There have been a few little changes in the training over the last few weeks. Taking the school cycling team out on a Thursday morning has added in a cycle, but meant dropping a squad swim session. The long rides have got underway again, after the post Ironman break for most, and Mr weather not really helping the motivation to get out at all. So the cycling mileage has pretty much doubled in the last 2 weeks (from 100 km per week to 200), swimming has dropped back a bit, and running has been there, but not quite where it should be - yet.
I have managed to knock off a couple of other things that have been waiting in the wings. The run time trial was done last week, and the bike TT this week, also managed to get a fat test done. Last week I had to choose between a long run and doing the run TT - so sort of did a long warm-up, the TT, and a reasonable warm-down, so got in a 1hr20min run in there too. The time trial itself was not that flash, mid 22minutes for 6km, but OK. Little under 3 minutes slower than the best I have done over the same course. Probably a fair indication of where I am at unfortunately. The bike TT was after doing a hill run in the morning, and two punctures before actually getting started - get to the bike and the tire is flat, fix it, and perhaps got a little enthusiastic on the inflation (hate it when that happens...), and a little more tire changing practice. Normally that would end the session, but stayed calm and got on with it, rather than following the call of the couch. Did not feel great in the warm-up, and purposely started out a little slower. Did manage to build through it (finished a little faster than I started). Bit over 30 minutes for the 25km on the trainer. Just under a minute off the fastest, but the average power was actually higher than the fastest time (still a little off my best 30min power output though). Might have under-done the tire pressure after the punctures, and perhaps the cooler temperature hindered performance a little too. Got the skin folds measured and fat estimated. Came out at just under 12% (39mm for 4 skinfolds) - not great, but about what I expected I guess. If this can come down to 9% or so by the end of the year, all will be good!
There is usually some compromise in the scheduling when training for Triathlon, just too many key sessions to space out with recovery days into a 7 day cycle. My current dilemma is the long run. At the moment I can fit the long run in on either Thursday afternoon or Saturday afternoon. The problem with Thursday is school cycling in the morning, which maybe a little harder than easy(!!), and then there are run intervals Friday morning - which will not be flash if I run long Thursday evening. Saturday is sort of OK, unless there are social events or any club type events that I may need to attend. If I contemplate doing cross country then this would take Saturday out. If I had no "real life" I would schedule the long run in for Wednesday. But I have bike class to do then!
The last two weeks I have been much more diligent on the easy sessions. The bodies response to these sessions has changed, and I can actually see recovery during the sessions. For a couple of the sessions, I have kept the effort the same (nice and easy) and the speed has increase (swimming), and in the other the HR dropped (holding the same speed/power). I have definitely felt better after these sessions than before as well. I felt I could have gone harder if I wanted to - but knew there were bigger fish to fry later in the week (harder sessions), and I was able to perform in these sessions. So while not perfect, good progress and a few things sorted, in the training in the last two weeks. With the baselines performances measured - it is onward and upward! Hopefully...
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