Coming out the other side

It’s been three weeks of mayhem. Work was completely nuts with 10 days or so of 15 hour days, while simultaneously trying to fight off the cold which had taken hold.  The double whammy made it easy to walk away from any training and I felt much better for making that decision than trying to do bits here and there which just wouldn’t amount to very much. I’m still feeling pretty tired but I’m gradually getting my energy back and this week has seen me start to get back to some base training with a bit of turbo and and some swimming.

I’ve had some great news and a few friends are coming out to race IMCH too, so we’ll have a bit of a posse which is just great. I’m really glad that everything’s back to normal and I can get out on my bike. It feels like it’s been too long.

The results are in

Nom nom nom.

No running again this week, with a beautifully formed bruise on the top of my foot where it looks like I've strained a tendon or some such. I've progressed from hobbling in pain to being able to walk normally, which I suppose is an improvement, but I'm still waitnig to hear back from a physio to see if there is anything else I can do, although I think some carefully placed plasazote under the balls of my feet will be in order to get my foot in the correct shape.

While that's been going on I have used this week to do an ftp test on Trainerroad and a critical swim speed test in the pool. Both results were really encouraging. On the turbo I was able to push out 275W ftp, which is a power pb, just. Bearing in mind that I had been ill the proceeding 2 weeks and that I had not done any focussed and consistent turbo work this was pretty good. I was expecting a 10-15watt loss, so this bodes well for the rest of the winter. In the pool I absolutely rinsed myself over the 400 and 200 metre tts. I completed the 400 in 7:09 and the 200 was in 3:31, which gives a CSS value of 1:49/100m. This might be a little low as I was holding 1:45s in my 100 repeat sets last week, and probably indicates that I need more endurance as I progress over the next few months.

Other than that it was 3 turbo sessions, finishing off with an hour yesterday afternoon. All good, except it left me in pieces for today's ride out with Simon; 3 hours of barely being able to turn the cranks whenever the road even slightly went uphill. It was pretty rugged, but the rain held off and there was the best cheese on toast in the world, so it wasn't all bad. The next couple of weeks are going to be really hard to fit sessions in, as work and home is particularly busy this month, but hey, no one said it would be easy.