When I look back at my Norseman training plan https://twinbikerun.com/2018/08/28/norseman-training-plan-iain/ this statement stands out.

” I couldn’t have done much more, based on the time I had available and the desire to still have a life outside of training.”

So that was my key goal for training for this race – still have a life outside training.

To remove the anxiety of knowing whether i was training enough I decided to buy a Celtman training plan. I got it from https://www.tmrcoaching.com/

I had to purchase a training peaks (TP) account to use it. It was an interesting way to train…..I will write a separate blog about it.

SWIM

The training plan advised two or three swims a week. I did one session a week. Swimming is my most time consuming exercise as it involves at least an hour round trip from my house to my pool. I didn’t want to spend my time driving too and from swimming when i could be biking/running instead.

Thankfully my swim technique is pretty good so I decided all I really needed to do was work on my swim fitness. I did one 2.2K swim a week. And that was fine for me.

I’m also pretty confident dealing with cold water so I didn’t feel the need to overly practice swimming in it. I did a couple of pre-swims just to remind myself what it would feel like. That was also fine for me.

My view of swimming in triathlons is that if you are not looking to win the race then spend your time training the parts that will actually make a significant difference to your time – biking/running.

BIKE

The key sessions for the bike were a shorter faster set on a Tuesday and a longer bike ride at the weekend.

I mostly used Zwift until about April. It was the most time efficient way to train as I could do it in my house.

From April I tried to do the longer ride outdoors BUT I mostly did it on a mountain bike. Yes – a mountain bike. I don’t really enjoy long rides on my road bike. I find it a bit boring. So instead I would head off on my mountain bike and find interesting roads and tracks to ride.

I also (maybe mistakenly) thought that these rides would be better for me as the bike is heavier and therefore it would need more effort to ride it. I hoped this would mean that when I finally did get on my road bike it would feel easy.

My longest pre-race ride was 6 hours. Which I did a couple of times to ensure that I was used to being on a bike for a long period of time.

I only rode my road bike three times before Celtman. And that was mainly to check it still worked.

Run

The running schedule was a shorter hillier run on a Thursday and a longer run at the weekend.

I enjoy running so this was easy enough to follow. It was actually slightly less than I would normally run.

The only issue was that I developed an achilles injury at the start of April. This meant I choose to only run once a week. Which was enough to keep my running fitness but not enough to make my injury worse.

I’d have liked to have done more but I think I made the correct decision to ensure that I made it to the start line of the race,