Haven't posted for a while which is a pretty good indication of how the last 2 weeks have been...busy! Work is now pretty full on so as expected some of my planned sessions are not getting done. I'm not too worried as the worst of it will be out of the way by 9th March.
I've still been managing to ride into work most days and getting a couple of other sessions in during the week and luckily to now my weekends have been unaffected but i certainly don't think that working 60 hours weeks and trying to train for an Ironman is a good mix, have been pretty tired!
Last week was week 10 of my program and the last week of my 'base' period. That meant that on the weekend I had my longest ride and run to date planned. The ride was ok, a little warmer that it has been (although still only about 5 degrees!) and I managed to do 6 hours ok. It was pretty tough going as for some reason the whole world thought it would be a good idea to just abuse me for the day. To be honest when I got home I was a bit fed up with it. It appears that people still find it hilarious to drive right next to you, wind the window down and hurl abuse at you for no reason, normally I just ignore it but I had about 5 or 6 different people do it to me on this ride. One guy tried to run me off the road twice just trying to prove to his mates how tough he was. His tactic was to hurl abuse at me as I went up the inside of a line of stationary traffic then once the lights changed, he cut me up and then as he came to the next set of red lights, pulled his car over to the kerb so that I couldn't get past. I just went round the other side and waited at the front of the line of traffic for the lights to change and as expected as he came back past me again the same trick of swerving right across in front of me before driving off.
The last woman to have a go at me as I was going round a roundabout (fairly sure I am allowed to do that) got a full verbal response from me. I was almost 6 hours and 165km into my ride then, tired and fed up and the last thing I needed was some fat smoking chav telling shouting abuse at me! I'm not sure I quite understand these people, don't know why they just can't leave me alone to get on with my own life and maybe worry about theirs a little more. Anyway, rant over!!
Sunday was then a 2 hour 45 min run. As expected this was pretty tough going, especially for the last hour or so but I coped ok and am really happy with the pace I am maintaining on my long runs, which are done at a pretty low intensity. I covered 32.3km so only 10km short of a full marathon and at 3 hour 40 min marathon pace with a 6 hour ride in my legs from the previous day. I think I am in good shape to run a marathon at the moment, would be confident of getting under 3.30 if I were to do a stand alone one rested.
That's not going to happen though! This week was week 1 of the next 10 week phase of training, the build phase. There are two key changes in this phase, firstly, I start to bring in a little bit of higher intensity training into my sessions, which will increase week by week. Secondly I am now going to be running straight after my long bike ride on a Saturday and doing a short ride before my long run on a Sunday, so starting to get a bit more triathlon specific.
I'm trying to be careful not to overdo it so have dropped the length of the weekend session back a bit to allow me to adjust to the bike-run sessions.
This weekend was a bit odd. Saturday was a 4 hour 30 min ride followed by a 30 min run and I felt great. It was 12 degrees and the roads were nice and dry and purely because of that my average speed on the bike was noticeably increased. I was happy to see this as my speeds over the winter have been shockingly slow compared to what I used to ride at in Melbourne. I was fairly sure that this related to the conditions but am glad to have got some confirmation. Average speed for the ride was pretty much bang on 30km/h.
It was also amazing how many more bikes there were out due to the warmer weather, I almost wanted to tell them all that I have been doing this all winter and they should toughen up!!
I had a nice moment as I hammered past a pack of riders on my way back home, a few of the guys at the front of the group must have thought that I was one of their group making an 'attack' off the front and almost killed themselves chasing me down, they looked disappointed when they caught me and realised that I was not with their group. I got home for a quick change and back out the door within 5 minutes for a 30 min easy run, this was ok, didn't feel too bad, although I can tell that as I increase the length of the run I am going to need to pay attention to my nutrition whilst on the bike as by the time I got home I was starving. Pretty please with the day though, a nice confidence builder.
Waking up this morning I was therefore confident of my 30 min easy ride and 2 hour run given that I had run for 2.45 last week. Ride was fine and run out was no problem, but I really struggled on the way home, legs just didn't have much in them and I was much slower on the way back. I think the long week at work probably hasn't helped but I have another recovery week scheduled this week so hopefully the body will recover well and come back stronger.
Race season is now not too far away, I have the spring Ballbuster in 4 weeks and then the Reading half marathon the week after. Erika is also training for that but has had a bit of an injury problem this week which is a shame. Up until now coach Rob has been doing a pretty good job and she has been steadily improving but I have a feeling that the 10k race may have stressed her legs a bit more than was ideal. Hopefully a week of rest will help.
I had better get back to the work I was trying to do now, in a desperate effort to try and get ahead with a couple of things so that I do not drown at work next week. Roll on March 10!!
I've also been making some good progress with the sponsorship. It got up to £500 which meant that I could apply for the matching contribution from work which should be sent to me this week taking the total to over £1,000. I've been in touch with the charity and they are going to send out some t-shirts etc. for the support crew which is nice, they are only a small operation so if I can get up to my £3,000 target it will make a real difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment