It’s fairly common knowledge that post the Ironman I was ‘never doing that again‘. It’s also fairly predictable that I’m doing exactly that and signed up for Ironman Wales next year.

After my last post I’ve started to accept that maybe I’m alright at something, so I’ll give this triathlon lark another punt. Season planned, training sessions planned and the family are almost happy that it gets me out the house and makes me less miserable when I’m in it. Just. The fringe benefits are fairly clear as well. Last weekend I played two 90 minute football matches and felt fine. Last year I’d have been blowing after a half, this year I still get breathless but my recovery after a sprint is seconds and not minutes. Add in some visualising, which whilst cheesey, seems to work and ‘Me V2.0‘ is in full effect!

Training isn’t only abut making you stronger/better/faster. It’s not about stopping the pain on race day. It’s about being able to tolerate the pain on race day because you’ve been there before. Christmas fast approaches and my running training starts Dec 5th. Not ideal but let’s see how that test goes. If I can get the miles in whilst it’s cold and dark and I’m surrounded by parties and booze then I can do anything!

I thought I’d share some images from the Boditrax dashboard. See if you can spot when the Ironman was? Probably fairly obvious that in prep I was drinking more, eating better and training harder, check out that water percentage!

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The only other challenge? Plantar fasciitis, my heels are killing me. I’ve eased on the running and pushed a bit on the bike, but we’ll see how that goes.