Andy Loughran

Month: April 2024

  • Back in the gym

    Alongside the triathlon training, today marked the first day back at my regular group personal-training gym.

    It’s a great little gym doing small-group personal training; which means a maximum of 4 people in a class doing multiple sets of a ‘breakfast, lunch and dinner’ program. Each meal has two/three exercises each, with multiple repeats.

    I’ve now been going for over two years (with two ‘month skips’) for holidays/wedding .etc; and I’ve really noticed a positive impact on my core strength and general health. Initially I was looking forward to losing a little bit of weight; but instead the focus has really been on holding my body better, and just feeling generally loads healthier when pottering about the house/garden and doing any weight-based chores.

    I would thoroughly recommend anyone wanting to get this sort of thing done as part of their regular exercise. I was initially a bit against waking up at 6.30 twice a week to make it to a 7am session – but now we’ve got in the groove I kinda missed it!

  • Swim Training #2 – ~850m

    This morning I was pleased to get up and make it to Leytonstone Leisure centre, only 5 minutes after my expected start time after being too tempted to hit the snooze button.

    16 minutes, 51 seconds swim time. Distance 850m

    I did 8 lengths without any fins on and focusing on head position and stroke technique. I felt comfortable in the pool, but even in the medium lane I’ve started catching up with others in the pool. This is a massive surprise to me, and I’m not used to stroking peoples feet!

    Not quite having the confidence to jump into the fast lane, I put on my flippers first and focused mostly on my breathing and arm strokes. I was able to temper my kicking to keep myself short of the fast swimmers in front of me. I recently got gifted some FORM goggles, so used these to try and see whether my head position was in a better place.

    I came out the pool feeling happy; breathing better, and I swallowed far less air that I’ve done in ages. I could even start enjoying it!

  • Training begins..

    In about 16 weeks time, I’ll be participating in the ‘Castle-to-coast’ half-ironman distance triathlon.

    I’d not been well over the Easter weekend, and ended up on the sofa reading a few of the “Foundation” series novels by Asimov. I found them quite enthralling, and managed to get through nearly 1,000 pages of novel; which is quite an achievement for me.

    That said, my plan for this weekend was to do a FTP test and baseline myself for the triathlon training that I’ve got coming up. As that didn’t seem sensible given how poor I was feeling, I instead spent the weekend resting.

    On Monday, feeling a bit better; I managed to get myself off the sofa and onto finally doing some tri sports. Focusing instead on technique and enjoyment, I headed to London Fields for a few lengths of the lido in the sunshine. It was glorious.

    We then went for a 7k target run at 10k race pace read for a planned 10k in two weeks time. That went really well and I felt great during it. The bounce was back in my step and my breathing felt great. Looking forward to getting back on it, and will see whether the Strava plugin for wordpress products some prettyness to these posts.