Training summary w/c 21st January

21 – 27th January 2019.

Wow I can’t believe how fast these days are passing. Probably it helps that I’m way to excited about the Tokyo trip.

Week 6 of Ironman Bolton training

Week 13 of Tokyo/ Boston/ London marathon training.

Monday:

As always it was a rest day. I’m starting to like these days.

Tuesday:

Started my week with my long swim. Because I can’t make the early morning tri club swim I really need to make sure that I get my long distance swim in. I didn’t really have a plan , but at the end I’ve ended up doing 22x100m with 10secs rest. Slowly building up my distance. I think I finally feel really comfortable in the water. Since October my swim improved a lot, and I love the sessions. Of course there’s still a lot to improve and I don’t think I ever going to be as good as the others, but I do try my best.

Tuesday evening means, tri club run session. I did look forward to this session, because even though I’m not showing it, and I’m nowhere near the others when we run but these sessions making me faster. Without these sessions I don’t think my long distance speed would have improved. I remember last year when I was training to Chicago I just wanted to get the distances in , it didn’t really matter how long did it take. I never in my life done any kind of speed training before, so I do believe these help a lot.

So back to this session. Well it wasn’t my day at all. It was cold, but I shouldn’t really blame the cold. Back at home we have -15 or even -20 Celsius in the winter, so tonight’s -2 was really nothing. But it’s always easier to blame to something, and not to yourself.

The plan was to do laps, on the grass part of the track. Supposed to be in the same pace as the previous session. I not once hit that pace, 6:06mins/km.  I was so annoyed with myself, I know I can run, I know I can do that pace if I really want to do it. But no matter how much I’ve tried I didn’t get anywhere close to it. I’ve finished the session with 6:35. Which is still much faster than my normal pace, 7:30, but I was still annoyed that I couldn’t even to a lap.

After a bit of thinking, I realised that my legs still haven’t recovered from Sunday’s 22 miler. I really can’t expect them to function like nothing happened 2 days ago. It did settle my mind a bit.

Wednesday:

Brick session, one of my favourite session of the week . Can’t really explain it why, but I starting to love running straight after cycling. My legs always feel like jelly, but after that initial wobble I start to run and it’s a great feeling. Still only short sessions, but need to build it up slowly. So it was a 45mins cycle session, on the turbo then off I went for my 30mins run 🙂

I’m still really new to Zwift, so exploring all this new routes are exciting. It turns out they have a whole session in New York. I loved my time in New York, but how the hell I forgot how hilly Central Park is? I thought I’ll have a nice and easy spin session, but those bastard hills…. Never mind, got over them and my legs definitely worked hard. After the cycle I thought I’ll keep continue the New York feeling, so put on my marathon top and off I went for my 30mins run. Back to my nice and easy 7:30mins/km pace. I can’t even explain how much I love this. It’s easy, and comfortable. Hmmm… maybe that’s why I didn’t really improve a lot for Chicago ? I just kept doing my comfortable runs, not once I went faster or went out of my comfort zone. Hmmm…

Thursday:

It was supposed to be a swim session. Well it did start as a swim session, but ended after 7mins. I rarely get pissed off, or annoyed at others. I have my poker face on at work, and answer every question with my nice customer service voice and face.

But this time I really got pissed off. We have a temporary pool at Andover, 4x 25m length lanes. No issues with that. There are 2 different swim sessions , ‘ lane swimming’ and ‘ just swim’ . So as common sense dictates, lane swimming is to do laps up and down, and the ‘ just swim’ is where there are no lanes and just a fun session.

I’m really not a fast swimmer, but after a few laps I had to leave. Other’s really didn’t respect the pool rules. Stopping half way through and starting to swim back where they started, floating on the water, and even jumping in and out. Lifeguard was total useless as well. A lady and I went to ask him to sort this out, otherwise what’s the point of LANE swimming, but he just ignored us. So we left.

Friday:

1hr cycling session, in Z7 and trying to achieve a 100+ cadence. I managed to tick off 2 out of that 3.

