My road to Ironman officially starts here – 23 weeks to get myself fit enough to take on the 3.8km swim, 180km ride and 42.2km run. I have always said that I wanted to complete an Ironman before I turn 30 and as I rapidly seem to be approaching that date I finally committed myself and entered Ironman Taupo which will take place on 2nd March 2019.
I am not starting out in the best shape - 12.5 hour shifts combined with studying for the sports medicine diploma exam have meant that training has had to take a back seat for the past few months but now that the diploma is over and done with I am now looking forward to getting my fitness back. A quick weigh-in at the start of the week revealed that I am currently at the heaviest I have ever been but I’m not too worried about that at the moment as I’m sure I’ll be burning off those fat stores over the coming months.
Over the next few weeks I aim to gradually increase my training load to try and get my body used to the volume again and to start building in some core / strengthening sessions to help with overall strength and injury prevention. I did some test sessions a few weeks ago to try and get an idea of where I am at in terms of fitness and to give me some values to work with in training. I was pleasantly surprised that my swim and bike fitness had not dropped off too much but my running is as disappointing as ever so this has given me a good idea on where my focus should be. Results are detailed below
Swim
200m TT - 2.30
400m TT - 5.08
CSS = 1.19/100m
Bike
20min value – 218W
FTP – 208W
Run (Thurso ParkRun)
5km TT – 24.10
Threshold = 5.06min/km