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 :)

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.

Inspiration & Desperation

Recently, the tragic death of cyclist Rob Jeffries hit the local cycling community hard. And not just locally - Rob was very well known nationally. He had worked for British Cycling and had only left in February this year to pursue a career in Teaching. Rob’s role with BC involved training Officials and volunteers and through this he came into contact with a lot of people. The sentiments on various forums and message boards are very moving; it truly is a sad affair. The 18 year old lad who struck Rob from behind, (it is referred to as “a collision” in the local paper?) was arrested and later released. Emotions are raw, should we blame him? I want to but how can I? Was I a model driver at 18? I can tell you with some shame that I certainly was not. I never knocked any one down but I was lucky. So I cannot blame him. He will have to live with the events of that fateful evening. I hope he is remorseful. I hope he thinks deeply about what happened. I hope one day he rides a bike - he might. I hope he experiences the fun, enjoyment and pain that two wheels can bring. No matter how far into the future this happens then at least some good will have come from this devastation.

Earlier in the race season, I spent the day at the Swashbuckler Triathlon, over in Hampshire. Well it started at 05.15am so it was more like the night shift. Enjoyed myself, some impressive performances and some not so. Good fun though and it did take me back to when I used to jump into rivers at some unearthly hour. I have been to a lot of races lately, I am not a very good spectator so have been taking a few photographs. Now, I am no photographer so I take a lot of pictures and in amongst the rubbish I get a few good shots. I am trying to capture the event, sometimes I think I get it but most often not quite. I put the good ones on my regular blog page – if you’d like to take a look here.

I have decided to have a year off racing. My involvement with the GB Para-Cycling squad means I am away a fair bit so I do not feel I can do myself justice, yes I know, it’s an excuse. I need to keep fit though, I do train hard, always have done, but without the commitment of a race at the weekend it is easy to miss a session. Entering a race always was the best motivation, I thought. So I have ridden a couple of club 10s, but that just seems to highlight the lack of training, reminding me I need to do more. But hold on, I am supposed to be having a year off, so no need to worry…. but what about keeping fit?……I seem to be going round in circles here, so why don’t I just ride the bike - which is kind of the same thing.

At a recent committee meeting of our cycling club we were discussing, why, as a club we seem to be failing? I am sure all clubs, be they, cycling, fishing, triathlon, sowing circles, are struggling. Perhaps the days of the traditional club are over? People lead busy lives and do not seem to be able to commit to club runs, races or marshalling etc. They want to do their own thing. Cycling is on the increase we are told. Participation is growing! I am not sure that is reflected in racing - numbers are down for most local club time trials, the simplest form of racing. I see plenty of people out on bikes so I am sure more people are riding but its not racing that drives them, it seems to be sportifs. They have become very popular, with huge numbers riding more and more events. I am sure some of the people riding these sportifs will have a go at racing. Whenever cyclists ride together competition is not far from the surface. Perhaps modern living provides enough challenges throughout the working week, without the added pressure of racing at the weekends. Riding a sportif on a Sunday with your mates is a great way to relax, no pre-race nerves, no need to suffer if you do not want to, just good fun on the bike, with no results to confirm how good or bad you were. It must be a great way to de-stress, leaving you refreshed and ready to face the coming week.

Take care out there, see you up the road!!

Learning how to suffer

The Tour de France has just kicked off and we have the opportunity to watch some of the greatest endurance athletes in the world 'duke it out' for the next 3 weeks. When you start to take part in endurance sports one of the things that you learn all too quickly is that the events we challenge ourselves with hurt! They are both mentally and physically draining. This weekend just gone we had TBC athletes at distances from sprint Triathlon to Ironman and all in their own way will have had to learn how to suffer. To put up with often a high level of discomfort in the hope of beating our PB, hitting the podium or gaining a qualification to another race so we can suffer some more.

Pain and our responses to it is a very interesting subject. I have always wondered how some people seem to be able endure what seems like an intolrable amount of discomfort while others pack at the drop of a hat. What are some of the factors that make some people more able to suffer than others?

Some interesting reseach in this area has been developed by the behavioural economist Dan Ariely. I have been following his work at MIT and Duke University for a few years now. You may be wondering what a behavioural economist is doing with pain studies? He researches a wide range of subjects but the study of pain is closer to him than most - he was badly burned as a child and suffered terrible burns to his body - so his work comes with a lot of authority and experience on this particular topic. Take a look at this You Tube video and this might provide some interesting insights into why some people are able to handle more suffering than others.




