First race of the season has come and gone, i love heading out to Lisbon to start the year as always greeted by great weather and a great race!!
The organizing committee have turned this event into Portugal's biggest triatlon after only 3 years and do a great job putting the event on in a major spot within the city!!
The race field has improved every year and the pro line up this year was very exciting with some top 10 Hawaii finishers and world champions in the field. My goal for the race was to lead out the swim and stick with the lead group throughout the bike and then shoot for a podium finish on the run.
The usual nerves were present on race morning and was just a case of getting to the start line and getting the job done, i always relax once in the water for the warm up!! The swim start was good for me and i ended up in 3rd place straight away at the first buoy and held this position through the swim exiting in 2nd position into t1. Onto the bike last years winner from Denmark Jimmy Johnson soon blasted past and onto a solo mission up front, i was riding with a group of around 10 athletes 2 minutes back from the leader including Paul Amey, Marino Vanhoenacher, Pedro Gomez and Jonas Colting. The bike was comfortable but not too easy as we rolled around in perfect conditions for a 2hour 2min bike split for the 85ks. The new bike is amazing and the position is feeling great, much lower and aero now and most importantly no back pain!!
Into T2 i had a little run in with the camera crew who were getting some shots of Pedro for TV, once i got them out of the way it was quickly on with the runners and out onto the hot run course!! I lost a few seconds in transition so started about 20 seconds down on the tail end of the group, during the first 5k i stayed steady and started to pick off some runners, moving past Pedro and closing in on Jonas in 5th, my plan was to start to up the pace over the last 10k but this did not happen as the wheels fell off after 8k and Pedro came flying past on route to a great 3rd place finish. I found myself in 8th place and just stuck it out to the finish even starting to come good again around 16-17ks in!!!
Overall i am happy with the race, things are certainly much improved from last year and all heading in the right direction. Run was not great but i know there is some fast running in me just waiting to pop out!!
Pictures to follow!!!
Woody
Sunday 4 May 2008
Tuesday 8 April 2008
Season almost arrived at last
Well finally the season has rolled around again, just 3 weeks out now till my first race!! I will be starting the season again in Lisbon with a great Half Ironman event www.lisboatriathlon.com.
The training has been going very well and i am in the middle of a big 3 week block of work. Last week saw my biggest training week so far with 20k swim, 700k bike and 110k run, the week went very well with a lot of intensity on the bike and just ticking over on the run until Sunday's 2hr15min run which included 75min tempo running at the end!!
Good solid week behind me, just enjoying 2 light days training now and then back it tomorrow for another 7 days!!
have my new bike all set up and ready to go as you can see from pic above!!
Have become addicted to 24 yet again with my wife, getting a good 2/3 episodes in per evening after putting Zack to bed!! Season 4 at the moment, presidents plane about to be shot down!!
Train hard,
Woody
Wednesday 19 March 2008
BLACK CHRISTMAS WHITE EASTER
We are forecast some cooler weather this week with the temp back down below freezing at night, Szilvi told me today that the Hungarian's have a saying "A black Christmas will be followed by a white Easter". Well after hearing this i headed out for an easy 4 hour ride and sure enough the first 30 minutes were spent in a light snow shower!! However this quickly blew by and the rest of the ride was in the sun!!
Training is going well, had a little blip last week as came down with Bronchitis, all the family have been suffering here!! Just reduced the training load and mostly worked on conditioning till the worst past by, just lasted 4 days and everything was ramped back up on Friday. Sunday was a high quality day with a VO2 set on the computrainer followed by 2 hours out on the road, a little rest then one hour run with 2x10min tempo thrown in. Tuesday saw a 40 minute threshold run in the schedule and i headed out on a 11k loop i use to see how things are going, ran well and finished the loop in 36.25 much faster than expected!!
Pictures of new bike and hopefully a video coming soon!!
Woody
Training is going well, had a little blip last week as came down with Bronchitis, all the family have been suffering here!! Just reduced the training load and mostly worked on conditioning till the worst past by, just lasted 4 days and everything was ramped back up on Friday. Sunday was a high quality day with a VO2 set on the computrainer followed by 2 hours out on the road, a little rest then one hour run with 2x10min tempo thrown in. Tuesday saw a 40 minute threshold run in the schedule and i headed out on a 11k loop i use to see how things are going, ran well and finished the loop in 36.25 much faster than expected!!
Pictures of new bike and hopefully a video coming soon!!
Woody
Saturday 8 March 2008
Back in Hungary
Back in Hungary now and well into my race prep phase of training!!
My time in the UK was well spent meeting up with my new tri team Total Racing Inc (www.totalracinginc.com), spent some time helping the guys out with there swimming technique using the endless pool facility they have along with the shark eye underwater camera!! Very cool pieces of equipment!!
