This week went pretty well, until I went away for the weekend and had a few too many beers and also order dessert. I figured I was burning a lot of kiloJoules with all the exercise I was doing and it wouldn’t matter. But it all added up and it DID matter. However before I got to that point I had some good results with another 1.6kg lost over 6 days.
I’ll show you all the details at the end of the post.
Monday
On Monday I got down the pool at lunch time to do the 5th session of the 4 Weeks To A Faster 1,500m programme. This session is based around focusing on technique.
As this swim session was relatively easy I could only consume 8,400kJ today, however I ended up consuming just over 8,500kJ. No major dramas – I’ll make it up on the other days of the week.
Tuesday
I did the Quad Crusher II which is a progression from last week’s workout. This is an intense cycle workout with two 15 minute reps at Threshold Power and every two minutes within these intervals a brief “attack” is launched. Ouch it burns the legs. I struggled to stay in the Threshold Power Zone immediately after each attack today. That’ll give me something to work on next week.
Nutritionally today I did well expending an extra 2,700kJ and only consuming 9,600kJ thus giving me 750kJ to spare.
Wednesday
I was back to the pool today for the 6th workout of the 4 Weeks To A Faster 1,500m programme. This involves 15 reps of 100m. The first few reps I had managed to keep under 1:40, so I decided to try and get the first five under 1:40 (I thought trying to keep them ALL under 1:40 was going to be too challenging so I put the focus on the first five). Once I achieved that I decided to aim for the first half, so that meant getting eight in a row under 1:40. I ticked that off so I tried for the first ten. When I got that I figured I might as try and get the next five. Which I ended up nailing. My average was 1:38.
Rach was out for a run when I got home, so I figured I’d make use of the last of the daylight (I’m loving the slightly longer days) and get out for a qwik mountain ride. After getting a puncture a month ago in Golden Bay, I hadn’t managed to set up that wheel tubeless like it was. I’d even taken it to a couple of bike shops who hadn’t managed to get it set up either. I got Rach to take it into B-Rad Cycle Services to see if he could service it. He did it straight away for her (very frustrating based on the number of times I’d tried). I grabbed a set of lights, plugged them in to make sure they worked, set up my bike, got changed and got out the door.
I rode straight to Easby Park and up Escalator to the Hang Ten skid site with the intension of heading over to Lodestone and Bermed Monster. When I got to the skid site I suited up with my knee pads and set up my light, turned it on -nothing!!! I played around with a it for a wee while and BOOM, had it working again. After a qwik picture for Instagram, BOOF it died again. So I slowly made my way down the forestry road and home following a couple of runners with head lamps. Not the ride I wanted but still a good effort up the hill.
Nutritionally I had a good day burning an extra 3,500kJ and consuming only 7,600kJ which is my daily baseline (without any exercise considered), leaving me with a surplus of 3,500kJ for the day.
Thursday
This was a relatively quiet day as I got prepared and sorted for the training camp in Hanmer I was running for a group of ladies doing the Spring Challenge. I finished the day with 30 minutes of stretching.
Nutritionally I also had a good day eating 7,100kJ and burning an extra ~250kJ doing the stretching session. This put me in credit ~750kJ for the day.
Friday
As I wasn’t going to be home on Saturday morning to weigh myself I did so this morning. After the successful week I’d had I was now down to 85.2kg with 16.6% body fat. That is a total loss of 4.6kg!! Another 1.6kg since Saturday!!
I arrived in Hanmer and to set up the course and check out the trail conditions for my weekend training camp for ladies doing the Spring Challenge. As soon as I arrived in Hanmer I prepped the gear and got out on my mountain bike. A qwik lap along Dog Stream, then up Jolliffe Road, I then zipped down Red Rock, before looping through Western Link climbing up Swamp and then coming down Swoop before returning home via Western Link. The tracks were riding fast and conditions were good. I claimed four Strava PRs.
Afterwards I drove up the hill to start setting up the run route for the weekend. To set up the first control I would run straight up the hill and back to the car before driving over to the other side of town. But first the uphill, and it is straight up for 900m. Since last time I came up here there has been a fair amount of logging, but I was pleased to see that the track was open again.
Once I got back to the car I qwikly drove to the other side of town as I had another tough run to do to set up the second half of the run course. Parking back from the car park I ran up the road and onto the Dog Point Waterfall trail, climbing quickly up to the waterfall. Taking just over 30 minutes to cover the 2½ hr trail.
I then dropped back down and looped back around Spur Trail. Although all up it was only 7km it took well over an hour.
