Training Diary: Week 5 – 7 Aug to 13 Sep

 Weekly Goals:

Follow the coaches plan, hit the TT’s hard and get more structured in my eating.

  

Monday.

So happy to see a light session for today because:

• the weather outside sucked and I didn’t want to ride in it and
• after a big weekend my legs were toasted and the break was welcome. 

One guilt free trainer ride coming up and slammed down.

Did a little stretch and core strength session at gym today too.  I'm noticing my core just kind of ‘collapses’ when I’m running tired, trying to build up a little more strength.  Also a good excuse to escape the office at lunch.

  

Tuesday.

What a run!  Programmed as an own venue/easy run to time.  Got to admit wasn’t inspired at the start.  Despite light training yesterday legs felt heavy all day and real sense of "Meh" around this whole activity.  Still after starting I just felt right.  Right road, right sound track – everything was just as it is supposed to be.  Had to consciously slow myself down as a found myself running hard next to two dogs down the river path and laughing at how magnificent life is.

Today was a good day.

Wednesday.

Slow to get rolling this morning – was it that I didn’t want to ride or was it the destination?  Anyway a decent but otherwise unremarkable 30km commute.  Was scheduled to do a tt ride this week but can get to velo and just cant find a section long enough on my route.  Settled for hammering 20 (broken) km.  No great insights, no witty revelations, just calories burnt and muscles exercised.  Sometimes that’s enough though.

Another uninspiring ride home – on the upside though it was nice and uneventful.  Miles and minutes in the bank – nothing else to see here, move along please.

Thursday.

Run TT day.  A little warmup toddle, some stretching and a gentle cool down but lets be frank, its all about the one lap of the tan.  I rarely mention numbers but a tt without them isn’t a tt is it? – 18:45 for a tic under 4 km, about 1:30 slower than my best.  BUT averaged better than 5 min kms for the first time all year and also ran fastest single km for the year.  Also, mentally able to hold threshold (and beyond) for nearly 20 mins.  Not the result I wanted but the trending is good and that’s ok for now.

Friday.

I SWAM!.  Not far, not fast but I swam.  Was better and worse than I feared.  The good – I can still swim ok, the bad I ran out of power really really fast.

One thing though is I can really feel the benefit of practicing swimming well.  I’ve had more valuable swimming instruction from Sean Foster and Neroli Nixon while training to be a triathlete than in 6 years of competitive swimming as a kid/teenager – wished I had this coaching then!

Saturday.

Bike issue meant I binned this mornings session.  In short, dropped chain, wrecked chain, replaced chain (and removed and then refitted chain rings).

Planned to do session alone in afternoon but scheduled ride-run-ride-run too hard to manage from home.  Settled for simple studley park reps.  Didn’t meant to do anything special, certainly wasn’t smashing it but turns out I did some of my fastest ever laps of the boulevard.  Really confused.

Sunday.

Sleep in – thank the Lord!

Not sure if I can remember feeling this good about a rest day.  Lots of sleep but just tired all day.  Is that because I really needed it or just my brain filling in a gap because I knew I had the day off.  This can really screw with you so better not to think to hard about it, just let it happen.

Weekly Summary.

Interesting week.  Usually I can summarise a week barely looking back at the notes but this time I had to reread every day.  Just cant find a sensible narrative for the week, I started with a ‘soft’ day didn’t grind out anything really extraordinary during the week but finished the week dead.  Even reviewing the week nothing really gels, tt’s were slow but ‘easy’ days were some of the fastest things I’ve done for months.  Oh, and I swam for the first time in six weeks.

Overall I think that my life outside of training, which is good but a bit on edge at the moment, is messing with my head.  Its one thing to have a nice progressive training plan but if your head and heart are all over the place shouldn’t be surprised that performance becomes unpredictable.

ps.

Last point – lots of accidents on Beach road and beyond.  Some with mates who are way better riders than me.  Note – be careful!

pps.

Also, a quick lesson on how to give news people.  When you come up to someone waiting for their partner to come in from a ride "there's been an accident" and then follow up up with "Libby's ok, she's stopped to help."  Other way round is recommended.