Richard Allen’s Comeback Training Blog- September
Just back from a hard 5.5km swim workout with Julie Dibens, the World Xterra Champion- This included a 600m of mostly butterfly and a fair bit of band only work which totally blew my arms off! She was hurting me today and I wasn’t feeling so hot. In the August Blog I described how I was finding things a bit tough and was very tired. Well things have certainly progressed well since then and I have been coping extremely well with the 3 swims, 3 bikes and 3 runs. From the start of October I will be progressing to 4/4/4 and this should be a descent amount of training to race off. As I mentioned before I was mostly doing harder training to build strength, speed and power. This seems to have come back very well and I am now starting to add in some more longer, easy session comfortable in the fact that the power is back. Last week I swam 4 times and this week will swim and run 4 times so the transition to more training in October will not really be noticeable. So things are looking good and I have even started to think about racing. I may do a few races in November and December if training is consistent. I really need to have goals to aim for a few months ahead to keep me motivated to train. Next season seems such a long way off .I am very excited to be heading to Florida at the end of October for a month long training camp. I lived in St Pete/Tampa Bay, Florida between 1995 and 1997 so know the place very well. The weather will be great and it’s a very chilled out place to train. Being away from home will allow me to just focus on training and get some miles in away from the British weather. As far as racing goes, there is a big Caribbean Classic Triathlon in the Virgin Islands so might head over there for my first race back. I can think of worse places to return to racing! Following my trip to Florida I may race the Famous Phuket Triathlon in Thailand in December. Again not a bad place to race! I suppose this is the side of being a pro triathlete that I have really missed- I loved the traveling and training in beautiful places. It’s not just the training I am having to think about now. Having not raced for 2 years I don’t have race equipment and I am having to chase up my sponsors for kit suitable to race with. You need the best kit racing as a pro and I’m excited about putting together a new race bike. Not sure what the spec will be yet but I will keep you posted. I don’t even have a race suit so am having to get the latest one from Craft. As usual I will give you an insight into my training. This month I will show you last Fridays swim workout. Friday is always a sprint set and when I say sprint, I mean flat out! Warm up- 500m/ 400m pull buoy/ 300m pull buoy & paddles/ 200m as 50m catch up, 50m swim/ 100m kick. Main set- 16 x 50m with every 4th max sprint. Off 50secs.100m easy. 12 x 50m with every 3rd max sprint. Off 55secs.100m easy. 8 x 50m with every 2nd max sprint. Off 1min.100m easy. 4 x 50m every one max sprint. Off 1min15secs. Cool down- 400m with flippers. Total- 4200m. Notes- The warm up/cool down was just easy and the 50m’s were at a tempo pace- hard but not sprints.
