 11+ blissful sick free months, but alas I forget to take them over Christmas so Illness set in…

So now I had the dilemma of if to train? What intensities do I work at? Do I try and sweat it out? Do I pretend it’s not there? Do I rest completely?

Two years ago I chose to pretend it wasn’t there, I could perform just as well as normal, just had a slightly higher heart rate, but succumbing to machoism that sometime comes hand in hand with training I thought I could shrug it off. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. What actually happened was a lengthy lay off with a chest infection, and feeling as though I may cough up something important.

So this time round I was going to make sure I was sensible. Now being completely sedentary wasn’t an option I wanted to entertain, so instead I decided to spend some time at no higher than threshold on the bike indoors. I made sure to keep my heart rate under control and thanks to the lactate test with Jono I knew exactly the zones to aim for. This worked an absolute treat, It cleared my head, kept me moving and at the other end helped settle into training in threshold (also helping shift a bit of winter weight in the process).

Away from the horrors of the male cold Christmas was brilliant! It gave me time to catch up with people I sometimes don’t make enough time for, not because I don’t want to but the demands of work and getting the training hours in mean I have an element of selfishness about my time.

For me one the most frustrating things about triathlon is that there are only 24 hours in a day. I love the structure tri brings to my day to day routine, I enjoy pushing myself and seeing the gains, I even really enjoy the hours spent on my own (always helps to enjoy your own company in endurance sports).

However sometimes I wish I had more time to spend with friends and family. So I always make sure to spend as much of my free time during the holidays as I can with them. I feel it just makes the transition back into increased training hours a lot easier and smoother.

Training is back in full swing, with all eyes aimed towards the Europeans in Lisbon. The next race in the calendar will be Dewsbury 10K with a few of the others from the Blizard team, so really looking forward to it.

The diet is catching up but I’m not overly concerned about it yet, I just make sure I’m not going silly but I still keep the motivational treats in there. I’ve never been one for completely cutting stuff out of my life, so the increased comfort eating over Christmas will eventually get phased out for race season but for now I’ll make do with cutting out the occasional biscuit during breaks at work as a start!

Well I’m off for a date with the foam roller after the efforts of Saturdays 5K time trial at Blizards. Which as always was a really enjoyable affair, seeing some old and new faces, getting to sample some of the new On’s which really do keep getting better and better (Jess gave in and got her second pair of dashing salmon coloured surfers). Also got to run with the Legend that is Andy Ward, not everyday you get to run with a world record holder!

Hope you’re all enjoying the new year (and the shiny training related Christmas pressies!)
Tom