Got athletes interested in trying Keto? They're inevitably going to come to
you with questions about their training. Here's what you need to know.
The po...
Thursday 14 February 2013
A few people know that I am in for an IM distance race this year and have been asking me about the type of training I am doing right now in preparation. So I thought I would post up a typical weeks training at the moment to give you an idea of what I am up to and the reasons behind it.
I am doing Challenge Henley in September with a few good friends. Right now I am spending time doing mostly conditioning work to get myself ready for more race like training in a few months time. Call it base if you want, but I also like to mix things up a bit so I can stay keen and just enjoy the training. My main race goal is to enjoy the experience and do what I can up front to ensure that happens. I love the journey of doing the training towards an event, this has become more important than the event itself, although for me that may just be an age thing as I am not looking to bust PB's its just a great way to stay in shape.
The focus of my conditioning work has been to make sure I am the right work in the gym to get and stay strong and so ensuring I can train consistently in the 3 sports. I am an OK swimmer typically around the hour for an IM so mostly I am doing short feel for the water, rhythm sessions. This often includes continuous swims including some Fartlek or building to a strong steady pace and holding. My main endurance work has been on the bike and limiting the running to twice a week avoid over fatigue or injury.
Typical Conditioning week
Sunday - Long Bike ride (with hills usually about 4 hours anything from 60-75 miles weather permitting.)
Monday - AM Gym session (60 mins) PM Easy Swim continuous (30 mins)
Tuesday - AM Easy run 7-9 miles (75 mins) PM Easy Spin or skills session on Watt Bike (60 mins)
Wednesday AM Watt Bike hard intervals (70-90 mins) PM Continuous swim (Fartlek 30 -40 mins)
Thursday AM Gym Session (60 mins) PM Steady run 8-10 miles (60- 80 mins)
Friday Day off every other week - Or Watt bike Aerobic intervals (60 mins)
Saturday AM Swim Intervals (45 mins) followed by Indoor spin with training group (90 mins)
Typical training week is between 12-14 hours - I tend to take rest days when I feel like I need them rather than on schedule it seems to work for me like that but I am well versed to listening to my body after 40 odd years of regular athletic training. I will look to get 16 weeks of this type of training together before I start to look at more specific race focused.
Please feel free to post up questions or ask them on my Facebook page.
Rob :)
Thursday 7 February 2013
Character lies at the heart of leadership
Well its been sometime since my last posting and that's for a variety of reasons, sometimes other things in life take over and finding a voice for my thoughts took a back seat. That said this week saw lots of news stories that I wanted to comment on.
Earlier in the week we had politician Chris Huhne admitting his guilt to the charge of perverting the course of justice, he had for the past 10 years denied he was driving and had committed a speeding offence. As ever the cover up and consequences are going to be much worse than the original offence. A sad story of a talented politician and person with so much going for him falling from grace.
We had the news of the England Footballer Paul Gascoigne sadly lapsing back into hospital for rehabilitation to fight alcoholism. One of England's most talented footballers of his generation, now with his life gripped by a bottle and struggling to get his life back on track.
The Royal Bank of Scotland have been hit with a 390 million pound fine for fixing the interbank lending rate (LIBOR) with traders e-mails exposing how they put their own personal wealth agenda before that of their bank, clients, or anyone else.
Yesterday, we listened to Robert Francis QC, report on the findings and recommendations from the pubic enquiry he led into the issues, that resulted in the suffering and deaths of many patients at Stafford Hospital. He has made almost 300 hundred recommendations for change in a hospital trust that had completely lost sight of its purpose, to care for those at their most vulnerable. It was a gross dereliction of duty.
Four seemingly unrelated stories, the sorts of bad news stories that unfortunately we hear far too often. All of these stories though different in content I would suggest are linked by the fundamental issue of leadership. It has a kind of old fashioned ring to it but its 'Character' that lies at the heart of leadership. Our desire and ability to avoid the path of least resistance, or fall for instant gratification is one of our greatest challenges.
Call it 'strength of character' another old fashioned term, that strength or will is critical in situations that require leadership decisions.
The challenge for all of us is that almost everything we do ends up with us having to make a leadership decision. Everyday we are challenged with decisions of character. Recently my wife Julie and I took a receipt back to a till at Tesco, because after scanning through the bill we noticed they had under charged us.. 'you mean we have undercharged you!' The lady on the till looked shocked that we were actually bringing this to her notice. She said she has never had anyone bring her a receipt back for undercharging before. Please don't think that I am claiming to have achieved the some mystical goal of enlightenment. I am as challenged as the next person with holding true to my own personal values and standards. In this case I just thought it was the right thing to do.
