In my last blog I made the terrible mistake of saying how I had actually had my first winter where I had been able to train right through and I obviously jinxed myself.
While competing at the ITU triathlon weekend on the gold coast in the bike race a guy crashed right in front of me and I had no way of avoiding him and went over him, over the handle bars and ended up with a broken collar bone.
How bored do I get while water running???? For 3 weeks I could do pretty much nothing and then was finally allowed to water run as long as I didn’t use my right arm. At first I was pretty keen as it was at least a type of running, but for everyone who has had to train this way I am sure you would be with me in saying that there is nothing much more boring you could find to do for an hour, so the novelty very quickly wore off.
After christmas I was allowed to ride my bike on a wind trainer, sitting upright so I didn’t use my arm. Not wanting to lose too much fitness I did this about 5 times a week and yep my backside knew about it, after the first few days I ended up having to strap foam stuff to my seat to try to make it a bit more comfortable… not overly successful.
Friday the 20th Jan was five weeks and I was allowed to try a very easy 20 min jog and see how my collarbone handled it. I had a new pair of Mizuno Wave Riders that had been sitting in the corner taunting me and I was so keen to lace them up and go. Well my collar was fine but every other part of my body was hurting.(tight quads, tight hip flexors, sore back,) obviously my punishment for finding stretching 2nd only to water running on the boring meter.
A massive stretch session and a rest day and then Sunday had me jogging 40 mins comfortably…
After building back into the training I was finally back on the track 24th of February for the Vic Juniors where I raced the 1500 and 3000, I was quite happy with both races considering the lack of training and the weather being about 20 higher than what I was used to in Launceston!
Before this happened I had been running some nice PB’s and am hoping that my winter base will find me back there again fairly soon.
I have to look on the bright side and although I missed my first Falls Creek training camp and have missed most of the summer competitions I am telling myself that I will be nice and fresh for March Juniors and Malta X-country.
Jake Birtwhistle
