Performance Vs Weight-Loss Training

So a week after my last race and I find myself 2 weeks out from my biggest race of the year but I figure that last weeks post was very triathlon so this week I would talk a bit more about weight-loss training. Again my apologise about the delay with the blog but I was in rural Victoria on the weekend for an amazing wedding where I regret to admit I drank a little (or a lot) too much. It was great fun and I got to see the legendary town of Morwell which I have heard so much about and I even got to see the Hazlewood Pondage where there is a great local race held every year.

Being a bit stiff and sore last week I thought it could be the perfect opportunity for me to try and drop a few kgs to get me down to race weight before Western Sydney. It has been a long time since I have done any weight loss specific training and I was surprised at how different I found it compared to my normal weekly training. Now I feel the need to say here that I am not saying that triathlon training is not going to make you loose weight or anything like that. I simply mean that I started to do the same sort of sessions I did back when I first started loosing weight in 2011.

So what sort of sessions are we talking about? I understand that there are many different opinions about what is the best way to loose weight and I am sure that some of you who are reading this who are better educated and qualified than me will have different opinions as well. But for me, I spend lots of time doing low intensity cardio work. Normally 60 - 75 minutes on a X-Trainer with a pretty high intensity but a moderate speed followed by another 40-60 minutes on a bike. I used to do some good resistance training at the start of my sessions but being this close to a race I didn't want to risk too much muscle pain or do anything to different to what I normally do.

So what are the differences I noticed? When I am in a decent bloke of tri training, especially over the last few weeks, the intensity is a lot higher. It is the sort of training I am quite happy to do by myself because I either want to scream or vomit most of the time. Well in comparison this low intensity stuff I did last week was kinda nice. I downloaded a great audiobook version of "Im Here to Win" by Chris McCormack and just listened to it while I trained. I find that the time flew by and I wanted to extend my workouts a little longer to keep listening to the book. I find that a good strategy to maintain workouts. You listen to a really good audiobook and only listen when you are training. If it is a good book you will be hanging to get back to the gym just so you can find out what happens. But I have gone off topic.

In a nutshell, I am often shocking my body by doing a variation of a set or adding something to make it longer or harder. To shock my body by making the session easier was a really nice change. I felt like I managed to recover from Forster a lot better and have been able to loose a bit of weight in the process. Anyway this weeks blog is looking long enough. As I said its two weeks until Western Sydney and I am keen to get to the start line. It was great to see some of my friends achieving some great results over the weekend including Craig, Andrew and Shannon at Challenge Shepparton and the kiwi legend Mike 'Robo' Robinson at a tri New Zealand.

To anyone else racing Western Sydney good luck with your last two weeks. Don't get sick or do anything silly. Just get to the start in one piece.

Have a great week and remember to TRI!

Andrew and Shannon are two awesome people I met on Supercamp. Looking forward to racing with them in Melbourne next year

Just to demonstrate that I am not always 'behaving' myself