Outback

Hi LL, The most important thing you need to focus on is increasing the distance you run each week. You will struggle to run 42km at one go if you're not doing that much combined over a week. In my first I'd only been running 25k per week and even when I took the mara slow it was still very hard. Get a running heart rate monitor and don't go faster than zone 2 heart rate for at least half your runs. you need to teach your body to run without a great effort. this will be very slow at first but quickly improves. Get a plan, it's too easy to skip workouts if yo

Cool, thanks Estrix.

Hey, I've done a few multi-day hikes and recommend taking food you'll enjoy after walking for hours. There is no fun getting to the end of an amazing day and eating pretzels and dried fruit for your meal (unless that's your thing). I couldn't do low carb I'd tired and grumpy and stop enjoying it. jerky and tuna pouches are fine. Also in that vain is salami. Your pack will keep things insulated for a day or 2 so you can usually have fresh food for those meals. Also remember that if you're out all day you'll need to keep sodium up. A friend of mine got very low electrolytes from trying to ea

Congratulations on joining the rebellion. You goals look pretty good. Just remember a consistent effort will win.

Hi Estrix, I haven't heard anyone talk about improving there recovery rate for a long time. But I'd say what you're wanting would be hard intervals or what some coaches call 'anaerobic intervals'. Beep training is not far from this style anyway. Other types of intervals include 'Force intervals' such as hill runs and 'skill intervals' where you focus on foot strike, cadence, posture etc. When structuring an interval program you can look at: WI - Work interval. The duration or distance of the effort. RI - Rest Interval. The duration or distance of the recovery. TW - Total work. The sum

In addition to Dilnad's: running speed = cadence x distance per stride If you want to go faster you must increase one or both of them while not decreasing the other so as to offset any gain. So a longer stride may make you faster but probably not. Usually a lot of energy is wasted moving the body vertically rather than horizontally as stride length increases. Dilnad is spot on with circa 180 being an ideal cadence. While you are training try a slightly shorter stride at a higher rate. *Of course this ignores that its usually aerobic endurance that is limiting performance.

Lifting is great for running. Though I'm not a fan of doing them too close together. The only problem I've had with sore legs is that it can be hard to get your cadence up, but if you're starting out I wouldn't worry about it.

Hey, How's the HM training going?

week 4 Okay so I'm a lot better at doing running, swimming and cycling than keeping my challenge post up to date... Things have been moving along steadily, though my distances have increased I've easily done something 6 days a week. In the last week I went faster at 5ks by 10 seconds so I'm at 21:57. I've been doing a lot of swimming and am planning on a swimming challenge for next year. I've started lifting again and am enjoying it. I'll have to get onto those benchmarks. I did 10k in about 48 mins at the beginning of the year but the weather is much hotter now so that might be a push.

My mostly made up theory is: your body requires fuel for the workout you do. For cardio (esp: Hiit ) it will want to get that fuel primarily in the form of glycogen. By eating before exercise you are helping replenish glycogen supplies so you can keep going. If you have an empty stomach your just using what's stored in your body (you may feel very tired until you refuel). For fat loss my guess is it would make a small difference keeping everything else equal and may depend a lot on how much you ate the night before. Most endurance style people eat a bunch straight after the workout

Hey Rassidan, Kicking doesn't provide a lot of the power in freestyle swimming. I have heard it said that maybe 10-15%. However if your not kicking properly then it can make a pretty big difference. The most common mistake is that you may be kicking from your knees. You need to keep your leg straight and kick from the hips. practice a bit with a kickboard and after a few weeks you'll get the hang of it, be warned though, all that muscle in your legs is going to want oxygen so you'll probably notice you want a lot more air. I did anyway. Hope that helps

Well week 3 was going well until I got a cold... Decided to call off the tri as it would have wiped me out. I probably should have taken it easier when I started to get tired, but for some reason I always decide I'm going to push through. So I had four days with no training at all which felt like a really long time but I didn't get any energy back until the last day. Back into it now though, yesterday was: 20km ride 1km swim ballet class. Now I'm going to work at setting those benchmarks which should be too hard as I don't have anything serious until a way in to next year.

Last night I went to my swimming class and was told that from next week I should join the "serious swimmers training squad". I'm happy to know that someone thinks I should be in that group but their coach works them so hard...

Sounds like you're winning to me. persistence beats perfection At the end of this week you'll be half way through the challenge, stay focussed and you'll be able to smash the second half.

Check-in after week 2: Went a bit off track because I got hit by a car when riding on Tuesday morning. Luckily it was pretty slow as they were coming from a side street and I really only lost some skin. Tuesday: Rode 30k's, yes I finished my ride after getting hit by a car (the last 5 k's). Wednesday: Ran 5k's in the morning @ 5:30 min/k pace. Did a stroke correction class at the pool after work. Thursday: swam morning and afternoon. Didn't track distance as I'm still working on balancing kick and pull. Friday: Couldn't bring myself to go out on the bike so went to the pool again. Saturda