TheTrain, Pain, Gain Game by AndyP_1973

I've been reading up more on how to complete a half iron man in sub 6 hrs, which was my aspirational target albeit without any real science behind my goal.  That equates to around 40 mins for the swim, 3 hrs 15 for the cycle, 2 hrs for the run and the rest for transitions.   Having never done it before, I have no idea whether this is achievable for me or not.  There's so much that could go wrong during the race - insufficient fueling, puncture, cramp, suicide etc etc.

What's occured to me from reading more tips on the web is that I'm not cycling nearly enough, not even a 1/3 of what I should be per week.   So, from this day forward, I'm changing my approach and will only swim once, possibly twice per week, and will reduce the number of runs too.  I have to start making cycling the primary part of my training, even though its my least favourite and its the least convenient one.  

On Sunday I'd intended to go to the Chiltern Harriers Tri Club for a Duathon time-trial, to see what a tri club was like, and see how fast "proper" cyclists go.  It was absolutely *&%$* down in the end and a lot of roads were covered in surface water so I abandoned that idea and did a turbo trainer session indoors watching Utd spawn the Carling Cup, (thanks to paying off the referee first of course.  How Vidic was not sent off is beyond me.) before going out for a brief 15 minute run, in order to complete my first "brick" session.    Bricks are another key element of training, to get your legs used to running after being on a bike for a long itme. 

When you first set off it feels like your running on borrowed legs, but you soon settle in to it, even though physically you feel pretty drained.  Not sure what doing a half marathon will be like.  The idea in training is to do 10% bricks.  i.e. 40 miles on teh bike, followed by 4 miles running.   Apparantly I'm supposed to over-train to say 100 miles cycle, followed by a 10 mile run - sounds like a barrel of laughs... ;-(