Sunday 9 December 2012

How bad do you want it?

Training has really kicked on now, and I've completed three weeks of training 6 days a week. My body is adapting to the intensity of the training now, and after some much needed advice on my diet, I'm also eating much more nutritious food and feeling more energetic as a result. Allied with having stopped drinking alcohol almost three weeks ago, I'm becoming much healthier and if I can just phase out my desire to eat delicious cakes I'll really be flying! With the temperature dropping and the propensity for snow/ice to disrupt training, we've been doing a lot more gym and core work recently, which is proving to be really valuable. I've lost about 3 inches off my waist, and can feel my power to weight ratio increasing steadily. I also went up to Lee Valley on Wednesday and did a sprint circuit training session with Rikki Fifton, a British international sprinter. It was a really intense session, but he gave me some good tips on technique and running angles, which I'm hoping to build into my training more steadily. I've also signed up for 3 open invite indoor sessions between January to March. They are all over 60m, which I've never competed at before, so I'm pretty excited about gauging my improvement over the first half of my race, as this is where I feel I'm weakest. I've only got a few weeks to properly prepare for the first event, so will be really pushing on and working on the technical aspects of my start and drive phase in the run up to the New Year. January is going to see me increase the training to 9 times a week, before ultimately taking it up to 12 times a week towards the end of February. Balancing this with the demands of a full time job will be pretty exhausting, but I'm confident it can be done. Someone once said "most people don't run far enough on their first wind to realise they have a second". I've a feeling that come next April when the outdoor season starts, I'll be on my third or fourth.