After the 100 mile bike at the weekend I spent the early part of the week suffering for it with my body finding it hard to cope with the training stress. In the last 4 weeks I had only had 2 days off and this had rather caught up with me as I was not recovering enough. So I took a rest day on Monday with Tuesday being a bike to work with my longer route taken home, spinning gently up Boxhill to try to flush out my legs ready for a swim set in the evening to determine my critical swim speed. After a steady warm up I did the 400m effort in 6.34 but I had paced it badly, going through 200 in 3.12. After more steady swimming I then did the follow up 200tt and was really struggling, finishing that in 3.24, well down on pace. Putting those numbers into the Swimsmooth calculator that gave a 100m pace of 1.35/100 which I knew wasn't right and after some helpful advice from Tritalk I readjusted it to 1.41, which I know was more likely. Apparently, the CSS maths doesn't work if the 200 is slower than the 200 splits of the 400tt.
The next day I tried a gentle run at lunchtime and I got through it but it was a real struggle and I could tell that I was not firing on all cylinders. Everything ached, my calves were really sore again and I just felt generally beat up. So, the perfect opportunity to go out and batter myself at the Phoenix evening 10 on the G10/42 TT course then? Doh.... I probably should have knocked it on the head but hey, it's only 10 miles. ;-) Within the first 30 seconds I knew it was going to be ugly. As you join the A24 there's a very small rise and normally I can get my head down and pull up it in a relatively large gear (for me) but straight away I found myself snicking down through the gears with my legs burning brightly. uuugh. I actually had a better second half, I presume because I had warmed up a bit but I was not surprised to see a new, slowest time in what were not too bad conditions (27.12).
Last night I got back into the pool and did a 3km swim as;
10x100 as 25 full stroke, 25 finger drag, 25 full stroke, 25 catch up.
10x100 on 2 minutes at css pace (1.39, 40,40,41,40,40,40,40,42,42,) really tough but just about held it together.
1000m straight focusing on body roll and catch.
I felt much better and refreshed and hopefully over my 48 hour dip.
A busy few days are planned. A bike commute home tonight then tomorrow I need to fit in a 50 miler, preferably with a run off. Sunday I'm aiming to get to a lake to do a long swim in the wettie and then on Monday Simon and I are heading off to recce the Forestman bike and run course, so hopefully that will be another 100 miles with a 10 mile or so run off.
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Cheers Hodge. I am very much just looking to get round, learn from the experience and then build on it. My aim is to work towards having a go at another IM next year but I will want to really do it justice and achieve a time. I know what I would like to aim for (not saying publicly though ;-) but I will need to be consistent , which, unfortunately, is my weakness. Having said that, I've learnt a lot in the last 6 weeks and feel that I CAN do it. Also means that the DW will need a bit of a rethink. I just don't think it's possible to do both well. Oh, and I STILL want to do a sub 5 half IM; that's probably the thing that I will be working on over the rest of the season.
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