THE WEEKS ARE TICKING BY

So we are another week closer to what ever race we are aiming at... and as the weeks tick by the sessions are getting harder and the mileage is getting more.

Last week it was 6 x 1km with 75 sec rest, this week 6 x 1km with 60sec rest. (Good thing I'm not yet looking at a marathon or I might be aiming at 8-10 x 1km.)

My mileage has climbed from 90km to 107km last week. Don't know what this week will total out at, but it should be about 110km

The good thing is it's just one more week up over 100km before I can look at cutting back. I just hope the body holds out. With my injury's of last year I have not been pushing the sessions. OK I have been pushing the sessions, but I have kept my 'speed' (or lack there off) under control.

How do you keep your speed under control you might well ask? Well you run in the morning, so when it comes to session time your legs are tired!!!

I hope all your training is still on track as most of you are approaching your big race.

QUESTION: What is your 'big' race?

I have to many, but if I must choose one I'll go with Zermatt Marathon 9th July (but African-X, 3 day trail, race is also quite big).

keep training

ABSA CAPE EPIC

Today saw the start of the ABSA Cape Epic, a little mountain bike race we has here in the Western Cape... OK they call it the 'Tour de France' of Mountain biking. 1200 rides in teams of 2 cycling 707km over 8 day and here is the biggy 14 550m of climbing!!!

I ran from home to watch the Prologue:

It was a great day for cycling and forest was full of spectators waiting to see a couple of crashes... I was got to see a front wheel blow out and a guy go down (4.5km into the race). Then I also saw a couple of guys a bit tired to 'jump' onto the pavement...

If I had the camera out then I would have had a great shot of 'grass eating'...

Since I still had to run 9km home I couldn't stay to watch the pro's fly round the course, and boy did they fly.

THE MOTHER CITY IS READY TO ROCK

This weekend is the:

and the paper says:

All the venues are due to be full and rocking...
No-body here yet, but it is only Friday lunch time...
Saw all the venues going up from my office window.
No I'm not going but with the perfect weather here it's going to be amazing...

LAST CHANCE WORK OUT

To rap up a week of hard training I needed a long run, so on Saturday morning I meet Jayde at Constantia Nek. We had chatted through the week about what to run, and had decided to run something flat and easy... (Ha, Ha, Ha).

If at all possible I like to run a little late on the weekend, so 08h00 we set off along the contour path to the Block house. Contour paths are meant to follow a contour, Right? Wrong... not this one. The 10.3km climbed over the 'Aloes' and that together with the other climbing totaled 285m. Now with a lot of this over rocky single track that 'Leg' took us all of 64min.

I took a little video of the next leg of our run, but I hit the wrong button and it didn't record, so all I can do at this stage is ask you to picture a view over Cape Town to the harbor... it looked amazing! Here the running was easy as we dropped 200m in 2.6km before "Heart Break Hill" forget about any other "Heart Break Hill", this little hill climbs 77m in only 710m. Now as if that isn't hard enough the mercury was on the rise, and had already hit 30...

We were now taking strain, me because I had loaded my pack with over 2 liters of water, a cel phone a video camera, and a few other things, while Jayde had run out of water.

Good thing this river was still running:

With just under 2h30 on the Garmin we were back at the cars. (24km)

One of the thing I always do when I get home from a run is weigh myself... 62.4kg that's my goal weight, my racing weight, I had lost over 2kg in 2h30min. OK maybe a 2h30 run on the mountain in the heat with a 3kg pack on isn't the right way to loss weight. This evening I was 64.6kg That was one real 'LAST CHANCE WORK OUT'.

WEEK 1, 14-20 March 2011

With week one of the final push for Oceans almost over I have to see how things are going. I know a lot of you are also in the final stages of training, and we are all hoping that the weeks we have under our belts are enough...

