Having ticked the box of competing in her first triathlon, Claire learnt that it's simply not an option to take her foot off the gas...
After the euphoria of my first triathlon at the beginning of May, I took the rest of that week off training and must admit I haven’t been as conscientious or regimented since. This clearly was a big mistake as when I returned to the pool, I discovered I’d lost some time on my swim.
This was annoying given all my hard work but I seem to have got myself sorted on that front. In fact, despite not swimming as regularly, I’ve managed to increase my swim to 1 mile front crawl, so this is my achievement for the month.
I could always swim a mile breaststroke but felt pretty chuffed to do it crawl and even more so when I tried for a second time, taking 5 minutes off my first attempt (and without having eaten anything for 6 hours!). So I’m down to 39 minutes for a mile and wondering if I should change my entry for the Brownlee Tri in September to the Sprint distance?! If I do that, I’ll need to go back to some serious training. My cycling will need to be more intense and for longer distances each session, but the biggest hurdle is my knee.
I’ve done very little running since the beginning of May as my left knee continues to object during every session. I haven’t been exactly sensible with specific exercises and don’t need telling how stupid I’ve been about that but I think several sports massage sessions will also help me and get me more focussed with how to manage this problem and hopefully improve it.
So with the summer weather slowly warming up, I really do need to buy my wetsuit and find some safe outdoor swimming places in readiness for the September tri. It’s not that I’m going for a podium place or a particular time obviously but I also don’t want to be falling over, rolling on the floor and pulling strange shapes as I struggle out of a wetsuit!
Claire’s next blog post will be on Wednesday 5th August. Read her previous post here.
