Sunday, 31 August 2014

BOOM! Green week!

It's been a while... and I've aaaalmost managed a green week this week.  (All planned sessions completed and as planned).


I missed it by a whisker by deciding to only do 10K at Clapham Common today rather than carrying on for the 3rd lap and 15K.  I had a target of 1 hour 20 minutes to beat to PB the 15km route, which meant a pace of 08:30/mile to hit that target.

I was really happy up to the 6th kilometer mark as the time I had on my watch meant that I was bang on target for that pace.  Then I convinced myself that I was dropping off pace dramatically at the half-way mark and gave up.  Phoned it in for the 2nd lap and retired after 10km instead of pushing on to 15. From the data I now have afterwards, I see a slightly different story and I just couldn't do sums under pressure (no change there - running makes my arithmetic get Special).  My pace wasn't as quick as I thought it was.  Averaged 08:48/mile for 6.2 miles on a very twisty course with a good few dead turns.


A bit annoyed with myself as I really didn't have any drive for this race.  I didn't manage to make it meaningful and I went into it convinced I didn't have the pace at the moment to hit a PB that I set last year.  So, clearly, I never was going to with that attitude.  Hey ho.  No biggie.  It's not my goal at the moment to be quicker at shortish things.

Consistent training though, so I'm very happy with that.  And next week looks like it's going to be fun.  Starting with an actual rest day on Monday after 11 days of consecutive training (not all running), and culminating in back to back 13.5 mile runs at the weekend (that look like they'll actually be more like 15 and 14.5 mile runs due to routing & railway station locations - probably Maidenhead to Staines and Staines to Kingston along the Thames Path).  That'll bring me to 43 miles of the 184 mile route recced; with full pack as planned so far.

We're 5 weeks out from Round Ripon (35 miles) and 7 out from my Thames Path tour.  More weeks like this week and I'll be well set up for both.

Monday, 11 August 2014

Checking In/How does this all work again?

Training is happening.  2x strength and conditioning sessions every week, 7am Tuesday and 7am Friday mornings.  Like clockwork.


Running is happening for most sessions - though there was a week where things didn't line up so well for it.  I did, however, manage the scary session that was hanging over me since I saw it in the plan a while back...  Yasso 800s, the speed session of dooooom!

Green graph is pace, the thick squareish route is god knows how many laps of the rec.

The lack of racing going on is making me feel a bit weird, but life just seems too busy to manage even the day-to-day stuff without worrying about race logistics too.  I have no idea how I managed to train for 70.3 Zell Am See and do things like washing, cooking, occasionally going out, seeing Mr TOTKat for more than 5 mins a day whilst awake; but I had a different job then, and so did Mr TOTKat.  My current job is quite relaxed about hours, but there's no gym close by so swim/turbo isn't possible at lunch time; still I manage to have no time in the evening when I get home around 19:30 or later.  When I want to be getting up at 05:45 every day, to make the 2 days I have to do it for S&C much more routine, I need to be in bed by 21:00.  This is *hard* to schedule and make work and not end up resenting one thing or another.

I wanted to cycle commute at least a little bit, but it's not in my training plan and I'm prioritising sleep a lot of mornings too.  So, I'm also a bit sad that I'm not doing any cycling at the moment.  This tiredness thing is quite demoralising having been feeling great this time last year with 6am starts every weekday and quite a bit of training load in the week.

I'm going for a bit of a check up to see whether the reason I'm tired a lot is simply lack of sleep or something else related to needing to supplement vitamins given the amount of exercise I'm getting.  My gut feel is that it's just sleep as I'm actually not doing a lot of exercise in the grand scheme of things - averaging 6 hours a week including 2x 50mins S&C.  But we'll see what comes out of the blood work, I'd love it if it was something as simple to fix as needing more vitamin D or B12 or something!


Monday, 4 August 2014

Cancelling my last triathlon

I'm sort of happy that we weren't racing the London Triathlon on Sunday.  Yes, we'd get to see lots of friends.  Yes, we'd get to cycle on closed roads around some of the loveliest bits of London in the early morning mist.  Yes, we'd feel righteously knackered afterwards.

But.

We'd've spent a chunk of Saturday driving around London.  We'd've spent a longer chunk of Sunday driving around London.  I would have put in an awful swim time and an awful bike time and probably been scared witless going through the Limehouse tunnel on a TT bike I've never ridden before (and not ridden a TT bike since September).  Life just really got in the way of this one working and I'm glad I didn't drag myself around a course only to beat myself up about a crap time which I would have roundly deserved for lack of training.  This is why I stopped "doing triathlon" for now.

I feel a little sad that it was the last triathlon I'd entered.  I'm not a runner.  I'm simply rubbish at that, but it's what I have now and I do enjoy it.  But I'm not a runner.

I do want to run though.  I feel like a dog hauling at its lead sometimes... let me off it, I wanna run!

(This is not my last triathlon... there will be others.  Just not right now.)