Reflection on 2009

Now that the season is over, it is time for some reflective thoughts.

Well, that was a long and interesting season. It didn’t exactly end of a high, but all-in-all it was a pretty successfully first year doing triathlons. Given that I started with very little swimming and cycling training I managed to finish 2 sprints, 2 Olympic distances and 2 middle distances.

Due to the new training regime things improved significantly. My running got much stronger (10k by 1:30 and half-marathon by over 3 minutes) and my body composition improved a lot (lost 4kg and reduced my body fat by 3%). I really wanted to blast a good marathon time, 3:45 or even 3:40 which I am capable off, but the body wasn’t up for it.
Lesson learned: rethink whether doing a marathon at the end of a marathon season is a good idea.

I started the year recovering from problems with my hip and finished with problems on my back. I started doing core work after the injury which really helped. I stupidly stopped doing it again from July on and the consequence was the injury.
Lesson learned: do core work all year round, even when the races are on.

I also managed to spend a lot of money on kit. I used pretty much all of it, even though some was more of a luxury than needed. I should be pretty much equipped for next season, apart from the usual consumables (running shoes, tubes, tyres, etc).

November will be a rest month with some time to prepare for 2010 where the focus will be entirely on Challenge Roth in July. Foundation training will start in December. Before that I want to check out a few medical things and also get my swimming technique looked at.

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