Another solid week, but feeling blue

This has been another solid week of training, but I am feeling quite blue.

My swim session was cut short due to running short on time and being quite hungry.  It was an after work one where I didn't manage to leave the office promptly, so I was tired and cranky even before I started the session.  So I felt a bit down about not getting the whole set in, especially as it was my only swim of the week.  Then I missed my mid-week run, which was disappointing as it was supposed to be a hilly one; not something I could do on the way home and I'd been at a work event in the afternoon so was laden with laptop and other heavy stuff.  So, instead of running, we went for cheese and wine instead.  Oops.  Again, felt a bit down about that as things had been going well and I know that alcohol really sabotages my weight management.

Thursday, I picked myself up, dusted myself off and went for a ride at lunchtime to pick up my lovely new team-issue Lezyne kit; a beautifully engineered track pump, which packs down flat for easy packing into the car and has some rather sweet design features, like a locking hose for when it's not in use.  Also in the team kit pack was a pair of bottle cages, a mini puncture repair kit, a compact pump and a neat bento box.

After work a nice little run up to the common, across the diagonal, down a long long hill and then... back up it again to get home.  There are some lovely varied routes on Wimbledon Common - it's so versatile: flat, hills, gravel, dirt, mud, sand... I absolutely love it and it's so much quieter than Richmond Park.  And I was back up there on Sunday for the local running club's 10K race with some friends.  With predicted baking heat, utterly sweltering by 11am, I set off from home on Sunday morning fully intending to get the bus up to the common, but checking the indicator board, it showed over 15 minutes for the bus I needed.  I could jog there in less time; so I did.  Up the hill, not the best of warm-ups and by the time I got to the common the heat was getting noticeable.  To cut a long story short, I ran the first lap reasonably hard, then eased up and had a social second lap.  It was hot and I'd had a second week in a row of quite a bit of training compared with the prior couple of months, so I was pretty fatigued and in no way in good shape to force out something in the low 50min range.  Had a nice chat with @abradypus afterwards and then toddled off for coffee and cake while I waited for an update from MrTOTKat who was out doing the ride I'd done the day before - his longest ride since Ironman Wales last year!

Little bimble in the heat

So, a bit up (a good solid week put in) and a bit down (missed out on a quality run and part of my only swim session, and was a bit liberal with the boozes).  Looking forward to a week of having great fun trying to fit things around my trip to the rural office!  I'm sure I'll make it work somehow.

Consistent training... early results

Consistent training.  That's the key.  And the last 3 weeks have been really quite good (I was ill 4 weeks ago, so missed a few sessions).  If you look at the sessions success, you'll see a few red ones in there, but trust me it's a lot more consistent than it used to be and I don't really have a proper training plan so I'm just trying to get more base stuff in there than I had before.

And the results are really starting to show in my performance charts (the blue line is overall fitness, pink is fatigue levels, yellow is "freshness").  You can see clearly an improvement in fitness, though the significance of the scale eludes me at the moment, upwards seems good to me.

What really caught my interest was the small dip in fitness where I didn't do much while I was sick - the big drop in the pink line - really was quite small in the grand scheme of things.  My fatigue level dropped significantly, which helped me recover from being ill and conversely the freshness level goes up and I'm back on my feet again not much lost over that 2.5 week period of two illnesses back to back (one chest infection and a gastric thing).  Onwards and upwards now and I'm looking forward to see how things shape over the coming weeks and months.