June 2018 Fitness Summary

Half of the year is behind us and the summer is in full swing. Summer means good weather, a lot of daytime and I am trying to use it for training outside as much as possible. These are the main highlights for the month of June:

  1. Training for triathlon and marathon;
  2. Increasing length of workouts;
  3. Olympic distance triathlon in Zarasai.

As always, I will start with a summary of all the training I logged during the month:

I have actually only checked this summary now when writing this post and I am surprised with the numbers. It didn’t feel that I spent so much time doing sports in June 😀 We even had a week-long vacation in June but I stayed active during it as well. The biggest time was spent while cycling and running, as these are the disciplines that take most of the time in triathlon. I could have done more swimming but I am not very disappointed as it takes the smallest part in triathlon. I think I am doing it right, as I don’t feel over-trained and haven’t experienced any injuries and that’s very important to me.

I also increased the length of my workouts. These were the longest sessions during June:

  • Longest run in June – 25km (up from 17km in May);
  • Longest bike ride in June – 86km (up from 50km in May);

Olympic triathlon in Zarasai

I participated in one competition during the month – 3rd stage of Lithuanian triathlon cup in Zarasai which took place on the 16th of June. It was an Olympic distance triathlon which consists of 1,5km swim, followed by 40km ride, followed by 10km run. I really enjoyed this one and you can see the proof of it in the below photo which was captured by my wife:

All Good!

This is how it went for me in terms of results:

  • Swim: 0:31:04 (59th out of 95 participants);
  • Transition1: 0:02:13;
  • Bike: 01:19:55 (82nd);
  • Transition2: 0:00:55;
  • Run: 0:47:14 (50th);
  • Total time: 02:41:20 (66th out of 95 participants, 62nd out of 88 men) – PERSONAL BEST!

I am glad to say that I reached my personal record again which was standing since last month when I finished the same distance in 02:42:27! Super hyped about that and it proves that the training is working. I am still lagging behind in the cycling discipline a lot and will do my best to improve it. After the race I decided that I didn’t push very hard during bike part, so perhaps I could have done better. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the race that much if I gave it everything 🙂

At the beginning of the year I set some goals to myself and one of them is to finish in TOP 50% in final classification of Lithuanian Triathlon cup. After 3 races, I am standing in the 31st place out of 130 participants which puts me into top 24%. So far it is looking good. This is mainly due to the fact that I participated in all of the races and there are quite a few people who only participated in one or two events. But it’s good to see that I am constantly climbing up the ladder in results of each individual event so far as well. Final classification will include 4 best results out of 7 races, so I may drop a little if most of the participants take part in at least 4 events but I think I will easily stay in top 50%.

Final stretch

Going Forward

As in the last few months, my main target will be further training for triathlon. July should be the last “harder” month before my planned half-Ironman distance race at the beginning of August and a marathon at the beginning of September. Looking at the results, I should still focus more on cycling but I can’t forget running as well, since marathon is going to be one of the hardest races this year. I have two competitions planned for July (one of them is already over and I will share results of it next month).

There is one thing that bugs me at the moment – my sugar intake increased when I started training more. I am always craving for some milk chocolate or something sweet. It is getting out of control, so I am declaring that I will not be eating any sweets/cakes/sweet cereal/chocolates (excluding black chocolate) etc for one month! I have to admit – I have tried this before and it didn’t work out well 😀 However, I am declaring it publicly now so we will see if this blog will help me in one more area of my life 😉

 

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave any comments below! 🙂

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