Basically every single event that I had in the calendar for 2020 got shelved. I didn’t take part in a single Triathlon and only managed a handful of virtual events. I’d trained hard all year despite my low VO2Max – I shifted some extra weight and got leaner and I was in a good place to go.
The good news is that I stayed motivated throughout the whole time. There have been times like right now where you can’t really swim which is annoying, but general aerobic fitness activities I’ve stayed honest to.
And now to January. I wanted January to be a decent volume month for a couple of reasons:
- Compensate for the excesses of Christmas
- Set a good base for the start of the year
- Get a good volume of structured bike training on the turbo
I spent the vast majority of January in Zone 2 so nothing has been intense, or injury risking but here are the key volume stats:
- Bike – 208 miles across 13 rides (avg 16 miles a time)
- Running – 50 miles across 12 runs (avg 4 miles a time)
So what’s the plan here on in? To get down to race weight means I need to shift 6-12lbs of fat (not muscle or water). At the same time I still want to further improve my fat metabolising rate so I’m going to cut out all simple sugars for February – a 4 week period to better fat adapt and to drop the weight. What I really want to do is put a larger volume in for Feb but focusing on a couple of weaknesses:
- Bike hills and thus muscular power for the weight
- Maintaining Zone 2 when running at different cadences
