The name's Athlete. Professional Athlete.

Well that's how it felt this week when (for the first time since I can remember) I had the joy of staying at home during holidays. It's probably been 5+ years since I last did that. So this week has basically been occupied by training, eating, sleeping & reading. Nice :-)

Mon: my training week started nicely with a sleep-in :-) followed by a 2.5km swim consisting of lots of drills. Thanks to the rain the pool was largely empty. Nice way to start the week!

Tue: thanks to being on holidays, I was able to switch the order of my training sessions in order to join TigerAngel for a long ride along the M7 bike path. Thankfully the rain had cleared so it turned out to be surprisingly warm by the end. It was great to catch up with TA; thanks for the company. Finished with 2:26. 55.58km. Av.22.7k/h. AvC85.

Wed: another long swim, this time 2.9km. I didn't feel quite as strong in the water to start with but my performance didn't drop off as much as I thought it might.

Thu: Loving living life as professional athlete at the moment - even though it meant leaving home at 6am to get to Bobbin Head in time to join TigerAngel for another ride, this time hill repeats up the Turramurra side of Bobbin Head. 3 hill repeats for me as I (and TA's cycling buddy Jan) played domestique for TA as she powered up the hill 4 times. While I only seemed to notice the rain when going downhill, it was either raining or drizzling for most of the ride which was good practice riding in the rain which is something I don't often do; I tend to retire to the trainer in the garage at the first sign of rain. It was also nice to get out on the bike twice in one week; I normally only do one ride on the road each week with the rest of my sessions on the trainer. Finished with coffee in Turramurra where we were joined by Gnome (*waves*). In all a lovely morning. :-) 1:39. 28.97km. Av. 17.4k/h

Fri: I enjoyed Thursday's ride and coffee so much I woke on Friday morning wanting to do it again. Alas, I had a swim on my program. The pool didn't open until 10am so it was a good excuse to sleep-in. Not that I needed a sleep-in after falling asleep about 11pm on NYE (*she blushes*). The new year started with a 2.2km swim which started with 1.6km straight (sans warm-up) to simulate a race scenario. The 1.6km component took about 34mins which is a tad slow but still it was my longest non-stop swim ever so it was a good confidence booster ahead of the Oly in Canberra later this month.

Sat: strength session at the gym.

Rest day tomorrow (Sunday).

Thursday's session of course brought the month of December (and the year) to an end. Despite December being a busy month, I managed to complete almost all of my sessions. It was also my biggest month in the pool (by far) to date -

Swim - 23.4km (!!)
Bike - 264.6km

Since June 2009 (which is when I started keeping a tally of my training) to the end of 2009, I swum 94.7km & ridden 1,553.1km! Bring on 2010; the year of the hill :-)

MTD:
Swim: 2.2km