In a spin

I woke up this morning with very heavy legs. My body seems to be in quite a bit of shock recently ... I don't quite think it's caught up with the fact that the race is only three months away and that there's no more messing about with training. My mind has switched into serious mode, its now up to me to make sure that my body actually follows.

With that mindset, rather than taking the day off, I went to the gym anyways. Details to follow. We headed to Essex today for some shopping (Lakeside to be more precise) and one of our regular stops there (apart from IKEA) is a sport shop, Decathlon. We took the opportunity there to stock up on some further equipment. I bought a few workout gels ... nutrition will be essential in helping me finish the race, let alone allow me to reach a decent time target so I figured I may as well start getting into the seing of things. I'm going to start trying various products over the course of the next few months and if any of you actually have any suggestions I'd be more than happy to hear them and try them out. At this stage I've decided to stay with water for hydration purposes during the workout rather than purchase a 'workout mix' ... it may not be the wisest of ideas (if you think its wrong, feel free to drop me a line and tell me so) but I figure as weightloss is also part of the general idea for training then water on its own should be enough to do the trick.

I headed to the gym this evening (while my wife was painting the wall - somewhat of a role reversal I know, but she loves it and I don't) and rather than doing the normal routine I headed to the spinning 'room', got on a spinning bike and spent 45 minutes doing 7, 6 minute sets followed by a 3 minute cooldown. 5 minutes of flat ground followed by a minute 'uphill' i.e. off the saddle and on my feet pushing hard. It felt good and a hell of a lot more like, i imagine, a bike will feel in a couple of weeks' time. A nice stretch after and my legs didn't feel like jelly as I expected them to. It'll be interesting to see how I wake up tomorrow but the plan is to get to the pool. Its a Bank holiday tomorrow so I don't need to fit the swim in the early morning or the late evening.

The plan is to fuel up properly for the swim and ensure I do a good one (with a positive attitude) and a target of 1.8km. I aim to be doing some technique drills also so it won't be a 'fast' time, but as long as I get the distance done, and the technique improves, it still counts as a decent deposit in the training bank.

Will let you know how it went tomorrow.