Magic Days

What an awesome amazing day today. Absolutely perfect weather, a reminder of just how perfect Perth's winter can be.

The weather was so nice this morning that there was no way we were going to spend the day indoors. As a result we have had a real outdoorsy family day. Nothing to adventurous, just lots of play outside which is a pretty good way to spend a day when you are a kid.

This weekend is a real quite one on the coaching front for me, which has been a nice break. No athletes to meet and no real programs to write. I have just been checking up on the progress of a few athletes who are racing soon to make sure they are on track and to see if any tapers need tweaking, but so far they are looking okay. Two of the athletes are preparing for the Perth City to Surf in a week's time, one doing the half marathon and one doing the marathon. The guy doing the marathon has had a brilliant lead up with solid training and PBs all over the place and so I think he is on track for a great day out. If everything goes to plan I think we could see him crack 3 hours. That is the target anyway and I think it is realistic. The young lady doing the half marathon has had a more interrupted lead up but I think she will be okay. It might be a bit of a slow day out, but I think she will cross the line. She got in a really great week of training this week and so that has improved things a bit on the fitness front, but now the challenge will be tapering her into something that resembles race form. That is a challenge for tomorrow. I think for her we will be trying to strike a balance between building a bit more fitness early this week but also getting in some recovery. At this stage every little bit helps. This is a B race for her, so she can afford to go in carrying a bit of a fatigue debt, we just don't want to make it too great.

The other athletes I have racing soon are getting ready for the 70.3 World Championships in 2 week's time. For these guys their training and taper look like they are still on track, but they are all travelling this week and that is always a period of uncertainty. Time will tell how the training goes when they get to South Africa, we have a training plan of course, however, it may end up not being that easy to train over there and we may have to adapt on the run. We will get a better idea once they are there. For all those athletes taper is a bit of "wait and see" until we get a better idea of how training in South Africa goes.

Besides these various bits of coaching maintenance though, there isn't a lot to get done this weekend for me. The quieter weekend combined with the great weather means I have been doing a bit of training today, heading out on the river for two separate paddles. The one this morning was a real solid 2 hour long steady session that really set the muscles burning. The session this afternoon was more of a technical one, but also one that surprisingly got the heart pumping. Drills and technical work can still be pretty demanding when done with intensity. It was a great chance to practise some of the technical skills that I wrote about earlier in the week regarding how much we neglect them.

Amazingly, as good as the weather was today, it looks like it is going to be even better tomorrow. The golden weather means we are going to try and have a similar day tomorrow, probably a bit more pottering around the house, a bit more exercise and a whole bunch of time spent outdoors. Should be awesome.