So, currently, the next race is Ironman Wales on 6th September 18 weeks off. This was originally meant to be my 3rd Ironman and 5th Ironman event of 2020 but as Ironman 70.3 Mallorca has been postponed to 31st October and Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire, Ironman Ireland and Ironman UK have all been rescheduled to 2021. Wales is now my only Ironman race this year.

Whether it goes ahead or not remains to be seen and to be honest, I am 90% certain it will get reschuled to next year as well. That said, until it is cancelled it would be foulish not to train for the race and whats the worst that could happen? The race gets cancelled to 2021 and I have banked the fitness gained over the next 18 weeks.

So lets go for it and train hard and target Ironman Wales.

Having gone 10 weeks through marathon training for Boston and put in a lot of bike work alongside that run training, I am starting this block with a good base level of fitness. Probably the best level of fitness and speed going into any training block.

Last week I used the Ironman VR5 virtual race to gadge where I am at roughly in comparrision to my last 70.3 back in June 2018 and things look to have improved by quite a margin since then so plenty of positives to build on.

I am going into this block with no coach, I will be planning my own sessions and holding myself accountable each day. 18 weeks of hard graft to come.

Obviously, there is one gaping big hole in the training plan right now as the gyms and swimming pools are closed under the current lockdown restrictions, meaning there is no chance to get any swim training done, certainly during the early weeks but I am hoping the pools will reopen within the next 4 – 6 weeks.

Goals:

My goal for a full Ironman this year was to go under or as close to 12 hours as possible. I thought Ironman Ireland would have been my best chance of that but Wales will have to do for now.

Another goal is to take at the very least 1hr 15min off my run PB, in 2018 I really struggled with the 26.2 mile run and clocked a 4:47. I would like to be comfortably under 3:30 this time around.

My goals for training are to get up to 20 – 22 hours of weekly training for those peak weeks in August and build out the bike endurance sessions to hold 230w – 245w across the 112 miles come September. The run side of things will take care of itself, I already have that endurance base in place with a target pace of 6:45mi for Boston so it will just be a matter of contiuning that work and slowing the longer runs slightly.

This week is week one of Ironman Wales training and I cannot wait to get going and having that goal to train for and sessions planned out will keep the motivation levels high.