Back On Track

After an enforced break from training – 5 days of complete rest – due to my unexpected night in hospital and subsequent cold and flu symptoms, I am glad to say I am back on track with my training.

I started out with some light cycling on my wind trainer and jogging on the treadmill for the first couple of days. I tried a light session in the pool the next day and felt surprisingly good so the following day (Saturday) I did a 3 hour ride at a very leisurely pace and followed up on Sunday with a 20km run with a bit of intensity. Things were feeling good and back to normal.

This meant I would be pushing to complete my scheduled training as I had set in my program for the week ahead. That week began 7 days ago (Monday) with a strength swim session where I performed 4 x 400 metres and 2 x 200 metres with paddles as my main set. That same day I rode my bike to and from work as a little extra bike mileage for the week.

That was the perfect start to the week and things continued on Tuesday with my 2 hour strength bike session on my wind trainer followed by a 15 minute run on the treadmill building to race pace.

Wednesday started with my hard interval treadmill run with 8 x 1km performed at 3:00min/km pace with 2 minutes slow recovery in between. Later on, it was a more race specific session in the pool that included 20 x 100 metre efforts at race pace.

Thursday was another 2 hour bike session on the wind trainer with high cadence efforts and single leg work. Friday looked similar to Wednesday with a morning run but this time a comfortable pace for half an hour before a few sharp efforts and then a big feed. My swim, that day, was a genuine speed session with 20 x 50 metre efforts off a deep water start (no push off the wall). This showed me how ineffective my kick is currently. My legs felt like they were barely assisting and I couldn’t get them in a good rhythm when trying to kick faster. I will be working on this during that same session each week.

Eventually, Saturday came and my long ride awaited. I had been waiting to do my first ride over 4 hours for the first time since beginning this whole process in building towards the Shepparton 70.3 and the weather decided to give me a real test. 50km/h winds, coming from the west, absolutely smashed me! I had decided to head to Mount Macedon as this will be where I climb hard to build my strength significantly. This meant dealing with either a headwind or vicious cross wind all of the way there.

It’s about 60km to get to the start of the Mount Macedon climb and then about 7km of uphill with some 12 and 13% gradient sections. However, by the time I reached the climb my legs were really struggling after battling those winds but I reached the top and then took a break before heading back down. I was extremely cautious on the way down as it is very steep but the winds made it more difficult as I mixed it up in the cross winds.

Back on the flat roads, I enjoyed the tail winds but couldn’t get as much joy from it as I hoped because my legs were spent. Then, I had the cross winds to fight with some more which continued to zap my strength. My anticipated 4 and ½ hour session turned into 5 and ¼. Overall, I was really happy with how I held up under the conditions. I got myself up the climb and kept on top of my nutrition really well. It gave me a lot of confidence for tackling that same ride on another day with better conditions.

Finally, it was Sunday and long run time. I was on location in Port Arlington with family and, as we were going to Point Lonsdale that afternoon to visit some other family, it was the perfect way to run about 21km in order to meet the others there. Well, it couldn’t have gone much better. I warmed up over the first couple of kilometres and then quickly found a solid pace of, I estimate, about 4:10min/km pace on an undulating road. Conditions were excellent with about 20 degrees temperature, a slight tail breeze coming off the bay and sunshine. It was so exciting to feel that good in my strongest discipline.

I am going to be doing almost exactly that same sequence of training over the next week and a half before having 6 days of rest including, 3 days of no exercise at all and 3 days of very light training. After the rest period, I will hopefully feel quite physically refreshed and then it will be 3 more weeks of intense training before I taper into the race.

Good times!