Dan's research revealed that everyone who had suffered some sort of acute injury developed the ability to adapt to pain and the more severe the injury the more they seemed to be able to endure pain. He made a fascinating distiction from working with chronic pain sufferers, and that was, our ability to endure pain very much depends on how we atribute pain - either positively (i.e. its tough but I can deal with it)or negatively (i.e. its tough and there's no hope of it getting better).

So how does this relate to swim, bike, run? Think about the kind of conversations you have with yourself when the training starts to hurt, are you having positive, self-affirming conversations? Saying to yourself... "this is how I should be feeling right now, its ok, my body is working hard and thats just how it should be", "this is doing me good, its getting me where I want to be in 3 months time" - because these are exactly the kind of positive attributes for pain that helps us learn to endure it. If you have any ambitions to get good at endurance sport learn to love that feeling, because thats the positive feedback that your body is adapting. Keep going comrades!

Excuses, Excuses...

A busy few months working away has meant more time off the bike than I would like. Popped over to Mallorca in January with the GB Para-Cycling squad, then it was down to Newport Velodrome with the squad for 8 days of intensive track work in February. A couple of weeks at home, then a long drive down to Montichiari, near Brescia in Italy for the Para-Cycling World Track Champs. Took a bike but only managed two rides and could feel the little bit of fitness I had, ebbing away. Still although the championships were hard work, they were very exciting. The GB squad is lottery funded and sponsored by Sky, with most of the Athletes full time and based in Manchester. This level of support is the envy of most nations including the USA who were in the pits next to us at the Velodrome and were constantly scrounging tools from our mechanics. We got on well though, so they were welcome. With 18 medals we topped the table and are the Nation that everyone else looks at, we can appear a little arrogant though! Anyway it’s all about next year London 2012 and everything this year is done with that in mind, points win prizes, the number of points won in competition this year will determine the number of athletes able to compete at the London Paralympic Games. We certainly picked up a few in Italy. It was hard work trackside but being so close to the action was great fun - even enjoyed the long drive back, while the athletes flew home from Verona.

Then it was down to Celtic Manor Hotel for a team day, apparently its £160 to play a round of golf on the Ryder cup course and even though it was midweek there were plenty of takers. Anyway back to that lost fitness! Have managed to get back on it a bit, not got the time for loads of miles so when I do ride I “nail it”. Its hard work but I know it gets results and after 4-5 weeks I can feel a few “green shoots of recovery”. A family holiday and then Switzerland and Spain with the Para boys and girls for 12 days will soon put an end to that.

Enjoyed a morning taking pics at the Ringwood Triathlon recently, I did this race a couple of time in its first incarnation in the early nineties. Organiser Michelle Noble of Results triathlon put on a great race and was rewarded with warm spring sunshine. The course is pretty much the same as 20 years ago and the long drag up Bolderwood drive with the steep bit at the end, caught more than a few out. Winner James Gilfillan looked very comfortable, I know because I was there taking photos of him. I still regularly train on this course and always have to work hard.

London Marathon time again and I have had the usual last minute panic appointments for massage, some of you should have come months ago. Most of the people I have been seeing started training a week or so after Christmas so have racked up a fair few miles. I must wish local star Steve Way good luck, his training has been a bit disrupted this year but he certainly puts in the hard work. Whether he has the form to beat last years 2.19.39, and 17th place I do not know, but I know he will be giving it his best shot - Now that’s something to aspire to!

See you up the road…
ED

Eamonn Deane is a TrainingBible UK specialist in the field of sports massage. To find out more about his work, check out his new website at
www.sportsmassagebournemouth.co.uk

Thin slicing

As many of you will know I spend my working life split between facilitating Leadership training programmes for corporate clients and coaching athletes. I find both areas really motivating as they are fundamentally about helping to develop an individual's potential. Recently I have been working on a Leadership project for a major bank and was reminded about the book "Blink", by one of the participant's performance in some of the tasks we coached them through. In the book, it's author Malcolm Gladwell describes how the human brain is able to take in, what on the surface seems, a very small amount of information and extrapolate it very quickly. A good example would be how a tennis player reacts to return a fast serve, the unconscious brain takes in lots of sensory information from the servers body position and ball toss and seemingly without a thought moves to the position where the ball can be hit and returned over the net. All this happens in fractions of seconds. Gladwell calls this ability 'thin slicing'. He puts foward the idea that the more we have practised and mastered a particular skill the better we become at thin slicing information. He asserts that because our brain, through its learned experience of these very specific experiences, can effectivly short cut through the sensory information and make super fast decisions in fractions of seconds i.e. in the blink of an eye or even faster. We all wonder why Rodger and Rafa seem to have so much time when returning a serve, now it becomes obvious, their abilty to thin slice the information and move even before the ball is hit, means that added fraction of a second seems like a lifetime.

