Feliz Navidad!

Merry Christmas to all.

In my family, we have our Christmas meal on la noche buena, aka Christmas eve.  Pork, black beans and rice, yuca, platanos are the staples topped off with my mother's homemade flan (yes, the picture is from last year b/c I'm in Japan).

Racing in Japan

For the holidays, I'll be taking off to Japan to spend time with my partner and her family (very excited!).

I'll be away for 17 days, and yes, I have my workout schedule planned out.  For convenience sake, I'll give up the bike and pool and stick to running and strength training (super-sets of plyometric jumps, push-ups, pull-ups, core, etc).  The plan is to work-out on 14 of the 17 days varying the distance of the runs, broken up by strength.

The best news of all, while in Japan, I'll run my first race of the year, Ibusuki Nanohana Marathon!  Ibusuki is a small city (about 50,000 people) in the southern part of Kyushu, the southern island of Japan. The area is known for the small, yellow flower called nanohana (seen in the picture below).  The best part, the city nearly doubles in population for the day with 30,000 runners taking part.

I'm not doing much marathon specific training, so no plans for a PB.  Plus, I'm still in low heart-rate, base training mode, so hoping to come in just over 4hrs.

I'll try to keep the blog going while I'm away, but if not, there are a few pre-scheduled posts to tide you over.

Week 6

An up-and-down week.

The up, I'm getting used to sessions of an hour or more.  I can stay focused through the whole workout and sitting on the bike for a long time no longer hurts.

The down, over-eating.  Several nights in a row, I was feeling extremely hungry, almost like a bottomless pit!  No matter what I put down there it didn't seem to fill up, and without my girlfriend around to keep me in check, I need to pay extra attention to my eating.

Happy Birthday

How did I celebrate?  With a few of my favorite things: running, swimming and lifting.

A morning run into work enjoying the half rain, half snow in the air.  Full day of work topped off with 30min gym session of mostly plyometrics and  run to the indoor pool in Highbury for a few hundred meters of cool down.  Great day.

Fiver

Week five over.

Good one through Thursday evening.  I hit all the sessions, even the early mornings.  Then, Thursday night Christmas drinks with gym folks put a big alcoholic damper on Friday's plans.  Recovered for a Saturday morning bike session (got really in to it, enjoying the longer sessions again) and brilliant Sunday long-run along the Thames and Regent's Canal.

Grey, crisp sky, still, calm water, cool, fresh air, chilly at first, warming up step-by-step, there's not much better than a winter morning's run.

Stretching

The first few weeks back felt like a chore, and nothing was more "tick-the-box" than stretching.  How I spent 5+ hours per week stretching earlier this year is beyond me.  So, of course, I haven't done as much as I should, and I'm paying for it.

Left knee, hip and right hamstring issues.  No injuries, yet.

If there is any one lesson that I would pass to first time ironman or endurance racers, it's stretch.  When you think you've stretched enough, stretch some more and when you're bored stretching, take five more mins to stretch.  

Thanks for the reminder, I'll take you up on that.

Overall Plan for 2012

My motto for this year, expect change and stay flexible.

On a personal note, 2012 is the year I finally move to Asia.  I have wanted this for a long time but want no more, it's time for action.  The issue, I have no idea when.  This uncertainty makes race planning difficult but looking on the bright side, it keeps me flexible and allows experimenting with different types of training (i.e. whatever I can squeeze in between researching, deciding, planning and executing a move).

Given my jell-o-like plans, training will target half-iron distance events (1.9km swim, 90km bike, 21km run) so I continue to build a triathlon base with an end of the season focus on longer runs finishing the year with an ultra-marathon (exact distance tbd, but 100km run sounds nice!)

Subject to change, below is an outline.

Wks 1-15: Base (aerobic training)
- Mon, Nov 7 to Sun, Feb 19
- Swim, 2x per week at 500 to 1000m per session
- Bike, 3x per week 30 to 90min
- Run, 4x per week 20 to 120min
- Yoga, at least 1x per week and up to as many as possible
- Weights, 2x per week of short 30min sessions

Wks 16-25: Build
- Mon, Feb 20 to Sun, Apr 29
- Similar as above but adding in sprint (non-aerobic) work

Wks 26 - 35: Peak
- Mon, Apr 30 to Sun, Jul 8
- Same but beasting it!


So, looking for a half-iron distance race in July which is peak season for Ironman sponsored half's across America, TriStar events in Europe and a few dotted around Asia.


After that, I'll take a few weeks of r&r before launching into ultra training.