Racing High, Training Low

After the highs of my race in Pwllheli last weekend, the rest of a week has been a bit of a low training wise.

I had an easy little spin on the turbo trainer on Monday and then went for an easy run but didn’t feel too good on it. I put it down to the fact that my legs must have been more tired and tight than I thought they were after Sunday’s race. But, I woke on Tuesday with a nasty bug. I didn’t have a cold, but I felt sick, had a stinking headache and developed all over body aches throughout the day. No training for me, just plenty of painkillers and back to bed.

Thankfully it didn’t last long and I felt quite a bit better on Wednesday, but decided it was best to not do any training. I felt fine on Thursday so went for a run. I’d planned to do quite a long run, probably around 12 miles with five 1 mile efforts during it. However, I only managed 7.5 miles and three fairly lack lustre mile efforts before I had to give up and walk home. That was a little disappointing so I tried to make myself feel better by going swimming in the evening.

Rather than swim on my own I went to a club session and put in an OK effort. It wasn’t great but I was beginning to feel a little more on top of things. Friday saw me do a fairly decent 30 miles on the turbo trainer, maybe I was getting back up to strength?

Saturday was much better, a hard 9 mile run with ten 2 minute hill reps. I pushed hard on the hills and started feeling better towards the end of them and was able to push even harder for the last 4. At last, I was feeling good! The run back to the car was a little tough going, but after a hill reps session I guess it should be. Here’s my heart rate and elevation chart from the run – I do like these neat, repetitive charts from interval sessions!

Hill Reps Heart Rate Chart

As you can see, I pushed my heart rate to the max on the last few hill climbs, so at last I think I’ve recovered. I don’t think it was the race that took too much out of me, but it may have contributed a little, but the lurgy certainly had an effect. At least it was a supposed to be a relative easy week in my periodised training plan, although the Easter weekend will mess with my schedule a little as well so I won’t be back to it properly until the middle of next week. I don’t think I’ve missed too much training though.

The run on Saturday also took me up to the 100 mile mark within the GU 100,00 mile challenge on Strava. It’s just a bit of fun to get members of Strava to run a combined 100,00 miles between March 9th and April 9th. As an added incentive anyone who makes it to the 100 mile mark on their own gets a free pack of peanut butter flavoured GU energy gels – hopefully they send them to the UK as I should now be in line to get some freebies. Nice!

Tags: LurgyrunningTrainingTriathlon