THE MIGHTY JO CARREL: Big Jo training 21 March

Lets get ourselves back to our usual format...

SWIM

My hip was still a being a bit fidgey-widgey with kicking and there is only so much PB I can take so I decided to take the last week completely off swimming. I met with Haydn about my piss-poor swimming and he devised a program for me starting with a 6km session EEK!! So I am hoping a week off will settle the hip enough so I can start with Program Fishy. Unfortunately my week of swimming meant that I would miss the annual Waikato Five Bridges Swim which somehow increased from 5km to 7.1km despite using the same course, odd. I was there anyway as the driver and only had a little bit of FOMO. J-Rad razzled the field and led from start to finish while Davo attempted to swam with Jared but only lasted about 200m.

Swimmers waiting to start the big float

J-Rad and Davo in 1st and 2nd

BIKE

In attempt to become a better cyclist I have turned up to the Counties Manukau club races the last two weekends. The first one was a complete waste of time with both me and J-Rad puncturing on the first lap ending our races. I thought my puncture may have been karma for not stopping for Jared when I saw him walking back but I figured he would be mad if I sacrificed my race, of course had I have been dropped from the bunch it would have been a different story. But any case I had a puncture of my own about 10mins later and had to pull out anyway. And it rained the whole time so all in all was not a fun afternoon.
The following week was an 80km handicap race in perfect weather. I was on quite a large handicap but the group was too big and after 3 laps out of 5 me and a few others peeled away. Our new little group got along quite well until some of the faster bunches caught and obliterated us so I ended up sad and alone for the last lap. But I got there in the end, smug in the fact that out of the 16 people who started in my group only 6 of us finished.
So club racing is to be a permanent fixture on our weekend calendar from now on.

My dear friend Neilio hooked me up with some winter BMW kit.

RUN

First run since Ironman woo-hoo!
Did a series of little intervals with one minutes walking in between and all seemed pretty good, not quite the full 100 but almost there. Going on the flat and downhill is ok but uphill was still a bit iffy. So I'll just keep it easy and on the flat for now and hopefully we'll come right.