The week started off well. I was successful at achieving a minimum of 30 minutes exercise each day with some days a little bit more. All up for the week I achieved a total of 3840m swimming, 3hrs 9min on my bike and 2hrs 56min running for a total of 7hrs 17min training.
Monday
I got out for a run up the Wither Hills trying to maintain a power of between 263 and 289 Watts. Running with power is always harder than trying to maintain a certain pace on the flat or a certain Heart Rate. When you go into the hills it becomes harder to maintain a consistent power and I only managed to maintain 23% of the time within my Endurance Power Zone. I ran up Quail Valley to Quail Junction then climbed out the hill dropping down on the Witches Hat Rotary Lookout and then back down to the car park. Overall I climbed a total of 154 elevation gain.
This is a favourite go to run for me as it is nice and easy to get to and takes about 30 minutes to complete.
My nutrition for the day was pretty good. Having expended 2,100kJ on the run meant that I had an allowance of over 11,000kJ of food to consume throughout the day. Checking my totals in My Fitness Pal I had just shy of 2,000kJ remaining to consume to balance out so I allowed myself to enjoy a Spicy Ginger Beer putting me in credit for 1,164kJ.
Tuesday
At lunch time I went for a swim. As the focus of this whole programme is about consistency and making positive changes, I’ve decided that I’ll do two swims per week and work through a training programme I have that is based on doing two 2,000m: 4 Weeks To A Faster 1,500m.
Today’s session included a 1,500 Time Trial, which I completed in 25:05. As the pool I swim in is 33 ⅓ yards long, I swam 1,500 yards, instead of metres.
My nutrition was once again pretty good (as it should be at the start of a goal), but it was freezing cold so got myself a hot chocolate. Having expended 2,200kJ with the swim I once again had over 11,000kJ that I could consume without overdoing things. During the day I had consumed less than 8,000kJ so I safely had another ginger beer again in the evening.
Wednesday
I jumped on the windtrainer at work today with the intent of doing a Functional Threshold Power (FTP) Test. I’ve been developing a programme of cycling workouts to enhance cycling fitness (particularly power) and just like yesterday in the pool I wanted to get a benchmark of where I’m at. Anyway I jumped on the windtrainer and started my warm up, but something came up before I completed the warm up so I flagged the session with the intent of completing it later.
When I got around to doing it again, I got stuck into the session. Rode hard, and with the recent lack of training it was no surprise that my performance wasn’t that great. I came away with a FTP of 221 Watts (lets see how that changes over the next few weeks).
My nutrition was pretty good today with the exception of being tempted by a chocolate self-saucing pudding, after all I had an extra 4,000kJ of food I could consume. Overall I was under my allowance by nearly 1,300kJ.
Thursday
Today’s swim session involved 2,000 yards of mainly swim drills to enhance technique as I work through the 4 Weeks To A Faster 1,500m programme.
I had a hair cut after work and the barber offered me a beer whilst he cut my hair. My partner was having dinner with some of her close friends but had 40 minutes to kill before they turned up so I joined her after work for a second beer before leaving them to it. I was tactical about my decision to have the second beer and made sure this didn’t push me over my daily energy allowance. The swim only extended my daily energy limit by 833kJ but I stayed under my allowance by 500kJ.
Friday
Today I did Jim Vance’s 3min/9min Running With Power rFTPw test as another benchmark, this time of my running ability. I will be doing a few more over the coming weeks each Friday as I test different run benchmarks. This estimates my running FTP to be 339 Watts.
I was a little late starting this workout due to the assistance of my six year old daughter.
Unfortunately my nutrition went out the window a little this evening. With an extra 3,400kJ thanks to my run effort, I allowed myself to have a bag of chips and a couple of beers. I then shared a bottle of wine with my partner. Unfortunately, this pushed me 2,200kJ over my daily energy expenditure.
Saturday
Weighing in this morning I weighed in at 87.9kg which is nearly 2kg lighter than last Saturday, with 18.4% Body Fat.
With kids sport on and snack food at the sports ground, my nutrition didn’t go so great. To take this into account I made sure I got out the door for a good solid mountain bike ride starting off up Easby Park in Richmond prior to traversing over to Silvan Forest Park, where I rode a few of my favourite tracks and some new ones as well.
Nutrition wise this wasn’t very good. Despite trying to navigate the challenges of the kids sport and eating at the venues, I initially avoided the standard takeaway food available and went for the sushi option. Unfortunately this sushi was the worlds blandest, crappiest sushi and I appeased myself with a burger. That evening my partner and I had a relaxing night watching TV and had some chocolate (Whittakers Caramelised Pecans and Canadian Maple Syrup is so delicious), cider and wine. This didn’t blow out the day as much as expected thanks to the extra 5,400kJ the mountain ride afforded me. This meant I only went over my limit by 700kJ.
Sunday
Rach and I started the day by going for a run. Not quite together, but out on the Great Taste Trail at the same time. That way we get to start and finish our runs together whilst optimising our workouts independently.
After our run we went and did some errands in town and decided try out a new burger bar. Unfortunately, this became my down fall. I had a beer then a ginger beer (so I could drive home). I also saw they had donuts on their menu, so tried one of them before my burger. I’m not going to bother naming the burger joint as it wasn’t all that good. We both wished we had gone to the pub next door and got our burger from there. Despite the credit of 4,300kJ my run afforded me. That night we got some pizza’s for the kids and my three slices were 2,200kJ, combined with a glass of cider and some chocolate in front of the TV blew my daily energy allowance out by 2,500kJ!
Week Summary
My weekly allowance is 63,553kJ and I completed 22,130kJ of exercise giving me a weekly allowance of 85,683kJ. I consumed 85,219kJ of food (and alcohol) meaning for the week I was under my total by 464kJ.
My training went well. The blue line tracks my fitness as it tracked upwards this week. Of note is the pink line which effectively measures my fatigue. Having gone from doing minimal training to doing something everyday it is no surprise that it has climbed up. The yellow line looks at my form, the more fatigued you are the less on form you are. So once again it is no surprise that is on the decline.
PREVIOUS WEEKS TRAINING
Here is a link to last weeks Coach Ray’s Suffering:
Previous weeks of Coach Ray’s Suffering can be found here.
https://www.coachray.nz/category/adventures/coach-rays-sufferings/