January, 2020 you’ve arrived

This is the year I plan for it to happen, so fingers crossed. I’m turning 60 this year so move up to a new age group.

The competitors are less in number so if I want to qualify now I will probably have to win my age group to make it to Hawaii’s start line in 2021.

Time for testing

So to start off the first month of the year with some testing to see where I am now on my training path.

Critical Swim Speed.

Like a lot of other triathletes I am a terrible swimmer and find this easily the hardest part of training and competition. Anyway with the statutory warm up, then 400m time trial followed by short recovery and then a 200m time trial then the usual warm down.

It was back to the computer to enter the times into the old SwimSmooth calculator – this gave me the not to stunning CSS of 1:52 per 100m.

Cycling Functional Threshold Power

Then the 20 minutes FTP test knocked out during January gave me an TFP of 268, I am happy with that, so ideally my training target will be to build endurance in order to be able to maintain a ride closer to that than I normally achieve on an Ironman race.

Power in the Gym

I’ve also upped my attendance at the gym in order to work on my power over the spring.