The New Regime

Today was the official start of my new training program with Geoff Williamson. The main difference between what I am doing now and what I did with Katie is the level of detail that Geoff provides in his instructions. Its great to have this level of detail as I have always just trained to how I felt on the day or to the level of the people I just happen to be training with (if they are slower than me I train at their pace, if they are faster I usually push myself too hard). Now I know when I am to do an easy session, hill work or hard intervals.

Geoff also has me doing a 400 metre time trial in the pool and around a 12.5km time trial on the bike to assess my fitness. We already know that my running is to 1:46 half marathon standard, so it will be interesting to see what the benchmark is for the other two disciplines and to see how they improve (my half marathon time has improved by more than half and hour since September 2008).

Geoff also joined Michael, James and I on a 75km ride yesterday (Sunday) and gave me a number of pointers on the move. I have just fitted aero bars to my bike and I gave them a bit of a trial too. Geoff suggested that I sit further forward on the seat, but I wasn't keen on the pointy end of the seat meeting up with my pointy end. We headed over the hill and out to the south of the city along the coast through Brighton and just past Kuri Bush. Its a bit more of a grind than I thought it would be as there are plenty of undualtions along the coast and I was trying to keep the pace up so Geoff didn't feel like it was too slow for him. It was too slow for him anyway and I was knackered after about 60km, but I recovered extremely well today. Despite the fast pace there was plenty of time to take in the brilliant, still autumn morning and the perfect surf crashing in along the white sand beaches. The light sea haze and clear blue sky framed the picture post card scenery of one of the most under-rated parts of the city (if not, country). The next calm Sunday, I think I'll head out there again.