Did a second 30min stint on the indoor trainer when I got home on Wednesday night. Same drill as last time: 10min warmup, some one legged drills and finish off with another 10mins cycling. Had another gym session first thing yesterday morning and felt surprisingly good. Normally I’m a bit sluggish in the morning.

Wk11: S: 2000m – B: 30km – W: 2 sessions

Got up this morning to do some training on my indoor trainer. I had spent last week playing around with it and making a few adjustments to my cleat positions, so I was ready for a straight training ride today. I was aiming for 30 minutes to start off with, so after a 10min warm-up I started doing a few one-legged cycling drills.

The basic idea is to cycle with one leg (obviously), which sounds a lot easier than it actually is. It’s amazing how tired your leg becomes when you have to lift it over the top of the pedal cycle, so my original intention of doing 5mins on each leg got rapidly downgraded to 2 * 1min each. I guess I’ll have to build that up slowly. In case you’re wondering, the reason you’d do these drills in the first place is to teach you to lift your leg at the bottom of the pedal stroke. This means that the opposite leg, which is on the down stroke, now has less work to do, leading to a more effficient pedal stroke and a faster cyclist. I completed the session with another 10mins steady cycling.

Lunchtime swim: did the whole session as pull, since my foot is still annoying me.

200 FS Warm Up
8 * 50 on 1:00 (40)
4 * 50 Catch on 1:00 (45)
5 * {
    100 Catch on 2:00 (1:35)
    100 FS on 2:00 (1:24) }
200 Cool Down
Total: 2000m

Wk11: S: 2000m – B: 15km – W: 1 session

Things slowed down a bit last week on account of my foot, but I’m trying to get back into it this week. Monday was a public holiday, so I took that at face value and did no exercise. Yesterday saw me back in the gym. I’m down to 2 sets of 13 reps (from 30 intially) and the weights have increased enough that today’s the first time I’ve still felt a bit stiff the day after a gym session.

Although I’m definitely fitter than any stage in almost the last 10 years, I’m still finding it hard to get rid of the gut, so I’m going on a diet. Before you bust your arse laughing at the thought of me eating just lettuce & drinking water, it’s not one of those women’s-mag fad diets, it’s the CSIRO‘s Total Wellbeing Diet. Given that they’ve just won an award for discovering how pure carbon nanotubes can be spun into cloth-like yarns you can’t argue with the quality of their research!

Anyway, the basic outline is pretty sensible: lots of fruit, veg, and protein from lean meat, slightly less carbs than normal and everything chosen to provide a balanced amount of vitamins & minerals. Nothing revolutionary. So, there’s 7 weeks until the NZ ski trip starts, so let’s see if that’s enough time to make a difference.

Wk11: W: 1 session

Well, on Friday morning I twinged something in my foot again, for the third time in three weeks. By lunch time the top of my foot had swollen up so I made an appointment with a physio who told me that nothing was fractured but that I’d probably irritated the tendons leading to my metatarsals and there wasn’t really anything I could do except rest it as much as possible. So, no running for at least a week, though I can still cycle.

On a more positive note, myself and Becs have entered an adventure race in two weeks time. Kayakying, MTBing, navigation and trail running – should be fun. I just hope my foot heals in time!

Got out of bed to celebrate my birthday with a run – 3.2km around the local park in 19:45 which is a bit slower than normal as I was feeling a bit sluggish. Weighed in at 88.3kg @ 17.5% fat which means I’ve put on a bit of muscle over the last few weeks. The gym is paying off ;-)

Hit the pool for a swim at lunch, so I can now relax with a few beers this evening.

400 FS
100 IM
2 * 100 Form
2 * {
    50 K/ 100 Pull/ 200 FS on 6:15
    100 Form on 2:00 }
3 * {
    200 FS on 3:20
    100 8FS/8BC on 1:50
    25Easy/25Med/25Easy/25Sprint on 1:40 }
Total: 2800m
(skipped the first 200m of last set)

Wk10: S: 2800m – R: 3.2km

Got my final weights session of the week in on Friday without issue. No more running this week as my calves got really sore after doing the two runs earlier in the week, presumably because there’s a couple of slight uphill bits, rather than the flats of my regular route.

Bought an Elite Fluid Trainer from Cheeky Monkey this afternoon so I can do indoor bike rides during the winter. Tried it out when I got home and it’s much quieter than I had expected, so there’s no chance of waking Jacqui up in the morning. I should be able to set it up in front of the TV and watch the morning news or something while I cycle away.

Wk9: S: 2700m – R: 7.2km – W: 3 sessions

Went to the gym yesterday morning and had no issues with my foot. However, after going for a run last night I noticed a bruise just above my heel. No idea what it’s from as I didn’t bang it off anything. Since it’s not sore to the touch I decided to ignore it and crawled out of bed at 6am for another run this morning. It was bloody cold, but my Icebreaker vest kept me nice and toasty.

I ran 3.2km last night and 4km this morning at a pretty comfortable pace. I measured an intermediate 2.6km at about 13:15, so that’s a 10km in approx 52mins. When I got home, however, there was a bit more bruising, so I’ll have to lay of the running for a while and let whatever the problem is heal. Pissed off.

Wk9: S: 2700m – R: 7.2km – W: 2 sessions

Who shares your birthday? Check here

I’m in good company, with five Nobel Prize winners, two kings, 2 presidents, a dalai lama, the last Russian tsarina, Scott of the Antarctic and the guy who kicked off the Renaissance. Not badd, eh?

Bjorn Borg

K.F. Braun (shared 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics, radio)

E. Krebs (shared 1992 Nobel Prize for Medicine, reversible protein phosphor)

T. Mann (1925 Nobel Prize)

P. Sharp (1993 Nobel Prize for Medecine)

Heinrich Rohrer (shared 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics, electron microscope)

William T. Cosgrove (First Irish President)

Dalai Lama #14 (1935)

King Joseph of Portugal (1750)

King Joao III of Portugal (1521)

Donncha Redmond (Living Legend)

Regiomantus (reponsible for kicking off the Renaissance in Europe)

Robert F. Scott (of the Antarctic)

Sukarno (indonesia’s First President)

Diego Velazquez (Spanish Painter)

Alexandra Romanova (last Russian tsarina, murdered in Bolshevik Revolution)

Alexander Pushkin (Russian Poet)

The question on the DealMac forum: Have you ever caught a Mac virus?

Some long-time users can remember one around 1989-1991 (yes, that is 14 years ago!) but very little since. As for me, I can remember running Disinfectant back in 1990 and it finding the occasional problem, but nothing that caused me to lose any data. Since using OS X full-time since 2001 I haven’t had a single virus, trojan or piece of spyware.

Weighed in at 87.8kg this morning, so I hope it’s because I’m bulking up due to weights and not due to eating, though after all the farewell meals for Ed last week in Canberra I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it was the latter.

Was wandering around the house this morning getting organised for work when something twinged in my foot. Not sure what caused it, but something (a tendon maybe) near the middle metatarsal suddenly hurt quite a bit and didn’t like me pointing my toes. There goes running for a day or two. Decided to go to my lunchtime swim after all, but just did pull for the whole session, not kicking at all. Wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t bother recording the details of the session – 2700m of pull, broken up in various ways.

Should hopefully be able to do weights in the morning.

wk9: S: 2700m