Claire Tucker takes us through the twists and turns of her current training regime as she looks to embark on her first ever triathlon...

February started off really well - with a family day trip walking in the Yorkshire Dales resulting in a sighting of the Brownlee brothers!  They were out cycling with a group (and were leading the pack by a distance!)  The group all stopped for a break outside a local community hall but we were too shy to go over to chat to them. I’m sure they wouldn’t have wanted to be bothered by us but it was great to see them - when I got home I felt motivated enough to go for a run!

I realised very early on in my training this year that I don’t like running as much as I’d hoped and as this month has gone on, my left knee is definitely objecting. I seem to get to the 1-mile mark and my knee starts twinging. However, despite running through it and doing my best to ignore it, by the second mile my, right calf starts cramping. I guess this is because my running gait has subconsciously changed to compensate for the twinging. I am careful to stretch before and after running but at the moment, I haven’t managed to improve the problem. 

So instead of running twice a week, I’m down to once a week to see if that helps. The plus side is I have improved my time by a ‘huge’ 1 minute this month! I really don’t know how I can get any quicker without the worry of creating an injury but even if I don’t speed up, as long as my knee holds out when I compete, I’ll have to be grateful for that.

I was training so much during January that by the beginning of February, I constantly felt physically tired and so decided to ease off a bit as I didn’t seem to be able to put the right amount of energy into each session. I suppose I had gone from paying lip service to exercise to 6 or 7 days training a week. What did I expect?

My swimming, I’m glad to say, has seen progress. Early in the month, I did 400m front crawl without warming up first. I did have to stop to catch my breath briefly every 2 lengths and I definitely felt worn out quicker than if I had warmed up doing 400m breaststroke but I decided I needed to try this approach as I’m not going to be able to warm up for the swim when I compete. The second week of February I swam 800m front crawl with breathers.  I was so ecstatic and although my time for each 400m was several minutes off how fast I can swim the distance breaststroke, it was great progress. I now had a time I could aim to improve on. So 3 days later, still buoyant with my achievement, I swam another 800m. 

Last week I had my first ever swimming lesson. I thought it would be useful to have a 1:1 lesson to see how many bad habits I’d developed whilst teaching myself front crawl. I was happy to hear that my style was good and just needed slight adjustment on my leg kick and arm positioning. So I’m now trying really hard to put that into practice and on my first swim post lesson, managed to take 2 minutes off my time for 400m. I’m not finding my aerobic fitness improving as quickly as I’d have liked, but I did manage 7 lengths before I had to take a quick breather. I know this is a small gain but I’m using any tiny progress as a motivator!

As for my cycling, I have now started to get out of the saddle up each incline on my route...but I confess we don’t have very big inclines in the Vale of York!  However, I can feel the extra effort having resulted in increased strength in my quad muscles and have subsequently taken 3 minutes off my time. I’ll try to maintain that during March when hopefully the weather will get warmer.

So alongside the training, I now need to focus on nutrition. So far, I’ve been eating broadly the same balanced diet as usual, but I’m sure I could do with reading up on this and being a bit smarter about how to maximise the right foods and when. And finally I need to research the equipment I still require – e.g. wet suit, tri suit etc. There’s so much to learn and I’m not sure where to start...it seems a minefield out there!

Claire's next post will be on Wednesday 8th April. Read her previous post here.