I’m posting this after receiving a nice little comment to one of my previous posts on this blog and thought it would be good to 1) give an update on the training, and 2) say hello to any new readers…

“…a friend passed on David’s blog after the end of May Thames Turbo Triathlon to encourage me to sign up for the one at the end of Aug - It worked & I am in! It looked like the conditions were terrible on that day but David, you did brilliantly to finish in around 1hr 20secs & your run times are superb (unfortunately my weakest discipline of the 3). How’s your training going for the one in Aug?”

Yup, I’m entering the Thames Turbo Triathlon at the end of August. This will be my second Thames Turbo Tri and I’m very much looking forward to it - partly because the weather should be a little better than it was on the first one that I took part in at the start of May.

Since then my training has been going OK. I’ve been swimming pretty regularly (i.e., once a week, although I’ve not swum for a couple of weeks now) and have done a couple of longer bike rides (e.g., the 40+ mile ride to see the start of the Tour de France). For the race in a few weeks time I’ve been offered a racing bike to use which I hope should shave a few minutes off of my bike time. I thought I was fairly quick before on my mountain bike (with road tyres), but a proper bike should make a good difference. I just have to get the bike and try it out on a couple of rides beforehand.

As for the running, as I’m a runner I’ve been doing lots of that recently I’m not concerned by this - in fact this is my favourite part.

Back to the swimming… I’ve recently got a couple of swimming books from the library which I’m going to refer to when I do some intensive swim training in the next few weeks before the race (I may even try and learn tumble turns!). This has to be a good thing as when you enter the triathlon you have to give an estimated 400 meter swim time - for the race in May I said 8 minutes 30. For this race I’ve said 7 minutes 45. I’ve got to get my time down by 45 seconds to avoid being “swum over”by other competitors.

So, the preparation is going well in that I’m doing lots of training - although not quite as much biking as I should, and I really need to get my swimming quicker. Apart from that, its all good!