Much Improved

This week has been so much better. My strained thigh has been feeling progressively better each day as the week went on, and my training efforts have been much much better this week.

The training program has had a bit of a re-jig as a result of the thigh problem and so the first half of the week was spent swimming. This was actually a good thing as my swim sessions had dropped down to two a week and so I took the opportunity to back up some good distance and focus a bit on technique (that sounds a lot loftier than what my swimming actually is – generally when I use the term “technique” to refer to my swimming the word “bad” more often than not comes first).

On a bit of a side note I saw Kieran Doe out training during the week, he was smashing up a hill with a training hack and going awfully fast considering how steep the hill was. He must live somewhere close as I tend to see him out and about every now and again, usually going in the opposite direction to me which is probably a good thing as having people fly past me doesn’t do my ego any good at all.

By Wednesday the thigh, while still a little tender was definitely on the mend so it got a little, gentle, workout on the indoor bike and came through really well. As a result Thursday and Friday saw the biking come back into the program with a couple of heavy hill workouts over the two days. I’ve stayed away from running so far this week as that’s what triggered the problem initially. Basically your thigh works in an opposite way when you compare biking to running (when running acts as a break – stops you from falling over – in cycling it works the other way around. That’s why cyclists have big thighs and runners don’t, even though they do the same amount of work – its also why pure cyclists are usually poor runners and vice versa).

Today I had a good two and a half hour ride, I kept it low key as tomorrow I’ll be doing a half ironman simulation. I felt pretty strong for the first hour of the ride and smoked it up all the hills, including Albany hill – which is a bit of a grind – where I caught and dropped two other guys preparing for ironman as well as a roadie a bit further up.

On the way back I felt a bit low on power, but the speed seemed to still be there so it can’t have been to bad.

This afternoon I have my support crew coming over to plan for race week, the crew chief is hyper-organised so there won’t be a repeat of the Rotorua Half fiasco.

Only three more big work outs to go, one of which is happening tomorrow, and then I’ll start t ease things off before the big day. I can hardly wait, I think at the moment I could probably do an Ironman, however I think that I’ll be able to do one much more comfortably in five weeks time!