Also met up with top strength and conditioning coach Nick Grantham (www.nickgrantham.blogspot.com), always good to meet new coaches as you can always learn something new or a new approach to something you've already been doing, variety truly is the spice of life!! I have been having problems with my left glut for some time now and some simple exercises isolating and activating the muscle sure has made a world of difference in such a short time!!
If there are any triathletes looking for something new in there training then i would highly recommend heading up to Newcastle for a couple of days with Nick for body analysis and a specific conditioning program! Nothing like a new element in your training to boost motivation!
For more details and articles by Nick check out the training articles on www.totalracinginc.com.
happy training
Woody
My time in the UK was well spent meeting up with my new tri team Total Racing Inc (www.totalracinginc.com), spent some time helping the guys out with there swimming technique using the endless pool facility they have along with the shark eye underwater camera!! Very cool pieces of equipment!!
Also met up with top strength and conditioning coach Nick Grantham (www.nickgrantham.blogspot.com), always good to meet new coaches as you can always learn something new or a new approach to something you've already been doing, variety truly is the spice of life!! I have been having problems with my left glut for some time now and some simple exercises isolating and activating the muscle sure has made a world of difference in such a short time!!
If there are any triathletes looking for something new in there training then i would highly recommend heading up to Newcastle for a couple of days with Nick for body analysis and a specific conditioning program! Nothing like a new element in your training to boost motivation!
For more details and articles by Nick check out the training articles on www.totalracinginc.com.
happy training
Woody
Sunday 10 February 2008
Back in The UK
I'm back in the UK for 2 weeks recovery training (grandparents were desperate to see Zack!!) and meeting up with my new sponsors Total Racing Inc ( www.totalracinginc.com ).
We arrived late Friday night after a long day traveling and decided to take part in the North East road relay champs on the Saturday which was being run as the Signal Relays. Was a beautiful location for the race with the rolling 3.5k course set in a country park just outside Newcastle. The race went well, i had second leg to avoid the scrum and starting sprint of the first leg, i took the first 1k a little easy then opened up on the hilly part of the course running strong until about 9 minutes when total lactate legs struck and i hobbled the last 90 seconds but managed to hold the team in a solid 4th spot. Always nice to get a real taste of pain again, very different to triathlon racing!!! Szilvi also took part in her first race since Zack was born just over 2 years ago, a little challenged by the hills but enjoyed the challenge!!!
Woke up today with quads ripped to pieces from the downhill sections yesterday, been a while since i was in this much pain but the sunny warm weather in Newcastle in February (!!!!!!!!) and a nice trip to the beach soon sorted this out. We took Zack upto the beach and found that all of Newcastle had decided to do the same, don't think i have ever seen the place so busy!! Always a great place to spend the day and have a good laugh, i went down to the water to soak the legs and it was very cold, however seeing a rugby team taking a dip and a couple of surfers out in shorts
made me stay in a little longer.
Zack decided to join me as many other children were running in and out of the water, he had his wellies off, ran to the water and proceded to fall in the water when the first little wave got him!!! Good job his mum decided to bring a change of cloths!!
Training week ahead will be very simple with 3 runs, a few mountain bikes and a couple of swims ending with a X-country race on Saturday as part of the North Eastern Harrier League!!
Here's hoping this great weather continues!!
Woody
Monday 4 February 2008
2008
2008 has started very well, i am just finishing up a nice 6 week block of work before heading to the UK for 2 weeks to see family get a little warm weather training!!! Zack very excited to go on an airplane friday to see his grandparents, wakes every morning asking if we go to the airport!!
The winter here in Hungary has been quite cold so far, lots of indoor training on the computrainer mixed with some freezing runs outdoors. The main goals for me this winter was to regain my speed after 2 years of training for longcourse, too many long hours in the past 2 winters just sapped my speed and led to 2 very average racing seasons. So focus has been speed now and long stuff will come closer to races, a different approach to I'm used to but seems to be lots of evidence for the success of this principle.
Here in Tiszaujvaros we have a great team of athletes and has been good to join them for a swim focus over the last few weeks, we have been putting in consistent 30+k swim weeks and certainly reaping the rewards with some fast swimming over a 1500m TT last week, managed to improve my best by nearly a minute recording 16.46 but only good enough for second fastest!!!
The winter here in Hungary has been quite cold so far, lots of indoor training on the computrainer mixed with some freezing runs outdoors. The main goals for me this winter was to regain my speed after 2 years of training for longcourse, too many long hours in the past 2 winters just sapped my speed and led to 2 very average racing seasons. So focus has been speed now and long stuff will come closer to races, a different approach to I'm used to but seems to be lots of evidence for the success of this principle.
Here in Tiszaujvaros we have a great team of athletes and has been good to join them for a swim focus over the last few weeks, we have been putting in consistent 30+k swim weeks and certainly reaping the rewards with some fast swimming over a 1500m TT last week, managed to improve my best by nearly a minute recording 16.46 but only good enough for second fastest!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
