Post-Worlds life/training

After the Worlds we had a few days in France, stopping off at a couple of places on the way back. The best was Reims where we went on a tour of a champagne house (Mumm) - the sheer size of the cellars was amazing and it was interesting to learn about champagne. We even managed to not give in to the temptation to buy some, although we did buy some cheap wine from the store by the Tunnel!

The first day back I entered IM France, so that will be my main target for 2013. A couple of the group I cycle with (Matt and Andy) have also entered, so that should make the training a bit easier. Looking back at previous years' results, a 9:40 should be good enough to get a Kona spot, although I did a similar analysis before Austria which didn't work! So I think I'll be aiming for 9:30, which will be tough on that course. I'm considering getting a new bike as I don't think either of my bikes (a not very good road bike and a TT bike) are suitable - I'm thinking of something like a Felt AR or equivalent, with some clip-on aerobars. Any advice gratefully received!

Training-wise, the last few weeks have been a bit tricky as I want to cut back a bit, but also need to get some running miles in before the ultra in January. So I've basically been doing my standard "tick-over", and trying to get the weekend long run up to a decent length. So the weeks have looked something like:

Monday - Tri Force swim (hour) with a few miles jog on the way there
Tuesday - Striders track session (usually about 9M in total inc. jog there and back)
Wednesday - Tri Force spinning session (70 mins inc. warm-up), with a couple of miles jog beforehand
Thursday - run with Striders plus a few miles beforehand (so maybe 12M in total)
Friday - easy bike or turbo (hour) or rest
Saturday - long run with Striders (I'm doing extra miles before/after to try to increase this to 25M+ in the next few weeks)
Sunday - ride with the cycling group (3 hours), generally steady except for the hills and the 10 mins leading to the sprint finish!

Doing this standard week I can get in around 12 hours' training without really doing any on my own (just the few miles before and after a couple of the sessions), so it's mentally very easy.

First cross country race of the year on Saturday - we're targeting the Chiltern League this year rather than the Met League, so it will be fun to do some different courses against different opposition.