So my week has looked like this:

• Monday , well Sunday was a rest day with only 110km cycle, so I didn't have to worry about running flat and easy, so I split the group and took to trail runners up to the Block house on the back paths up so mean hills...
• Tuesday I started the day with a 7.5km run, it was great been out at 05h15, I need a couple more of these if I want to get back to the top of my game.
• Tuesday evening was 6 x 1km road reps with 90sec rest. I would like to be running these a little faster but I'm still worried getting injured so I'm still 5-10sec slower than last year.
• Wednesday evening was another fantastic run in the forest through to Kirstenbosch. I'm not cranking out the miles, so turning out the bottom gate was more then enough. We again climbed some big hills, but heading home was easy and on the road. We ran the last 7km of our 13km run at 4:25/km.
• Thursday didn't start well as I had thought about getting up, but that didn't happen!!! So I would have to make up for it in the evenings session... HILLS I would have like to have run a couple more, but I had the movies to get too (The King's Speech). 6 x 2min would just have to do. Yes I had the guys running all the way to the bend at R/Men to build a little strength.
• Friday Morning I had wanted to get up and run, but the body didn't feel like running after last nights hills and sitting in the movie house with Dawn's legs on mine.

A long weekend lies ahead of us so there is still lots of time to put in a couple of big runs, and how about a 10km race...

WHAT A WEEKEND

So where does one start with a weekend so full of action?

How about Friday afternoon: Yes I walk the dogs and yes we went shopping, so does that make it a big weekend, NO, all the fun started on Saturday...

How does it go? Early rising exercising... Yes my wife and I were up early for the CV 15km race. The best thing about this race is the start, it is 2km from were we live, so we ran through to the start as a warm up.

15km = 3 x 5km so the plan was easy, don't kill yourself just aim at 3 x 19min, 57min nice and easy pace on a quick course. But as we all know plans never turn out as we want... With the 1km being a little slow I set about closing the gap on a couple of my athletes who were also looking for about 57min. No sooner had I caught them, then they picked up the pace and left me again. I let them go and settle into running with a couple of other friends. Then at about 4km a little girl caught us... Yes it was the same lady as last week, so I decided to follow her again! No we are not racing my legs are a little tired from last week... those were her words to me as I "flirted" with her... (hope my wife isn't reading this!) (ps she had ran a 5000m track race in 15:52 on Thursday evening)

By 10km we had caught all my athletes and Oloff, who was still with me said 37min, PR (as a 40+ Vet) by 5 sec...

By 11km we had caught the leading ladies and like last week I just ran past them and she came with... I wasn't going to be beaten in the last km so as we reached a hill I used hill climbing and dropped the ladies. With them behind me I looked ahead and saw a trail runner ahead so I set chase... I only caught him with 1km to go. It turned into a good thing I had set chase as I had moved up into 3rd place (40+). Then to boot my time was 55:30 was a lot quicker than I had hoped for.

My Saturday hadn't end there:

The garden awaited and I took control with one of my favorite toys, The Hedge Trimmer... (a good arm work out)

Sunday morning was Argus time and my 15th tour, the 12th with Dawn, my wife. Now cycling isn't our thing, but once a year we dust off the tandem and join 35 000 other cyclists for 110km around the Peninsula.

This is the start...

OK you need to see what I looked like:

Now the Pro's were flying around the route in near perfect conditions:

Yes we finished and and had a great time on the road. We don't aim at racing, just finishing and 5h11:49 wasn't as fast as we had thought we might do, but if I had, had my way we would have stopped a couple more times...

PLAN FOR THE WEEKEND

Just a quicky before my weekend starts with the mad rush home as I weave through the traffic on my little baby.

Then I'll have to swim a couple of lengths of our pool before taking the dogs for a walk.

Dawn was saying that she's stay at home and rest her legs for the race on Saturday. But before we get to the race we go shopping every Friday night.

Saturday is the CV 15km race, I'll run with some friend and aim at 57min...
Sunday is the big day Argus Cycle Tour 110km cycle on the tandem with Dawn, my 15th tour, if the wind plays ball it should be fun.

Next post I'll tell you about my weekend of racing...

Good luck to all of you who are racing.