My wise friend and leadership guru Trevor Waldock puts it simply 'the choices we make inside, lead to actions, that lead to habits that form our character'. We can see this in the stories above, it starts off with seemingly insignificant decision, 'its ok to leave that person, I won't check on that patient, the next member of staff will be here to do it in 10 minutes' or 'no one will notice a small rise in that rate, I am sure everyone else is doing it anyway' or maybe ' it might look bad if I am seen to have been caught speeding, its not hurting anyone anyway'
At the time we can all rationalise these decisions, and we can convince ourselves that they make perfect sense. The problem is that these situations hardly ever happen in isolation. A series of things happen, that threaten to expose these actions, and the pressure comes on... and then another decision has to be made, and another and another and before long we are hearing these stories and find it hard to relate to 'why' these people make such crazy decisions? Who in their right minds would leave a patient lying in their own excrement?...Think is was sensible to deny charges for 10 years when they know they are guilty...Think that no one would find out that the interest rate was being fixed?
Character is a work in progress for me, I guess that's the same for many of us, something we are all trying hard to remind ourselves of and keep in context.
Earlier in the week we had politician Chris Huhne admitting his guilt to the charge of perverting the course of justice, he had for the past 10 years denied he was driving and had committed a speeding offence. As ever the cover up and consequences are going to be much worse than the original offence. A sad story of a talented politician and person with so much going for him falling from grace.
We had the news of the England Footballer Paul Gascoigne sadly lapsing back into hospital for rehabilitation to fight alcoholism. One of England's most talented footballers of his generation, now with his life gripped by a bottle and struggling to get his life back on track.
The Royal Bank of Scotland have been hit with a 390 million pound fine for fixing the interbank lending rate (LIBOR) with traders e-mails exposing how they put their own personal wealth agenda before that of their bank, clients, or anyone else.
Yesterday, we listened to Robert Francis QC, report on the findings and recommendations from the pubic enquiry he led into the issues, that resulted in the suffering and deaths of many patients at Stafford Hospital. He has made almost 300 hundred recommendations for change in a hospital trust that had completely lost sight of its purpose, to care for those at their most vulnerable. It was a gross dereliction of duty.
Four seemingly unrelated stories, the sorts of bad news stories that unfortunately we hear far too often. All of these stories though different in content I would suggest are linked by the fundamental issue of leadership. It has a kind of old fashioned ring to it but its 'Character' that lies at the heart of leadership. Our desire and ability to avoid the path of least resistance, or fall for instant gratification is one of our greatest challenges.
Call it 'strength of character' another old fashioned term, that strength or will is critical in situations that require leadership decisions.
The challenge for all of us is that almost everything we do ends up with us having to make a leadership decision. Everyday we are challenged with decisions of character. Recently my wife Julie and I took a receipt back to a till at Tesco, because after scanning through the bill we noticed they had under charged us.. 'you mean we have undercharged you!' The lady on the till looked shocked that we were actually bringing this to her notice. She said she has never had anyone bring her a receipt back for undercharging before. Please don't think that I am claiming to have achieved the some mystical goal of enlightenment. I am as challenged as the next person with holding true to my own personal values and standards. In this case I just thought it was the right thing to do.
My wise friend and leadership guru Trevor Waldock puts it simply 'the choices we make inside, lead to actions, that lead to habits that form our character'. We can see this in the stories above, it starts off with seemingly insignificant decision, 'its ok to leave that person, I won't check on that patient, the next member of staff will be here to do it in 10 minutes' or 'no one will notice a small rise in that rate, I am sure everyone else is doing it anyway' or maybe ' it might look bad if I am seen to have been caught speeding, its not hurting anyone anyway'
At the time we can all rationalise these decisions, and we can convince ourselves that they make perfect sense. The problem is that these situations hardly ever happen in isolation. A series of things happen, that threaten to expose these actions, and the pressure comes on... and then another decision has to be made, and another and another and before long we are hearing these stories and find it hard to relate to 'why' these people make such crazy decisions? Who in their right minds would leave a patient lying in their own excrement?...Think is was sensible to deny charges for 10 years when they know they are guilty...Think that no one would find out that the interest rate was being fixed?
Character is a work in progress for me, I guess that's the same for many of us, something we are all trying hard to remind ourselves of and keep in context.
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