Brrr...30 weeks to IM France

It is cold, cold cold. Temperatures dropped to a shivering minus seven this weekend, with the prospect of starting my 30 week plan to IM France it is not the start I was hoping for !

So the aim over the next 30 weeks is to build my fitness to a level that will get me through 3.9km of swimming, 180km of cycling and a 42.2km run. I haven't set myself a specific time goal yet as having not really completed any distances like this before I don't really know what I am capable of ! To finish within the 17 hour cut off time will be a huge achievement.

I intend to take my training from an average of 8-10 hours per week to a peak of 20 hours per week between now and June 2011. This will generally consist of 3 swim, 3 bike and 3 run sessions per week and 1 or 2 weight sessions. I plan to get my weight down from around 81kgs to 76kgs to make me lighter on race day and I am going to try and attempt to get 56 hours sleep per week which is 8 hours a night.

I have entered the following events in the run up to Ironman, with these early goals;

20th March - Reading Half Marathon (sub 1:35, pb of 1:39) 8th May - Marshman (half ironman distance, sub 4:40, pb of 4:42)

I plan on doing some other events along the way if I can but haven't entered anything to date.

So it seems that over the next few weeks it is going to be a very cold start. This weekends bike and run sessions were very tough but hopefully all this winter training will pay off next year. I can see some long turbo sessions ahead !