Mad Manatee Mentors 2013: CLOSED (exc/ Pop Tart bribes)

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Caerphilly, Wales, uk.

Subject: RE: Mad Manatee Mentors 2013: CLOSED (exc/ Pop Tart bribes)

Originally posted by switch

Originally posted by Richardsdrr Hi, just checking in. Janyne posted a question on my inspire yesterday, I thought I would post it here along with my reply to keep people in the loop about what I'm up to. Replying to a message by jmkizer on 2013-08-20

I hope that all is well in your neck of the woods! I think that you mentioned that you had a mechanical during long course weekend and I notice that you have not been on your bike much since then. Is the bike kaput or are you just not getting along with it right now? Are you still doing the Oly in a few weeks?Have a great week!

Hi, all good here, just trying to get my head around what I want to get out of doing tri's, and where I want to be in 2-3 years from now. I am still doing the Oly, but not too worried about it because I'm not going to race it, but am using it as a training day. My main focus has been running, as you probably guessed, because I have a little ultra race coming up in September. The mechanical on the long weekend was my gear shifter coming off in my hand as I was climbing a steep long hill, but I fixed that on course, which probably cost me missing the cut off. I'm looking at entering a half IM for later next year, so will be shifting focus to biking then, once I get my run speed up. I'm really struggling to fit in training with 70 hour working weeks over 5 days, and its been even harder the past 5 weeks with my daughter off school. I have tried to see if I can remain consistent over the past 4 weeks to see how many hours I could realistically manage. Another factor, I am starting up my studies for my degree again soon, which is going to be another drain on available time, so I'm not looking forward to that. In other news, when I bought new shoes the other day, I got the go ahead to buy DW new shoes too, and she has agreed to a run/walk program as soon as the kids are back to school. I don't mind you posting these little questions on the forum, at least it might make me interact with the forum more. All the best Darren. Thanks for all who give inspires, I read them all and take on board what is written, even if I mostly don't reply, sorry. On that note, if anyone has any questions for me about what I'm up to, feel free to post them on here, I'm ALWAYS lurking. Much more than I should be. Cheers, and toodlepips

Darren, thanks for posting this in the forum. I do wonder about the members we don't hear from that often, so updates are cool And, btw, I suck with inspries--I have it as a goal to get better because I truly do love getting them too

As always, I'm so impressed you could fix a bike thing like that on course. Awesome!

What ultra race are you doing? Have you done an ultra before?

I'm in a run focus right now too, but for a marathon. I'm just in awe of you people who take on ultras

The ultra is a 24 hour race, http://www.equinox24.co.uk/about/I thought I'd sign up for it as, being a 24 hr race, there is no pressure, so to speak. I'm kind of treating it as a weekend away to see what I can do. Whether that is only a Mary, 50 km, 50 mile, 2 x Mary's with a sleep on between, 50 mile etc it really doesn't matter. I'm just there to enjoy it. No, I haven't done an ultra before, having only done one official Mary and one impromptu drunken Mary at x o'clock in the morning that Yanti mentioned, so, whatever I do should be a distance PR. I'm gonna be tracking my run there with Endomondo, so if any of you have that installed on their phone/computer, feel free to follow me. There's a good feature on there that me and my BIL had fun with, where you can send motivational comments to people on their runs, and the phone would read the comments out. We used to send "your mama...." Type comments to each other whilst training, really good laugh when your busting a gut up a hill to have you're one tell you "Yo mama is so fat that when she gets in an elevator, it has to go down.". But it could be used to give proper encouragement (hint, hint).

This ultra is possibly the last race for me this year, and it will act as an end to the haphazard way I've been training and booking races. I haven't been sticking to any plan, with no consistency, and no real direction. I'm currently in the process of drawing up a plan for the next 11 months, including booking in races. So far, I have a marathon booked for the 25th of May. Looking at booking a HM as a tune up 10 weeks from that,
this one

http://www.btrliverpool.com/event/half-marathon/#the-course

with 10 weeks training running up to that. I'm looking at using the plan in Daniels book for those 20 weeks. Before the start, I'm looking at having 2 weeks off over Christmas and leading up to Christmas week 12 weeks of Mary training using macmillan's plan with a marathon at the end to check where my fitness level is before starting the 20 week plan in January 14. The Edingburgh Marathon in May is gonna be my A race, with a current aim of getting close to 3:30 hrs, but that could change up or down depending on my mara time in December, and my HM time in March.

After that its all guns blazing for IM 70.3 weisbaden, in August. I will need to fit in some serious hill work on the bike into my mara schedule (pronounced shed-duel

) for the run up to this race, possibly from Feb I'm thinking of starting regular trainer road sessions on the bike to increase my FTP with long sustained efforts, intervals at about 95% FTP (any good Ben?). My biggest problem is getting to a pool regularly due to work times/opening times/ class times etc. which is a shame because its the one thing I don't have to pay to go to because I get it free, being an ex-serviceman.

So, there it is, the crap that is going through my head constantly, that I try not to spew out too often. Any comments?

Mad Manatee Mentors 2013: CLOSED (exc/ Pop Tart bribes) (Page 297)

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