Hard Week

I’ve been tired this week, staying up for New Years, plus getting up a couple of times in the wee smalls to settle kids (bless them).

This week has been all about intensity for me. The volume has increased as well but the biggest change is in the intensity of the workouts. In a nutshell, the swimming has involved sticking on the feet of people who are much better than me to increase the intensity of those workouts, and running and riding loads of hills, doing repeats, hill sprints and trying to catch any roadie that I catch sight of (and there’s plenty of them about at the moment).

The end result is … my legs hurt! Its been a great training week, tomorrows a rest day, which I’m really looking forward to, followed by a marginally easier week (similar volume but lower intensity) but building to 180k long ride on Sunday, which will easily be my longest so far in my buildup. I’ve been conditioning my butt this week by having several bike workouts in the schedule (two long ones) so hopefully it’ll go well.

Saturday’s ride was unusually hard, it was frustrated by a sneaky and steady wind which conspired to be continuously in front of me. So while I was slogging it out riding over massive chip, slightly uphill, into the conniving wind and unhappily watching my speed creep down to a lousily 20kph, it appeared as if the whole cycling world was merrily whizzing by in the other direction (yes down hill, with a tailwind, and I’m sure that road was smoother in the otherside!). It broke my heart. In the end my 110k ride got cut down to 90k’s and I got home absolutely drained (weak isn’t it, but to be fair my time allowance was running out and I had to totally flog myself to get back in time as it was – as much as I like training, and I do like it, I have a family to attend to as well, and I like them even more!).

Today’s workout was a swim, bike, run brick with a big emphasis on getting the transitions running smoothly. It started with a 1500 m (ish) ocean swim at Long Bay. A mill pond it was not! There was a petty good, mostly wind blown swell coming in which was really mushy. I was the only idiot out in a wetsuit trying to do anything other than body surf today and it was hard work. On the bright side coming back into the beach was good fun as I caught a couple of good waves to speed things up.

T1 went much much better than it did in Rotorua, so some lessons were happily learnt. I was in and out of my makeshift T1 in just over 2 minutes and didn’t forget anything yay!

The bike was a 20 k effort over a very hilly course and (once again) into a stiff headwind, with the layout of the course such that I didn’t really get a tail wind.

After that it was into T2 (1 minute 30 sec) and out for a 14 k run (again into a head wind and up a long stead hill). It was hot and hard – but oddly good, with a negative split (on account of the hill unfortunately).

So a good week down, and a slightly easier one planned for next week. I’ve got a bunch of key workouts to get in before now and mid February (where things will be eased somewhat), including a half ironman simulation, another 180k ride and a 3.8k swim – fortunately there are some public holidays coming up so I should be able to log them all in time.

It’s getting close!