All the gear... no idea?

I was very close to parting with a fair amount of money for the new Planet X TT frame back in early June this year… then I wondered if my times would improve more if I spent the money on a coach for a year.  It turns out I didn’t need a year… even in sprint distance races I have already improved by a couple of minutes just in the last 5 weeks.

This is my 5th year racing triathlons (list of results).  I have always done some form of sport: at school it was football and swimming; at uni it was rowing; and after uni it was running and the gym before finally getting into triathlons.  Being reasonably fit and knowing how to swim, I had a very good start with a 2:15 in the London Tri at the end of my first season in 2006.  It must have been beginner’s luck as since then I have only managed to improve that time by 4 minutes – 1 minute on the bike and 3 on the run (and I spent a lot on bike kit!).  In pretty much every race I do now, there is no one ahead of me with a slower bike split.  If I could get my bike times on a par with my swim and run, I might get into the top 5 in my age group in the bigger races and could even have a chance at a prize in smaller races.  That would be a nice place to be… new bike or coach?

I approached Fiona in early June and asked her if she could sort out my bike performance.  I had just scraped a place in my Age Group for the ITU World Champs Sprint Tri in Budapest in Sept and I wanted to use that as a motivation.  Straightaway Fiona suggested that I reduce the amount of running in favour of some hard bike intervals and overall go for a better balance in training.  We then agreed a weekly schedule around work and my club sessions and set a target of the ITU race – 12 weeks to improve as much as possible. 

My approach to training before has been mainly running or cycling to work with longer sessions at the weekend and a weekly masters club swimming session.  Running always took precedence in training and I just tried to fit in as many hours as possible with no real structure.  The story for the last 3 years has been a small improvement during the season, as the volume picks up, then I get injured and have to rest up for a couple of months.

After just a few weeks of the new regular and balanced training routine, there has already been a noticeable step up in my speed.  I wanted to improve my bike splits but all three disciplines have got better (probably 30s off my 750m swim, 1min off 20k bike leg and 30s-1min off 5k run leg).  I even managed to win my first ever race last week – the SLSC Evening Aquathlon (only a small one but it still felt goooood!).  I was 1:45 slower when I did the same race a month earlier and I thought I was on my limit then.  That improvement has got to be down to the training.

…and no signs of an aches or pains or strains even as the training has started picking up.  So far, so good.  I hope the improvement continues until Sept.  Good job I didn’t choose the new bike frame.