As I sit in my house writing this, there are numerous things that I am waiting for.  What I have realised (which is what I have probably always known) is that I hate waiting for things.

Firstly I have busted my ankle and I am waiting for it to heal.  Just a sprain, but bad enough to stop me from running.  I can still cycle (all be it very gently), but running is absolutely out of the question.  As every good triathlete knows, when you get injured you have to rest.  Sadly, every good triathlete (and also the bad ones) are terrible at resting.

Resting is just dead time.  Every moment you are not following your training plan is a moment wasted.  “Rest day” seems a nonsense.  There is no time to rest in triathlon!  The truth is that resting is important.  Whilst our bodies are excellent at adapting to whatever we throw at them, we need time for those adaptations to take place.  This is how a totally unfit lump of lard like me managed to complete an Ironman. As it says in the picture, lots of small efforts repeated day in day out equals success.

This why having to rest is so tough.  The whole time you are resting you cannot help but feel you are going backwards.  Getting “less fit”.  Of course this is true if you do nothing for large periods of time; however occasionally having some time off and letting your body recover is not a bad thing.  My busted ankle has forced me to do this, so I am channelling my efforts elsewhere.

I have been doing some weight training, which I love.  In fact I was at the gym at 4.45am this morning.  Don’t worry, I have not turned over a new leaf.  I don’t suddenly love getting up early.  My littlest little one is running a high temperature and couldn’t sleep.  After my wife trying for ages to settle her it was my turn.  I managed to get her off to sleep but then was awake myself, so off to the gym I went.  

To be fair the weight training is just what my ankle needs to recover.  It needs to get stronger and putting your body under load with weight training makes you stronger, so it seemed a logical thing to do.  I am following a Stronglifts 5×5 weight training regime which I have used before (a long time ago) and is great for adding strength without too much “bulk”. Will keep it going through the summer as weight training has numerous other benefits, especially as you get older.

Also tomorrow night Bush and I are back off to Trevor’s Wednesday night Triathlon club.  This consists of a spinning session, followed by a stretching session (think pilates on steroids) and then a swim.  I am going to duck the swim, but will go for the spinning and stretching.  I haven’t seen Trevor since I completed the Ironman, but owe a huge amount to his coaching hints and tips and generosity.  Bushy and I both agree we would not have completed the Ironman without his help, so it will be great to see him again and say hello to some of the old gang from his sessions.  As a totally shameless plug, if you are a Triathlon buddy of mine and are looking for some simply superb coaching then you cannot get better than Trevor.  Check out his website for more info.  http://www.zone6coaching.com/

I am also going to go back to swimming, though I am yet to work out when.  Probably do a couple of early morning sessions, although my local 50metre pool doesn’t open until 7am weekdays and that would only really leave me about 30mins to swim before I had to head into work.  Luckily the open water swimming with the Pompey Triathletes starts this weekend, with the Wednesday evening sessions to start soon after to perhaps I can just concentrate on going to that.  Will have to work out what is best.  Bit more research needed I feel.

Anyway that’s about that for this blog update.  Probably not the most exciting thing you will ever read, but it is too late now, you cannot “un-read” it.

TTFN

James

PS – The other thing I should mention we are waiting for is to move house.  Almost up to 11 weeks since offers were accepted the entire way up and down our chain (which is only 3 houses anyway).  A cynical person would say that conveyancing solicitors slow things down on purpose to make their ridiculous fees seem more reasonable.  And a cynical person would be quite right.