Swim Focus

Monday
Staff end of year party
Tuesday
Bike: (1hr), 26km, 110bpm. Very easy ride around town. The new cycling shoes seem to be making a big difference.
PM: No swim as I was helping people move house. Busy week this week
Wednesday
Bike: (1hr), 26km, 112bpm. Wore my orthotics in my cycling shoes today and it didn't feel as comfortable as yesterdays ride. I could feel pins and needles right away. This confirms the orthotics are just too bulky for my cycling shoes.
Massage: (1hr)
Thursday

Friday

Saturday
Bike (3hrs), 85km. av hr 110bpm. The pool was closed so I extended this ride out another hour. It went very well. My foot felt good, but I wasn't wearing the orthotics.
Sunday
Damm pools were closed again today

So much for starting my swim focus. It was a very busy week and my local pools were closed over the weekend. Oh well, start this week I suppose.

Here is another cool video for you "Skirough" have the tissues ready. This one is a bit of a tear jerker. Enjoy

fluro

The Journey has begun

Video
If your looking for motivation then this a the video for you. Just check out the judges reaction when this guy says he is going to sing opera.
P.S Thanks Mike

The journey has begun. It's time to start the ball in motion in preparing for my next IM. I have decided to commit to IM Japan 2008. Due to unfortunate circumstances I had to withdraw from this years event due to Metetarsalgia. I’ve had some extended down time now and will continue to stay off my feet for a few more weeks yet.
This means the first part of the plan is to improve my swimming and slowly resume cycling. Once I can handle the volume on the bike and I’m injury free I’ll then start running again. Step by step.
Magic marker No1: 20k swim week.
That’s the goal. My aim is to regularly swim over 20k a week during this time when I am unable to ride or run. Over the last 6 weeks I’ve managed to build my swimming up to around 4-5 sessions (12-15km PW). It’s now time to increase the distance of each of those sessions. I feel like I’m holding my stroke together pretty well now for an 1hr and my bilateral breathing is coming along very well. It’s time to jump up to the next level. I’ll start increasing some of my swim sessions up to 80 – 90 minutes now.
Once I have consistently put in some 20k weeks of swimming I think I should be right in that highly adaptive phase. I’ll continue to swim this way right up til August and then I hope to resume running again.

Stay tuned

fluro

Tuesday
Bike: (1:20). av hr 122bpm. easy to Aet. This was my first ride back after a10 day break. I got to try out my new shoes and I must say my ride felt pretty good. No pins and needles, burning or numbness like a normally experience.
Swim: (1hr), 3.2km. 20min straight free with periods of mod-hard. 15 min of drill20 x 25m on 1min max effort. Starting to see some sub 15sec times on the clock3 x 200 of free easy to steady. 25m indoor. Imust say I prefer doing my dril lwork in the 25m pool. 50m just seems too long to be able to hold perfect form on my drills and stop myself from going into oxygen debt.
Wednesday
Massage: 1hr. Left peroneal is still very sore to touch but it never hurts when I train???? My third toe is still sore too. There must be alot of scar tissue in and around that area. I thought things would be settling down by now. Both calves are tight and I managed to communicate with the masseuse that I needed some deep tissue work on them. Overall I feel there has been some slight improvements.
Thursday
Swim:(1:20), 4km.
1.2k free
1k buoy
400 free
2-20 free
4-100 negative split. (1:30, 1:28, 1:25, 1:20)
8-50 negative split (started at 42 and wroked down to 33)
Bailed after this as my stroke was falling apart. This was my longest swim to date. Overall happy with the progress
Friday
Bike: (1:02), 27km, av hr 118bpm. easy spin around town. This is my second ride with no foot pain. I hope this is going to continue as I slowly increase my volume
Saturday
Bike (2hrs), av hr 110bpm. very easy hr before swimming and then again after swimming
Swim: (1:15). 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400. All B/L with a 10-20sec rest between sets. Drills for the rest of the session.

fluro

New Shoes

Photo
Starting from the left.
Shimano size 44.
Then I recently bought another pair of shimano's in a size 45. These did not help at all.
I finally found a pair of shoes that make a wider model. Welcome to world of Sidi, size 45 E





Well spent all day yesterday riding to every single bike we could find. I brought Noel along with me as his Japanese is quite fluent and this turned out to be a big help.


