This feels good!

I'm really enjoying my new training programme.  It's tough to fit it all in, but I'm learning a lot, getting even fitter and picking up some better bike skills too.

Two training sessions a day 6 days a week is really hard to fit in with work continuing to dominate 12 hours a day (2 hours commuting, 10 hours or more in the office).  Sometimes I shift a session (e.g. I did Thursday's swim on Wednesday as I had a scheduled session with coachJez to check up on technique) and sometimes I miss a core strength session but I'm packing in way more hours than previously and they're more quality hours than before:-

Red = missed, significantly too short or significantly too long; Yellow = appreciably too short or too long; Green = on target; Grey = unscheduled; pale colours are in the future.

Today was hill reps of Box Hill - the only hill I know which even vaguely fit the bill that my coach asked for for the hill reps.  Six times up the main bit of it, while there was an event going on which gave me the opportunity to pass quite a few people even though I was taking it relatively easy up the hill.

Pointy! (950m climbing in total)

Looks like a scribble because there are 6 traces - 6 reps - fun!

This was followed by a negative split run - 16mins out, 14mins back - to focus on pacing and not going too quickly off the bike.  I think I went out a bit too hard, which meant that the reverse route was even tougher, but I just about managed 16:00 out and 14:18 back (over 5.48km).  Given the fact that I'm very inexperienced at pacing, I'm pretty pleased with that.

More wins today - drinking while cycling uphill, eating 4 High5 gels and a Clif bar in the saddle.  Very positive stuff.  Feeling good.  Looking forward in a couple of weeks to a good long chat about the first race itself - race plan and strategy, tactics, putting it all together, nutrition and hydration etc.  I'm actually starting to get excited about UK 70.3 though still nigh on terrified of UK IM a few weeks after that.