Key Sessions

I managed to get my key sessions done this weekend but the extra bits that I had planned were scrapped. On Friday I arrived home from work after taking my now customary long route home via Boxhill, only to arrive and I just felt completely wiped out again. I then spent the next 24 hours with a scratchy throat which I know is usually the first sign that I'm trying to fight something off. I woke the next day feeling lethargic and very tired despite a solid 9 hours sleep, still with itchy eyes and throat, so instead of the 50 miler I had planned I took to the sofa, played with little wheezy and had some down time. By the evening, following an industrial amount of Vitamin C I was feeling a bit better so did  a gentle hour on the turbo just to spin my legs out and then in bed by 9.30.

The next morning was to be the first of my key sessions for the weekend; my first open water swim since the Little Woody, last year. Many triathletes prefer open water training and racing to a pool; I don't. I am not sure what it is, whether it's the cold, the sighting, the wetsuit or the smell of ducks##t, but give me a chlorine pool, a blue line to follow and a load of old ladies in frilly hats clogging the lanes anytime. I went to Heron lake with Simon and the plane was to do a longer swim of around 3 kms. I have to say I actually enjoyed it for a change. The first 20 minutes were not good; it all just felt so alien again and as usual my stroke disintegrated as I thought about all the negatives, but gradually it started to come back. I think the thing that really clicked was achieving a good body rotation which I began to really think about. In the past I have got really tired or weary towards the end of the HIM swims I have done and thinking about it now it's like I was fighting the wetsuit because I was not rolling enough to allow my arm to recover and get a high elbow. As soon as I did this everything just felt....better. On the first two laps Simon and I had been swapping at the front and I got some really good drafting practice on his feet. The third lap was my best. I got my sighting right and my RPE felt pretty low. It was a very encouraging session.

The day after was to be our next key session, a long bike on the Forestman bike course with a run off. Thankfully I woke up feeling pretty good, despite spending 10 hours on my feet after the swim, at London Zoo with my 2 favourite girls. (Useless fact of the day; the collective noun for a group of Otters is a romp).
We found a place to park up near Sandy Balls, where T2 will be on race day, and headed off with a map and directions. The first lap was done at a pretty slow average speed because we had to keep checking our position and we took a couple of wrong turns, so it was really nice to stick the instructions away for lap 2 and just get our heads down. It was a very pretty course with a good mix of technical stuff, long open roads across the plains and on the A35 and pretty wooded roads but it drizzled on us all day and by the end we were quite cold and wet through. The course itself is not hilly at all, with only 2 short, sharp climbs to negotiate and the vast majority of it was spent on the tri-bars. Simon has found long bike rides hard in the past but he was looking much stronger yesterday. Usually, on the rolling hills I have the slight edge while he can climb much better than me when the gradient gets sharper but he's developed a lot more ME so he was pulling at the front really effectively. We were out for 6 hours of which 5hrs 40 was actually moving, the other 20 minutes were spent asking other people (who were also lost) where we thought we were. We ere both very cold and wet when we arrived back so scrapped the run recce in favour of getting back home. With 95 miles on the clock we had done enough.

The really good thing is that I feel relatively fresh today. I had a tinker with my bike position this week and raised my saddle by 3 mm's and it feels like it's made quite a difference. My hamstrings have been very tight and this has been compounded by spending a lot of time in a TT position but by opening my hip angle it's taken quite a lot of pressure off them. I am so pleased that I bought my Euros last year; a long 6 hour ride does not feel long at all.