It’s the end of our second month of training on our ‘One Year To Go Pro’ journey. With this month being filled with tapering, racing, resting and transitioning, each week has presented new challenges. From the moodiness of tapering, to the nerves of racing, to relief of resting and to the sheer joy of transitioning back into training.
For those of you that haven’t read about the race Sophie and I completed at Epicman Windermere, check out our race reports (Sophie Race Report and Richard Race Report). In short, both Sophie and I would describe this race as more of a “Challenge” than a race, as it certainly threw us out of our comfort zones. With 3 years racing hot and flat courses in Asia, we were challenged with a cold lake swim, seriously hilly bike and trail run to top it off. We both came out the race battered and bruised, myself with a sprained wrist. But both happy to have completed it and happy to have raced. Plus determined to come back stronger next year after a longer stint of appropriate training in the UK.
So what’s the next race? Sophie and I have been searching and searching to try and fill our race calendar for next year. But with COVID-19, no races are certain to go ahead and difficult to commit to this far out. We already have Ironman 70.3’s in Austria (Zell Am See), America (Utah Ironman 70.3 World Championships) and Italy (Sardegna) booked back to back in August, September and October of next year. Now we are looking for some races earlier in the year to aim for… Potentially Ironman 70.3 Mallorca in May. If anyone has any ideas, please comment below! As well as Ironman races we are also on the look out for local swimming, biking, running, aquathlons, duathlons, triathlons races we could compete in to as well… basically any race going 🙂
So, what about the training? With our last (and first) race of the year being finished, we have moved into the transition phase of our training (check out our blog on the transitional phase). It’s all about the base. We are going to spend the next couple of month building up our base endurance and working on some on our weaknesses as we go. That means, we will have a lot of long sessions in the pool, on the bike and on the trails. Plus we will be hitting up the gym to work on our strength. As we live in the Lake District, we have also included trail running into our plans as a form of cross training, as well as it having many benefits to regular running technique improvements. Watch this space on trail running as I am sure we will have many stories to tell.
What’s the next challenge? With no races in the near future, we are always looking for something to keep us motivated. One idea that we are toying with is a virtual race. If you have any challenges for us, let us know? In the next month we are going to plan some time trials. We will be doing 200m and 400m time trials in the pool. Also, a 20 minute FTP test on the bike. Then a 3km time trial on the run. So for those of you interested in statistics, keep up to date with our instagram story (@tri2richard and @tri2sophie) or check back here in one month’s time to see how our third month of training has gone on our ‘One Year To Go Pro’ journey.