All up I had expended over 7,000kJ of energy out riding and running since arriving in Hanmer and I’d been pretty frugal with my food intake during the day. So I popped down to Montheiths to grab some dinner, having a beer or two with dinner. The desert menu was too tempting not to turn down. Unfortunately that all blew me out for the day. By the time I left Monteiths I had consumed 17,000kJ for the day, blowing out by over 2,300kJ!
Saturday
The training camp kicked off in the morning with a mountain biking skill session that then moved up onto some of the more advanced trails as the skill sets of the girls attending developed. They started off with Easy Rider around the flat, then moved over to Western Link. There was some more skill work up Timberlands before dropping down Jolliffe Rd and heading up Swoop and down Swamp and along Western Link back to town.
In the afternoon we did some navigation training by going up to the top of Conical Hill and then dropping down the other side, stopping to learn and work with the maps and compass as we went.
Once again I had another pretty good day nutritionally wise. We all went out for dinner at a nice Indian fusion restaurant. I had a great lamb shank. After dinner we discussing maps the maps a bit more. Then I popped down to Monteiths again to catch the end of the Bledisloe cup game. A couple of beers and another dessert later (that is two days in a row) I had consumed nearly 13,000kJ!!! I thought I’d be okay having exercised most of the day but alas I had only done 3,400kJ of exercise, giving me a daily allowance of 11,000kJ. This meant I’d blown out by nearly 2,000kJ!!!
Sunday
Sunday was the last day of the training camp and the girls got to do an event simulation where they needed to navigate their way around a course. Whilst they were doing that I cruised around taking short cuts popping up here and there to give assistance and coach them where needed. After setting them off I drove up the hill to where their cars were all parked for the transition area. I qwikly got changed and sorted my bike before bombing down Tank Trail and rolling straight into Swamp. Ripping down the bottom I moved along to Timberland when I realised I hadn’t started my Garmin. I was confident that my rides probably were Strava PRs based on how I was riding and the condition the trails are in. Buggar!!!
I then rode up Timberlands to the top of Jolliffe Road (getting a Strava PR) before descending back down Timberlands (getting another Strava PR). I then raced up Swamp and then continued climbing back to the cars to try and catch one team before they got on the run. Having missed them I bombed back down Tank Trail this time with the Garmin running (and getting a couple of Strava PRs). I coached and guided a couple of teams at the top of Swamp and Swoop before heading down Swamp to find the other team only a few hundred metres from the top. A bit more coaching and guiding and then I really attacked Swamp (getting another Strava PR), looping onto Western Link and Dog Stream before climbing up Jolliffe Road like I did on Friday, packing up the course as I went. From the summit, I jumped onto Red Rock and then back around Western Link and climbed up Swoop (getting another Strava PR).
I then moved to the finish line to await all the teams to return. As the last team moved through the course after the others (they had a staggered start so they were forced to rely on their new found navigation skills) they picked up the controls but kindly left one for me to go pick up. This gave me an opportunity to explore a trail I hadn’t actually been down before. It’s a qwik but steep 30 minute run up the hill covering only 3 km.
My nutrition was pretty good again, but as I started driving home my energy levels were struggling and I stopped in Murchison to get some fuel and grabbed a Coke (being good I went for the sugar free option as I really wanted caffeine) but then got tempted by the chocolate at the counter. I was really blown away by how many kiloJoules a Bounty bar and Whittaker’s Almond Gold contain. Having done nearly 5,800kJ of exercise combined with my daily allowance of 7,600kJ gave me nearly 13,400kJ that I could have consumed, once I had dinner I was nearly 14,600kJ and 1,200kJ over.
Weekly Summary
I averaged nearly 3,400kJ of exercise each day meaning I could consume 11,000kJ of food, but I consumed on average nearly 11,100kJ meaning I was on average 100kJ over each day. If I look at the early part of the week (last Saturday through to Thursday) before I weighed myself I was nearly 1,500kJ under my daily allowance, hence the weight loss. But being curious, I weighed myself Monday morning after my weekend blow out to find I had put on 700gms and gone up to 17.0% body fat!!!!
As you can see on my Performance Management Chart (PMC) my fitness (blue line) is still growing, however my fatigue (pink line) is also growing. That makes sense: the more training I do, the more fatigued I get, although you can see it bump down significantly on Thursday where I did my stretching session. As a result of this fatigue my performance or form (yellow) has also decreased.
Here is a summary of my daily and weekly training since commencing this journey.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aMDHbOCtpD4jUQHb5rCkaK2P_WXgowN2uEohFnLTKWM/edit?usp=sharing
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/