November has passed in a blur.

Again, no races this month. Apart from Southsea Parkrun #5 which I’d been planning to attack for a 5k PB but ended up jogging round due to grumbling guts. 🙁 It was still a fun morning though, joining the final Portsmouth Triathletes sea swim of the year and then sharing a well deserved brunch with Budgie, Duncan and Jon.

The two sessions I had at the beginning of the month with Joe Allnutt at the Overton Clinic were positive. His approach has been very evidence driven, and the single manipulation he performed on my pelvis, backed up by two simple exercises I’ve been doing daily, has had profound effects. Initially I had a lot of variable nerve, tendon and muscular pain, but Joe reassured me this was expected and a few weeks later everything has calmed down.

I’ve done no road biking all month, which I’m saying has been a strategy, to avoid interfering with the adjustment. However, I have now finally made a few hours to prepare my old bike for the winter roads, and clear space in the garage, clean the main bike and get it on the turbo, and put the Zipps in their wheel bags up on the wall! I’ve installed the Garmin speed/cadence sensor and intend to give TrainerRoad a go in December, spurred on by Julian Middlewick’s TrainerRoad exploits and Andy also signing up recently. I’m a bit apprehensive, and will build the road and turbo time up gingerly, as I really want the sitting pain to be gone!

On the other hand, I have spent a happy few hours noodling around local trails on my mountain bike. It’s been refreshing not to be evaluating every ride as a performance, and just enjoying being out there – and it’s got to improve my bike handling! I’ve done hardly any technical riding but every trip has required hosing down the bike afterwards. 🙂

With the biking on a back burner, it’s been a second good month of running, both trail and road. I even managed a good few runs (and some Strava CRs :-)) in Düsseldorf. I had hoped to use the Tadley Xmas XC tomorrow as the end of my winter running block, but I’m still fighting off a winter sniffle, so I’m reluctantly going to give it a miss. Maybe I’ll do the Muddy Welly Run instead, and I hope I’ll fit in a final parkrun of 2013 somewhere.

The first block of PT with Nic has been useful too. We’ve focused primarily on running, with core strength and leg power intervals. I even managed to follow the programmed session Nic set me for the week I was away in Germany, which is encouraging, something must have sunk in!

So, December: pick up the biking, keep up the running and core strength, and take on Nic’s next bike-focused block of PT… and let myself relax over Christmas. But not too much. I’ve not planned next season yet but GB age-group qualification races like the Nottingham Triathlon are already filling up…

Finally, here’s the comparison between this month’s training, last month, and last year. The hours may be down, but I claim they were high-quality in a month of challenging circumstances – and last year’s monthly totals were inflated by interesting and fun hours spent on a bike fit at Athlete Service and on the Thames in my pedal-powered boat challenge!