Friday, November 21, 2008

My Personal Best Cycling Times

Around 2 weeks ago I thought I'd mix up my fitness and endurance training and take up cycling, i also want to get into Triathlons next year so it was the logical way to go. I bought my first road bike, a Cell Team Shimano 105 and have started putting in cycling training sessions 1 to 2 times a week.

My current best cycling times are:
(I'm going to maintain a complete history so I can see how the far i've come :)
14km: 45m (22 November 2008 - Training - 4 rounds of 3.7km)
22km: 60m (29 November 2008 - Training - 6 rounds of 3.7km)
29km: 1h 20m (06 December 2008 - Training - 8 rounds of 3.7km)
33km: 1h 30m (13 December 2008 - Training - 9 rounds of 3.7km)
37km: 1h 40m (20 December 2008 - Training - 10 rounds of 3.7km)
44km: 1h 50m (10 January 2009 - Training - 12 rounds of 3.7km)

It an expensive sport to get into as you need to purchase and maintain all the gear, but it is very rewarding and hopefully i can take part in a few events before attempting any Triathlons in 2009.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

5.6km JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge

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Before the run
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I had 4 weeks to train for this and was determined to achieve a really fast time. Going into training my most consistent fastest time per km was 5m 30s and my goal was to bring that down as much as possible.

As I usually save most of my energy for the last leg or two of the race, I wanted to try something new for me and hit faster times for the initial part of the race, as this seems to be a good way to get faster overall times for shorter runs.

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After the run
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It was a great afternoon, hot and sunny and there were 7,494 people competing at this event (that’s a lot of people trying to run together in the short running path of Centennial Park). I ran with around 8 of my work colleagues and managed to get a time of 28m which works out to exactly 5m per km.

In retrospect, I feel I could have knocked off a few more minutes if I had started a bit further up the field but I finished strong and beat my personal best which is always my main goal.

Could not take any pics as my official photographers (close mates who I force this role upon :) did not come but here are a couple.




This creepy picture I took the day before the run when I went down to Centennial Park to familiarize myself with the course


My race number, time and finishers t-shirt



I’m looking forward to starting my ironman 70.6 triathlon training regime now, more on that soon :)