So, it's been a little while...

I know, I know. It's been some time. I'll be surprised if anyone even reads this. But I thought, with the Karapiro Half Ironman this weekend, it was a good time to update it the blog.

After getting back from Europe, and then getting my ankle sorted, my training was actually pretty good. In fact, come early June, I was really fit. Then, the World Cup hit.

Having to watch both the All Whites and The Netherlands play meant many, many late nights/early rises, and the interrupted sleep patterns meant that training very much took a back seat.

When I tried to get back into training properly, winter had come, and I really struggled with the weather. It constantly rained, all the way until mid-September, and it got me down. For the first time, I was really struggling for any motivation to train. I did one off-road duathlon in Rotorua, and a mountain bike race, but I just couldn't keep it up.

I had the Taupo Half Marathon on 1 August, and despite my training having been patchy, I pulled out (in really tough conditions) a 1:29:04. My average heart rate was 187, with a max of 198 - basically, even though I wasn't super fit, I was able to push myself as hard as I could, which I was happy with (and what Paul had been training us to do up until that point).

After Taupo, I had a problem with my hip, which made running difficult - so, again, training wasn't great.

Then, mid-September, the weather got better, and I realised it was 9 weeks until the Karapiro Half. So I started training properly. And I was able to run.

The graph above is from WKO+, and shows my combined running and cycling training load since 11 October last year (the point at which I had enough data to make comparisons worthwhile). This doesn't include swimming (no fancy toys for that, unfortunately), but that's been going ok, and is at least as good, and probably better, than this time last year. The important line is the blue one, which tracks the average daily load over a six week period (essentially fitness). The pink line shows the weekly load (fatigue) and the yellow line is the balance between the two (form).

This shows the drop off from Rotorua while I was in Europe, a few spikes, the build to mid-June, then the big drop off again. It also shows that, since mid-September, I have been training really well, and my combined cycling and running fitness is as high as just before Rotorua last year - so at its peak. I know my running fitness is a lot lower (even than the middle of this year), but my bike fitness is a lot higher, and I'm still getting good running results.

A few highlights:

• I have been doing the Eastside 5k races, which are run by the Hawks. It's along the river path, and it's a hard course for a 5k (because of the number of climbs). I have gone from 19:40, to 19:10, to 19:05 to, last week (after a week off), 18:38; and
• At last night's Mafia mini tri, I did the bike with an average watts of 231 (normalised power of 247), and ran 4:02 mins/km off the bike - two weeks ago, I rode at an average power of 213 watts (norm power of 231), and ran 4:14 mins/km.

So, the aim for this weekend is survive the swim, go hard on the bike, and hold on for the run. It's a tough course, early in the season and a training race - so I'm not overly worried about the result. But I'm happy with where I'm at, feeling good, and looking forward to rocking Tauranga in a few months time.