Happy New Year everyone. Its been a while since I’ve posted on here. the last 6 or so weeks have been a bit hectic and a big change for me so I’ll bring you up to speed. I started a new job at the start of December which meant that the last 2 weeks of November and the first 3 weeks of December were a bit of write off training wise. I was able to keep some swimming up but the rest wasn't great. Wasn’t the best time to change in terms of my training but it was an opportunity to good to turn down.
From the weekend before Christmas to now I've managed to start to train the house down again. I’ve logged around 25hrs in the 11 days with a few rest days thrown in. The body is responding well to the work load which I’m more than pleased with. I’m in a fairly critical block now building for Melbourne but more importantly I’m laying down some solid foundations for for later on in the year and for the years to come. I’m only starting year 2 in my transition from cyclist to multi-sport athlete and it takes time to build up the strength needed to race long course in the other areas of the sport.
The best news to come out of this 11 day block is that I’m mentally back with it and motivated to train again. I’m putting this down to a few things. First one is that I’ve been able to to a large portion of the training with a solid group of athletes. I have to thank Xavier Coppock for letting me tag along with his training group. Secondly there is the MX12 group on Facebook to keep me accountable.
The final reason is a big change for me, a change up in the way I train and what I look at or more importantly what I don’t look at. I have all but given up training with a powermeter and the numbers. I’ve been training without looking at the numbers on and off for the last couple of months and my training has improved. I’m going back to training on feel and listening to my body. In the past I would throw in training sessions if i couldn't hit the numbers that the session required. Now I go by feel and am getting the training done. My sessions have changed with this new style for me and am going to do a large amount of KISS training. KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid or Keep It Simple Sutton which comes from Brett “doc” Sutton, head coach of Team TBB. It pretty much comes down to doing the simple stuff that works and don't try to reinvent the wheel.
The plan for the next few weeks is just to keep building on these last 11 days and get my body closer to ‘race fit’
Hopper
