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| On the way back from Monday's velodrome session - 62km |
This week was an adaptation week, which is kind of like a recovery week, but very different from many people's idea of recovery. When we were writing out own program, our recovery weeks involved drastically reduced training hours (often less than 50%), very easy sessions and almost no quality.
On Sean Foster's program, adaptation weeks, as they are called are very different from this. The hours are reduced, but mainly due to the day off on Sunday, at the completion of the week. There are a few sessions that are reduced intensity (such as the negative split beach road ride midweek) and the first run session of the week is always easy. The saturday session is usually either an "OD" (over distance - not ACTUALLY over the distance of Ironman, but very long) bike, run or combo session.
I have realised that the benefit of this different type of "recovery" week is that although the day off allows a limited amount of recovery, it is not complete recovery, and it means that in each 3 week block, you are still building on the block that came before.The downside of it is of course.... the mental aspect!! This week particularly, I started the week really tired, and thought I was in for a nice easy week, would freshen up and have loads of extra time (and energy) for Uni. Low and behold, by Wednesday afternoon I had already ridden 170km, swum 5km and run 17 km (including a run off the bike on Wednesday at 4.16/km!!!) Physically, that wasn't a big deal, most of the quality was in that 30 min run, but mentally, after a morning of teaching at Uni, I was shattered by Wednesday night.
This was when I had a chat with Pete, and we discussed just focusing on getting through the rest of the sessions in the week, then enjoying the day off on Sunday. This made the rest of the week much easier to handle, and I had a really good race - pace swim session on Thursday morning.
Pete and I have been doing a weekly 50m pool session where we do long sets (eg 500s or 800s) with me practicing holding on to his feet. Thursday's set was 4 x 800m and it went really well. It also meant that for the rest of the day I was raring to go for the run session at Kew on Thursday evening.
Sod's Law!! My calf started tightening early in the session, and despite the positivity, I had to pull up at 55 minutes. Very frustrating, but not the end of the world. I had a cracking ride in the hills to St Andrews and back on Saturday, but 1 km into the run off the bike, the calf was tight, and I decided not to risk making it worse. Yes, there were tears; there is NOTHING worse to me than starting a run and having to actually stop, especially when you've been stressing for the final hour of the ride about how the run will go!
But PERSPECTIVE is a wonderful word that Sean and I like to use. So Saturday afternoon I had to tell myself a few things
1. With 4 weeks to go, missing a few runs will NOT affect my fitness
2. It isn't a tear, and actually wouldn't stop me running the marathon now, if I had to do it.
3. I just ran one of the fastest 7kms OF MY LIFE (on dead legs and after a ride - possibly a factor in the injury, but I didn't feel it during that run, so probably not)
4. I have a day off, and don't want to wreck it for myself or Pete by wallowing in self pity!!
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| Balance |
So we had a nice steak on Saturday night, with a beautiful couple of glasses of red. on Sunday the longed - for sleep in - (till 7.50 am!! I know, ridiculous, in London 10 years ago a lie in was midday!!) Had a leisurely breakfast, went to the cinema for a 10 am sunday show (also unheard of for us!!) and I jumped out of bed this morning dying to hit the velodrome.
But that's for next weeks blog. I am writing this on Monday night, and I will reveal that I saw my Physio, Cory Prout, who said my peroneal muscles (outer calf) were very tight, possibly due to running on the uneven surfaces at Kew, but not too much to panic about.
Obviously with less than 4 weeks to go, conservative is the key word, and I'll find other ways to fill in some of those run hours (like doing some of the uni work I've been desperately trying to finish before I head off to Airley Beach on Thursday!!)
Weeks to go = 4
Total hours this week = 19.25
Swim = 14.3km
Bike = 276km
Run = 31km