The week I promised to get back on track was hindered by the weather this week! Not very often here in the UK we complain that’s it too hot, its normally the other way round! But this week has been unbearable for training! Over 30 degrees all week and really Humid, so how did training go!
Well long run didn’t happen on Monday, busy day, working in what felt like a sauna and then teaching two exercise classes I was completely fatigued. Not a good start considering I wanted to do 5 weeks of all green leading up to the next race!
Then the bike on Wednesday I’ve done before back in about March if I recall, its 3 x 5 mins hill repeats with a 1 minute spin recovery. This session is short but it’s a killer, especially on erg mode on the trainer as the resistance doesn’t go down instantly so it feels like I barely get a rest between sets. The first one I did well ok, the resistance felt comfortable but I could see my heart rate climbing to over 170bpm pretty quickly and from past experience I know that means trouble! And it did, the one min recovery was done in a flash and I was in a world of sweat and pain. I failed the second interval at about 3 minutes and just went onto the 10 min cool down, which in this heat felt like a workout in itself. I know I can complete this session and I will when this heat wave has subsided. Which is normally pretty soon in this country, it never lasts!
Onto the swim, I couldn’t blame the weather on this one and to be honest I was really glad to jump into the water. I see the benefit of this session as its 8 x 200m with a build 1 to 4. I swim in a pool that has only one lane and it’s a public pool, sometimes I’m swimming with people far better and sometimes a lot slower. This makes pacing the build each 200m quite difficult. With only 2 other people in my lane this week I managed this quite well. I was quite happy with how the session went! I felt strong and paced them pretty well.
The Run this week is one of my favourites, its strange that I love running intervals and running fast (for me) as I’m so slow compared to my competition. I think it’s because with each run I can feel myself getting faster. It’s a great feeling and I’m really enjoying them.
The last session of this week before this blog goes out was a slightly different one this week. I did this one for my daughters dance school, fund raising for new gym uniform and bags. We were in the local Tesco taking the bike in turns to pedal for the 6 hours. I did my 40 minute bike and then everyone thought I was insane then going for a 20 minute run around the car park! Life as a triathlete I guess!
– Mike Catton
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