My mission was to try and locate the widest pair of cycling shoes that I could find, because in one store this guy had a neat little contraption that could measure the widest of my foot. The result being is that I'm an E. But the length of my foot is only 25.8cm. So we worked out that I need at least a size 45 shoe but it had to be a wider version.


From what we were told there are only two brands of shoes which make a wider model. They are Shimano and the Sidi Scrape Genius 5.


















We went to 4 different stores and none of them stocked these two pairs of shoes in a size 45. The Japanese just have small feet. The last store we went to had the Sidi's but not the Shimano's in a size 45. I tried them on and they did feel good. They did feel much wider. This was a good sign. So I then inserted my orthoticis and then things weren't so good. The orthotics are just taking up too much more. Immediately my toes were pushing up against the sides of the shoes. I think now the problem I have with the orthotics is that they are too thick. No shoe on earth will be able to cater for this. I need to go back the the podiatrist and see what can be done. Luckily at the store, the guy who was servicing knew his stuff. He could see what my problem was and Noel was translating what I was saying. In the end the shop owner, made some insert for me that were as close as possible to what my orthotics needed to do, but only thinner. The whole process took around 1hr and he was very thorough. I walked out of the stored satisfied.






















But, will this work? I hope so.

I'll take another week off from cycling and then I'll try out the new shoes. I'll start out with only 1 ride PW until I'm riding with ZERO pain. Only then will a start to increase my volume again.

This is going to be slow, but it is pointless of me trying to train at around 70-80% of my goal weekly targets with pain.

I want t be 100% injury free so I can start doing what I feel I'm meant to be doing.

In the mean time I'll continue with my swimming focus which is coming along very well. I did a swim session yesterday with a timed 100m free at the end of the session. It was broken up into 2 x 50m with a 10sec rest. My time is now down to a 1:08 a PB. I'm getting closer to that 1min barrier.

I also did a little test set of 4-100 taking 10sec rest. The idea was to swim these at tempo (ie 1k pace). I held 1:25's doing all of these B/L. That is a big breakthrough for me doing B/L. Another PB.

fluro

Tough times ahead.

Well the decision has to be made and I have finally succumbed. I need to stop cycling and running totally in order to let my feet heel.

I haven't run now for 6weeks approx and I've cut back my cycling volume by 50%. So over the last 4weeks I've only been doing around 10hrs PW, yet my feet seem to be getting worse and worse. Sitting here at the computer I'm experiencing a constant burning sensation in my toes and I keep getting pins and needles shooting through my toes on both feet at the most sporadic times throughout the day. I just can't seem to put down any definite pathology to the problems I'm experiencing. Maybe I just need to give the new orthotics more time (2 weeks so far) to do there thing.

So I've made to the decision to stop cycling now to see if I can experience any sort of improvements without training for a while. My massage yesterday was a disaster, The masseuse was barely able to touch the problem areas. Why would this be? I have no idea as I hardly did any training last week, but I guess now any training might be too much until I fix this problem.

On a positive note I'll be able to fully dive into a swim focus period. My goal being to do a PB over 1500m. At the moment my quickest ever has been a low 21min. I would just love to break 20min one day. I would also love to be able to do 30-100m on a 1:30 base again. It would also be cool to be able to do around 6-100m on a 1:20. To break 30second for 50m would also be another cool target to aim for. At least this should keep me sane while I'm having a break from cycling and running.

I'm hopping that this is the right decision I'm making as I have been constantly injured since my first IM back in 2004. I'm making the firm decision now that I need to get my health sorted out first before I can even consider entering another IM. Even then I need to be able to put together at least 6mths of injury free IM training before I even think about entering a race. I've done 3 x IM's and 2 x HIM's since 2004 and they all have been on injured feet. It's time to make the change as I'm still highly motivated and very keen to do alot more IM's and HIM's yet.

To Dave C, Mike and Steve. Goodluck with your races, your bloggers really help me to stay in the game.

Anyway here are a few more photos from my camping trip away.

fluro