Paul May

It’s been a month since I started training, so it’s a good time to look back and see how I’ve been doing. All in all, I’ve found the training enjoyable, tough, frustrating and tiring, all at the same time.

Most of my time training has been given over to Swimming, and it’s been a real eye-opener. At the beginning of the month I couldn’t swim 50 metres solidly, and even then it’d take me an hour to do a few broken laps of the pool. Now, I’m slightly better - I can do 50 metres without too many problems, and I can do many lengths over the course of an hour. I can feel my arms getting a bit stronger, and I’m generally more confident in the water. My breathing is still poor, my body alignment, technique and endurance are poor - and I’m nowhere, absolutely nowhere near being able to swim for long distances - but hopefully that’ll come in the months ahead. I’m working very hard on the swimming, so fingers crossed.

Cycling has been more of a financial challenge (new bike, various bits and pieces) this month, and I can’t say that I’ve been putting in too many hours training. I did 60K this weekend, and it was really enjoyable. This month will need to see me putting in some solid time in the mornings, evenings and weekends. Riding a bike is a bit like riding a bike, you don’t forget how to do it - but riding a bike enough so that you’re fit enough to jump off and run 10Km is a very different prospect.

Running has been a bit of a mixed bag. The first two weeks were okay, between my own time running and the club run with Piranha, I probably covered 25-30K, but that all came to an end with my back/hip injury. Physiotherapy has been helping that and it’s less painful every day, but the strength in my left leg will need to improve drastically if I’m to have any chance of making the triathlon a reality. All I can do is keep doing the physio, start back training slowly as soon as I get the go-ahead, and hope for the best.

Thanks for the messages of support I’ve been getting from all of you. Thanks especially to Cliona who has been patient and loving to a fault in the last month, and who has had to listen to me harping on about my back, leg, bike, wetsuit, knee etc. day-in and day-out.

Thank you all, here’s to a great second month.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.