Week 10

Totals for week 10:

Swim: 4.5k

Bike: 127.42k

Run: 34.6k

Commute: 56k

This puts the running totals at the end of week 10 as:

Bike: 949.43 km

Swim: 42 km

Run: 189.7 km

Commuting 312 km

Another solid week of training (ignoring the fact I forgot to ready my training plan, and do an extended turbo on thursday! Only 15 minutes though!

Swimming is going really well, feeling a bit tired in the pool, due to the dieting I think and the fact I have long gaps between 2 sessions (thurs to tues), though this is about to change (see below). I have been told to move up a lane, when swimming with the tri club, so I'm pleased with that, should work me hard now and add a bit of variation and competition in.

Well a bad week was always going to happen at some point, and this week it happened on the bike. Although my brick session was good, going an extra 2 kmph quicker than usual for the 45 mins, saturday was not. In hindsight, I should have prepared better, dieting and riding long don't go well together, but I bonked (ran out of energy/hit the wall/etc) big time! It was ridiculously windy, and as a result the first 45 minutes I was flying along to the pennines, averaging 35-40kph, and then hit the climbs. I did about an hours solid climbing, which when dieting isn't clever, but doing 14% gradients into strong winds is always going to hurt. The climbs got harder and harder, and then finally it was time to head back, except it was all into the wind and I didn't have any energy left. I was working as hard as I could, only managing 25kph, just completely drained. I arrived home dead, completely drained and the thought of having to run a marathon after double what I did, made what I've undertaken hit me! I have a lot of work to do! But I'm glad it happened, I know my limits a bit better, know how to spot the signs and it was probably a good workout.

So I was a little nervous about my long run today (sunday), but having eaten my way through 2500 calories having returned from my ride, I had recovered pretty well. Managed a good solid hour, and my knees are a lot less upset compared to last week. The whole week of running has been great! My hours and mileage are steadily increasing, and am only about 5 weeks behind in terms of where I would have been without the injury in hours/mileage. Annoyingly my specialist appointment has been cancelled, so I've got longer to wait to find out what's wrong with them, but for now I can continue to slowly strengthen them and (touch wood!) increase my mileage.

And that's it for my base period! 10 weeks have flown by! I am a lot fitter, a lot thinner, and feeling pretty confident of reaching my sub-12 hour target! Training increases, I have an extra swim session a week, all of which increase to 3k per session, an extra bike a week, and a extra run, which is after my long ride on saturdays to get used to running with knackered legs! Onwards and upwards!