Week 32 Training Log

Half term fell nicely on a three day training week. I was working Monday so I had to shunt things on a day, makes no difference.
Another two and hopefully my last treadmill sessions this week, each off the back of a gym bike ride.
A nice swim on Tuesday. After a twenty minute warm up I set about doing kicking drills with pull sets between. The aim is to improve balance and posture in the water. For this stage in my training I have no complaints about my swimming. The same can't be said for my running and riding, both are flagging. I have a marathon in the middle of April and at the moment my longest run is half an hour on a treadmill. I have to try it on the road very soon but I'm still not completely happy with my knee. On a treadmill, after a good warm up on the bike the knee is fine for half an hour, I don't even feel it.

I've always been a keen cyclist and consider myself to be of a fairly good standard on a bike. But it turns out that the bike is probably my biggest limiter. I stand to make the most time gains on race day by improving the bike leg. Based on Thursdays endurance ride I'm going to be lucky to complete 112 miles in less than eight hours, that's nowhere near good enough. I need to shave about one and a half hours off of that. I've got a lot more work to do on the bike than I have in any of the other legs. No amount of training in my lifetime is going to shave that time off a marathon.
I have one week left in the base period so I may dedicate alot of that week to bike training, both on and off the bike in the form of strength training. I'll also throw in some brick training to get the knee re-introduced to the tarmac.