February started with the first Eton Dorney Duathlon of 2013. It was an encouraging start to the year, but showed me that I still needed to do more work on the bike. So I’ve tried to knuckle down.

In fact, February’s always a difficult month training-wise. It’s almost impossible to avoid a winter virus; the bike wants to be off the turbo, but the roads are still wet and muddy; and it’s a short month so the training total always looks poor anyway!

I also had my annual meet with the OB Ramblers for some winter hill walking, this year back in the Lake District. We had three fantastic days on the fells around the Fylde Mountaineering Club hut in Stair, in the Newlands valley. And I even squeezed in a proper training session, a 13.5 km run up the road to the Newlands Hause and back.

I’ve done some biking, both on the road and on the turbo or spin bike this month. It was nice to be out on the lanes, but it’s the focused sessions on the spin bike that have probably done me most good. I’ve really been able to focus on technique (pedal action, sitting with stable hips and core in a good aero position) and to do some much needed high intensity interval sessions, e.g. a main set of 20 x (1 min high resistance @ low cadence, 1 min slightly easier).

I’ve also done some running, mostly on the treadmill apart from the Newlands run, squeezing in 10-15 minute “transition runs” after a lot of bike sessions, as well as some 5 km and 10 km steady sessions (17:30 and 37:30 bests respectively). On the other hand, I haven’t been back to Basingstoke parkrun yet this year. I’ve taken the kids to bike around the park a few times, and the offroad bits of the parkrun course have been horribly muddy, so it hasn’t seemed like a fun thing to do on a Saturday morning!

I fitted in my first proper swim in ages (since last tri season!) and it was fairly woeful, as one might expect, but at least I’ve started again. I’ve not found the time for as much gym work as last month, and I’d like to up this again next month too.

In March, it’ll be the new Winchester Duathlon that tests how I’m going. And before then, I’m going to spend a few hours in tri geek mode at the Triathlon Show this coming weekend.

Here’s a comparison between this month’s training, last month, and last year.

(Figures in parentheses include hill walking! Plenty of work for quads and calves, but not very aerobic.)