This theory makes a lot of sense, we know as humans we all live in our own world of perception, experiencing life through our own very specific filters. We all make assumptions about the world we live in or we'd never risk never making it out of bed in the morning. Imagine waking up and trying to decide if the ground was going to be there or not! We assume it is and get up - well, at least its never failed me thus far. When we meet or work with people who have mastered this in an area of life we are interested in it can be a fascinating experience. I have been struggling with an injury for a couple of months, and this week I went to see my physiotherapist, Tim Cruise-Drew. He specialises in working with runners and triathletes, so he has the experience of seeing and treating probably a couple of thousand of athletes across his career. This helps him to thin slice the information he is seeing - its the tiny, inperceptual details that he is aware of, that other physios may not pick up or misinterpret, that make the difference to his ability to identify the source of the injury. Thanks Tim, your insights are making a difference already!

Its what I call the difference that makes a difference. How does this relate to an endurance athlete's performance? According to Gladwell, there seem to be lots of ways that thin slicing works - here are just a couple of thoughts. A few seconds can be the difference between a podium position and 20th place. Think about how much faster you have riden a bike course after you have done it a few times. Depending on the course the difference between riding it for the first time and and the second can be many minutes. The more we learn about the course the faster we are able to thin slice the information we recieve from it and the faster we can go, seems obvious... right? What about the times when you have just gone with the flow in a race and suprised yourself with your performance? Sometimes those thin slices of information provide what we might call a gut reaction. If you'd have stopped to consciously analyse what was going on you might have talked yourself out of it. I remember chatting to an athlete that ran a marathon and on his way broke his 10k, 10 mile and half marathon PB, on the way to his marathon PB. When I asked him about it after the race he told me he had forgotton his watch and just ran as fast as he felt his body would allow him. I am not suggesting we all throw our Garmin's away - just become aware of the potential of the thin slice :-)

To be a successful Athlete, you must understand your ‘Why’…

Recently I have been engaged to design a leadership programme for a ‘blue chip’ corporation and as part of that I have been undertaking some interesting research on what drives our behaviour. This led me to thinking about ‘Why’ I decided to become a coach, as it’s something that I am often asked by athletes and business professionals alike. My answer is that I truly believe that sport is a gift for lifelong learning, health and happiness. It’s because I hold this belief that I feel it’s my calling to assist and guide people to be the best they can be. I hope it will enhance their lives as it has mine.
Have you ever thought about ‘Why’ you do the things you do? Finding your ‘Why’ or purpose can be a tricky thing to identify and that’s one of the reasons that many of us don’t give it much time. When we are faced with difficult and complex things to consider, sometimes it’s just easier to accept that’s just the way we are. I would suggest that if we really want to be great at what we do, we need to understand ‘Why’ - even if we find that hard to explain in words.
It’s the ‘Why’ or true purpose that gets us out of bed in the morning and into the pool or onto the turbo trainer. Most of us are able to articulate ‘what’ we do and ‘how’ we do it, but when it comes to our purpose we end up saying stuff like, it feels good, or I get a buzz out of it. Some of us will talk in terms of ‘outputs’ - from ‘getting in the top 10’ to things like ‘managing our weight’ - but I tend to think it goes a bit deeper than that. I believe it’s linked to how we like to see ourselves, and even what we believe to be our true identity.
If we think about this in neurological terms, working out the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ is tackled in a different part of our brain. It’s processed in the computer like Neo Cortex which rationalises and labels these thoughts with language, enabling us to find a form of words to explain it. The ‘Why’ is developed in a different part of the brain - the limbic system - this is where we develop our emotional responses. It is less familiar with language and tends to evoke what we might call ‘gut’ reactions, the intuitive responses when something feels right or wrong, but is hard to explain.
Having a better understanding of our purpose can help garner the level of commitment that’s required to become the best we can be. It manifests itself in the highest performing teams and individuals. It can be observed in the standards they set for themselves and this in turn drives the training and practice schedules they put in place. Understanding our purpose can deliver a constant source of drive and inspiration so it’s worth spending a little time to think about ‘Why’ it is we do what we do. To paraphrase a great leader that truly understood his purpose Martin Luther King said ‘I have a dream...’