1 hour in Z2 , totally doable. But my average cadence was 72. Bruhhhh. Few times managed to get over the 100 mark, but it takes so much concentration , it’s incredible. I really need to figure out this cycling. Maybe its harder to achieve this on a turbo? I mean even when I’m in the lowest easiest gear I can pedal, there’s no issues with that. But it feels like I’ll fly off from the bike. I think I’ll need to go to the gym and see if I can manage 100+ on their stationer bike, or even better if they have a watt bike. Or should I just got to a spin class? Ahhhrrrrrrr..

Saturday:

I was so keen to wake up at 5am and do my long run. But after going to bed like 8.30pm on Friday when my alarm went off at 5am I just turned it off and turned on my other side at went back to sleep. At the end I managed to sleep just over 11hrs. By the time it’s the weekend I’m so so tired that I can’t even explain. Having 4.5-5hr sleeps during the week and waking up at 4am to go to work is so hard.

So I chose comfort instead of my long run.

But instead of that I did my long cycle session.

Longest time on the bike / turbo ever.  I cycled for 2 whole hours. OMG. It was tiring and I really had to push myself to just keep going. Drank 2 full bottles of drink, had loads of seeds and nuts, and also kept eating my  glucose tablets. Weirdest thing you can crave on a bike 😀 But the mixture of sweet and salted kept me going.

Another ride, another day on Zwift. The plan said stay in Z2. So I knew I can’t really pick a really hilly route otherwise my heart rate will be way over Z2. So stayed with Watopia, but by the time the 2hrs were over I’ve gained 255m (840 feet) of elevation. I knew I need to do hills, even virtually because Bolton will be hilly.

 Sunday:

Well my long run was missed again. I did wake up, but then just sat on the sofa. So missed out on 14 miles. Never mind. Sometimes we need to have an easier week. Roll on next week.

But did go swimming in the evening. Tri club swim session was on. Not too sure why but we didn’t have the normal coach, I did miss last week’s session, so probably he said it then that he wont be this week. So we had to follow our run coach instructions. He’s a speedy swimmer as well, so he knew what he was talking about.

After a few laps (10) of warm up, we’ve done more sighting practice. It is really important in open water. You really don’t want to get lost or swim more than you supposed to.

Then we were broken up into different groups , roughly the same pace. The instruction was to swim behind each other, as close as we can, practice sighting and try to keep up the other persons pace. Well I ended up with this guy, I feel so embarrassed but I still have no idea what’s his name is. It turns out his pace usually is 1.50mins/100m, then I said to him that my pace is usually 2.20 if I really push myself. I did feel sorry for him, because he had to go much slower than his pace.

At first he was swimming in the front and I tried to keep up with him. He did say he’ll go slower than he usually do. Thanks 🙂 Then we kept swapping who’s the leader. So the 1st 100metre turned out to be 1:57, then the 2nd was 2.00, 3rd 1.59, 4th 2.01 and the last one was 2.05. Okey, I’m totally socked, surprised , wow. I really had no clue that I can swim this fast. I know I won’t be able to keep up this pace for a long time, but it did feel good to see that I do can swim faster. But it does show’s that you can do whatever you set your mind to, and just need to push yourself, even when you think you can’t.

Then we had a really fun exercise. Swim a lap with your eyes closed, because when you are swimming in open water you can’t see much. And he’s totally right. When I had my first open water session on the 1st of January ( will write a post about that after I had my second one in February) I was totally shocked that I couldn’t see nothing in the Thames. At home I swam in Lake Balaton and in the sea by Croatia as well. But those were nice and clean. When I first put my head into the water in the Temze I had no clue where am I going, and even though I was swimming it felt like I’m not moving. So I do agree with him that it’s really important to practice this.

Summary :

Much shorter week than the previous, but I missed out on a 14miler run and also lost an hour swim. But all in I’m happy with it. I still managed to workout just over 7hrs, and that’s great.  Roll on next week, I can’t wait to see what am I capable.

Love,