March Maintenance

I come to you a slightly disappointed bunny, the month of March has not been the most consistent, illness and a rather full on effort at a stag do meant my month was somewhat interupted.<br /><br />My hours for February stacked up at a reasonably consistant 47 hours, for me, an average of 12 a week is about right, I tend to do the right stuff and not pad out with volume, something I will hope to do over April with the better weather but this is good early volume. March took a hit, I was ill for a week and a half and this knocked 10 hours off the previous month and took me a good week after that to get back into the swing of it. 38 hours banked for March. Still OK but no cigar (and a few too many beers !!)<br /><br />Swimming volume has been hit hard, bear in mind, 1 dropped session a week sees a 50% decrease 🙂 but this is picking up again. My times haven’t improved and my 100’s are still around the 1.40 area but I feel the stroke is better, just not strong enough.<br /><br />Running has been hit as well, with flu-like (not man-flu obviously !) symptoms and a sore back this has meant a few headaches and sore muscles, not really good running territory but I needed to maintain a reasonable tickover so put in a few runs a week but not nearly enough. I have noticed this week I am suffering for this as I build back into it, the calves are very sore after each run, need to keep up the stretching and core maintenance as well as the 3 main disciplines.<br /><br />Cycling has once again been the saviour, not just the Computrainer but getting out in the reasonable weather and trying to use some of this new extra power I have gained. My scores have improved again, remember the initial test of 291.9w and then last month I hit 311.6w. This months scores <br /><br />316w !<br /><br />An overall improvement of 8.2% so far this year.<br /><br />In the cold light of day, not the 2% increase from last month I wanted to achieve but I have forgiven the slight decrease on two factors, missing 10 days of decent training, then having to build up, and secondly, doing the test 4 days after a hilly 101 mile ride over the Cheshire Cat course. This may have taken more out of me than I realised and according to Simon would still have been in the legs ! Oops, must remember next time, stick to testing on Saturdays prior to the hard weekend ride and long run.<br /><br />Below is the performance report from the ride.<br /><br /><a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C0MYveH232s/TaSOzOtxoTI/AAAAAAAAATs/9u2-9uWeeqw/s1600/cpt31032011.bmp”><img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;” src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C0MYveH232s/TaSOzOtxoTI/AAAAAAAAATs/9u2-9uWeeqw/s320/cpt31032011.bmp” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594753647875563826″ /></a><br />There is good news, I have now hit the first of my targets for this year, I have an FTP of 300w, that should be a good time to test over a 25mile TT course. I also have the new CTT handbook so I have no excuse for attempting to test the theory officially.<br /><br />The next month is a move on increasing the training volume with focus on maintaining the good biking, getting more pool time (I will get to report one month that this has been achieved) and I hope to up the run speed.<br /><br />Have a good month<br /><br />Rosey.