Week Eight Dec 11th – Dec 17th

This week has been very unfocused due to “non-Tri issues”, and having made some dramatic changes in my future race plans (more on that in a separate post) I have been taking things a bit easier on the training front to let my body and my mind catch up. Also got a swollen knee again, probably from sitting for 4 hours in a cheap airline seat with knees up to my chin… these types of recurring injuries are one of the legacies of trying to wipe the effects of 30 years of drinking, smoking and general bad living in just to just a few years of living clean!

Anyway, everything was a bit light and I missed a couple of sessions and shortened others. I did manage some decent training though, all listed below.

Mon
Swim – 6 x 100 easy. 12 x 25 full gas off 30 seconds recovery, 2 x 100 easy, 10 x 50 full gas off 40 seconds rec, 4 x 100 easy c/d
Actual – due to the fact I am in a 20m pool, I swapped the 12 x 25m for 15 x 20m, and swapped the 10 x 50m for 1 x 60m and 11 x 40m. Suffered some cramp, probably from having to push off the wall every 20m, with the pain remaining all week. However, I really enjoyed the short hard one and two lap intervals.
Gym – 60 minutes strength work

Tuesday
Day Off

Wednesday
Bike – Turbo
Warm up
20 x 1 minute alternating single leg drills.
5 x 6 mins max seated sprints, recover 54 seconds
5 x 10 mins max seated sprints, recover 50 seconds
5 x 20 mins max seated sprints, recover 40 seconds
3 x 1 min max seated sprints recover 1 minute
2 x 3 min max seated sprints recover 1 minute
Cool Down
I enjoyed this a lot, although the first 6 and 10 second efforts felt light, only had enough time to get going before I had to slow down. The longer efforts felt better, and I pushed the whole way, driven by the power meter on my Kickr. I am a bit annoyed I have to travel and won’t be able to use the Kickr for a while, feel it was doing me a lot of good.

Thursday
Swim. 6 x 100 w/u, 8 x 25 hard, 4 x 50 hard, 8 x 200, Cool down
Actual. Again, I had to modify the distances due to being in a 20m pool, also the 8 x 200 were supposed to be done with pullbouy and paddles which I didn’t have, so just swam “straight”. I did see some record times on two of the distances, so like to believe I am getting faster.
Run – 45 minutes easy. When I was running every day, these “non-purpose” runs used to make up the majority of the weekly sessions, but it is amazing how much I find they bore me now.
Gym – 60 minutes strength work

Friday
Travelling

Saturday
Long Bike. Was supposed to be 3.5 hrs bike but due to travel tiredness and lack of access to equipment, ended up doing 95 minutes on a spin bike following interval videos on YouTube. I pushed hard so felt it in my legs which made the session feel worthwhile, but nothing like outdoors or proper Turbo trainer.

Sunday
Long Run. Was alternatively snowing and raining, and with my knee stiff I decided to be sensible and do enough to keep the engine ticking over. This consisted of 90 minutes spin bike followed by a cold but fun 45 min brick run

——————————————————————————————

I love writing my blog and sharing this crazy journey to the World Championships, and I love to see all the visitors coming by to check it out. But I would love it even more if you would leave a comment or a like, link to a post, follow me or drop me a line directly to let me how I am doing or what you would like to see here.

I look forward to hearing from you soon