A good start to 2019 and a good training week. 760+ TSS, 11 hours of total training for the week – first such hard week for a long time.  Felt good. Missed one swim, but had two good swims and will work on the swim consistency.

1 week to go to Goa 113 (70.3 distance race) – it’s an unofficial race, and I’m treating it as a practice race or a tough training session. It is going to be tough – bike course has 900m of elevation gain and it’s rolling hills the entire way through. The run course is similarly hard – 22.5km run and it’ll be 33+ deg by the time I start my run. All of which constitutes great practice for Colombo and the Goa 70.3 in Oct. It’ll also help me do some race practice in the heat and give me a chance to work on my nutrition and hydration.

The coming week is going to be a tough one on the work front, so I’m hoping to just stay in touch with my training plan and keep something in the tank for a tough weekend of racing in Goa.

On to week 2.

A slightly harder week this time around – to coincide with many dinners, drinks, and other events. But it was a good week overall. Nearly 600TSS this week. Most importantly, I had 2 good swim sessions for the second straight week – which felt good.

Starting next week, I’m going to aim for 3 swims a week as per the plan. This will ensure good recovery as well, and better feel in the water. So it can only help.

I also did my first outdoor ride in 4 months (since Australia!) – all my training has been on the trainer. Outdoor rides in Bangalore are hard – there’s traffic, pollution, and terrible roads. And rides can only really be done very early on Sundays and on certain roads. The big goal for next year is to up the frequency of outdoor rides but to do it with groups and not by myself.

2 weeks to Goa 113. And another 5 weeks after that to Colombo. So (despite an inevitable spike in work activity in early 2019), I am aiming for a nice intense run-in to Colombo.

On to 2019.

A lighter week (with recovery from the HM last Sunday). One missed session. The focus moves on to swim and bike while maintaining the run fitness built up over the last couple of months. The first quarter of 2019 will be mostly focused on the swim – getting better on that front – while not compromising the run and bike as much as possible.

On to the last full week of 2018.

An excellent finish to the week! Ran a ‘run test’ half marathon on Sunday to end an 11-week run-focused training block since October 1. I managed to set the half marathon PB I hoped to, and got very close to my target time.

Goal time: 1:36:00 (4:33/km)
Race time: 1:36:50 (4:35/km)

In the process, I also set a 10km PB of 43:56. I suspect that I could do 42:xx in a stand-alone 10km. I’ll try this sometime post-March ’19.

The race itself was a little hillier than I anticipated (180m), but the conditions were near perfect otherwise. Closed road, 17 deg cool, and I had warmed up for the first time in years.

Now, it’s time to focus on: (1) losing a couple of kilos of flab before Feb (2) focusing on swim and bike for the next 10 weeks (3) not losing my run fitness.

On to the next week.

Another strange week. The first couple of days of the week were ‘off’ days – a bit of recovery from Sunday’s Olympic Tri (in which I placed 2nd – my first podium – even if it was a pedestrian field), and also some travel back from Hyderabad. And then at the end of the week, I had planned to do Nandi Epic (112km) ride, but couldn’t because I was feeling a bit under the weather.

Managed to squeeze in one swim, and got a few encouraging sessions in. One was the 18km run on Saturday, where I was able to hold 4:46/km for 14km. And the trainer sessions forced me to ride reasonably high intensity despite heavy legs.

So not a great training week, but kept it ticking over. The focus now is on my last 3-week run block towards a half marathon. And I’m about 13.5 weeks away from Colombo tri. Hence, I’ll move into a tri-specific training block with a greater emphasis on swimming and longer rides once the HM is done.

Another thing I’m going to start throwing in is running in the heat (whenever I can) so I get acclimatized at least a bit.

On to week 47.

A bizarre training week. Travel, festival, illness and some logistical challenges. Tuesday was a holiday so I managed to do a hard 2-a-day run/bike block. But the second half of the week was difficult. First, the pool was closed for 3 straight days for Diwali – so no swim midweek! Then I traveled to Chennai for work on Thursday, returning late on Friday, so a little tired and sleep deprived. But that wasn’t the half of it.

We were scheduled to go to Hyderabad for the Hyderabad Tri (Olympic distance) and spend a weekend with friends there. A few hours after I returned from Chennai, and just a couple of hours before we were scheduled to fly to Hyderabad, I had a scary experience. I had the mightiest of headaches (and I rarely experience headaches except for the odd hot-day run or a hangover). The headache was so severe it woke me up! And then I started to feel nauseous. I was feeling so unwell, we ended up not leaving on our morning flight (bye, bye tickets). A little later in the day, I was still unwell, had a ‘hangover’ headache and general uneasiness. But I didn’t want to waste the planned weekend. So we took a later flight. All this meant that I wasn’t remotely well enough to train on Saturday, so I missed a second session (a hard run this time). As we went to Hyderabad, I still hadn’t made up my mind whether I would do the triathlon the next day.

Late on Saturday evening, I decided to give it a go. So, I went to the bike shop to rent a bike. Wasn’t a very good bike, but was functional and I wasn’t planning to ‘race’ as much as use the event as a good, hard training session with some transition practice.

Come race day (Sunday), my event was scheduled to start at 8.30am with a pool swim of 1500m. We ended up waiting in the sun to swim our turn – and by the time I started, it was 9.25 (and nearly 30 deg!). Scorcher.

The bike leg wasn’t enjoyable either since there were no road closures and we rode with traffic, the heat and the wind. And with a heavy bike, a size too small, that didn’t run very smoothly, it was a challenging ride. But since I was looking for a hard training session, it certainly served that purpose.

The run leg began at around 11.30 for me – a high noon 10km on a hot, hilly course wasn’t easy. But once again, if I were to look at it as a good training session for hot 70.3 races like Goa and Colombo, it certainly served the purpose. Had a reasonably strong run under the circumstances and finished in about 53 mins.

I scraped together a 500TSS week which wasn’t too bad given all the logistical challenges, the sudden illness and the travel.

On to the next (hopefully more routine) week.

This was a good, tough week overall – managed to hit nearly all my sessions. I missed one swim, but also moved a swim from the previous week into this one, so I still got one swim done. Two runs, in particular, felt quite hard. One was the Thursday 13km – which pushed me quite a bit. I was glad to run with company for that one. And I came within a minute of both my 5km and 10km PBs for that one. I think I should be in good shape to beat both PBs in the next month.

This was also my first 500+ TSS week since training for Sunshine Coast. So it’s been a good 3 months since I did this kind of a week. Feels good.

I also had some hard trainer rides – now that I tested a higher FTP last weekend. While I tested a 245 on the ramp test, I was advised by my coach to keep it at 235 until I adapted (otherwise it would be more than 10% jump from what I was training at). This has served me well so far – even the sweet spot rides have been enough of an effort so I can tell the difference.

I’m not happy with not getting my swims in. November is the month in which I want to make sure my swimming gets back on track slowly. I’m still in the middle of my run block, but leading into my swim camp on Dec 6th, I don’t want to be totally rusty.

My diet has been a little erratic – holidays, events and late nights are contributing factors – but it hasn’t been out of control. So I’m still on track to try and get close to 76kgs without loss in power by the end of the calendar year.

Traveling to Hyderabad next weekend, so going to do an Olympic tri on a rented bike and a pool swim. So, while it won’t be ideal ‘racing’ conditions, I intend to use the event as a good brick session, and transition practice.