The Cycle sportive last Sunday made last week a big training week. I had clocked up circa 7 hours of training before the Sunday ride so add the sportive into the mix and I hit almost 14 hours of training that week.
So this week was easier, but not easy. What does continue to surprise me is how quickly I can recover from events or big training weeks and even big training sessions.
A short turbo on Monday evening to ‘loosen’ up the legs and an easy swim session on Tuesday meant Wednesday’s ride to work and back with a short run off the bike was fine – the legs were fully recovered.
Meaning Thursday’s 50 minute run session with intervals was a ‘walk in the park’, not literally of course.
A rest day Friday set me up for a tough weekend with another run focus. Saturday was the 8 mile run being the Box Hill loop part 2 followed by the same loop on the bike. This was at my request (saddist). I did the run loop a few weeks back in a time of 1 hour 20 mins, a very slow time and a (too) comfortable run. I knew I could go faster easily 5 mins or so faster maybe even 10 mins, so I wanted to try it again.
So I did. A run time of 1hr 11 mins taking 9 minutes off of my previous time. Looking at the Garmin every split was faster than before, all at a faster and even pace, no starting off too fast and having to slow. Perfect.
I was well pleased with that. I changed my top, got the bike out of the car and jumped on it and went off on the bike loop. I was very cold, the sweat from the run making my tri suit wet, which I had on under my top. I need to think about what I am going to wear for the event itself!
This all turned out to be irrelevant as 5 minutes later, half way through the loop, the heavens opened and I got drenched. This meant going easy on the road and gave me a quicker motivation to get up that darn hill. A bike loop of 32 mins. Not too bad after the harder run beforehand.
I dumped the bike in the car, changed into dry clothes in the toilets and went home for a bath.
Sunday was a glorious day making my 75 mins park run a very pleasurable experience. No hard efforts all nice and consistent as a recovery run.
An easier week this week in preparation for Egypt boot camp!
Thanks for reading
A well executed training week. Your improved recovery after training will be most beneficial during your competitions. That is what allows us to go faster recovering as we hammer.