A Mixed Bag

Last week was a great week for training, and what was meant to be an easy week. This week was meant to be harder, felt harder, but sort of involved less training. A tough week at work has made things hard.

Monday was a well needed rest day. It seems spending two and a half hours running with a 5kg backpack disagreed with my shoulders and upper back. I felt like a crippled old man on Monday. Still it gave me the chance to bake what have to be the best cookies ever; Golden Oaty Carrot Cookies. So good in fact I had to bake more on Friday. Monday also brought the release of Sufferfest: Extra Shot. A painful 20 minute extension to any turbo session. I diligently downloaded it on Tuesday for Wednesday's turbo session.

Tuesday was swimming, actually felt pretty good in the pool, apart from the kick sets where I was the slowest, I actually managed to hold a reasonable enough pace. Maybe I can venture back into lane 2 soon....

Wednesday, well I had one hell of a day at work, spent most of the day in the lab, a fairly hostile place to be working and wasn't in the best of moods by the time I got home having worked an extra 30 minutes. So I decided to take it out on the turbo. I lined up a triple 'fest and set about beasting myself. TrainerRoad released a power profile for A Very Dark Place, I was keen to see what it was like so made AVDP my first order of business. I was able to follow the profile pretty well, in fact I actually ended up riding at an RPE that felt much lower than when I normally do AVDP. Guess that means one of two things, either my FTP is out of date and I need to fit in another test on Tuesday, or I have a great ability to suffer. The latter would be most useful given www.twentyfourhourturbotorment.co.uk, but the former is probably the most likely. Second on the menu was Extra Shot. Now it was sold as something to add on, with no warm up and cool down. Well what can I say about it. It hurt. Quite a lot. It is a great little addition, but it is 20 minutes of sheer brutality, RPE 7 is lowest it goes, builds from there then has lots of little attacks and "bergs". Great video though with some good Pro Women's footage and a soundtrack that I quite like. It's really a missing 20 minutes from Hell Hath No Fury. Not that I would advocate attempting the two combined without first seeking medical advice. Last on the 'fest menu was Revolver. The most painful trainer workout experience ever. Fact. Well, my 'warm up' seemed to have got me to the start in reasonable condition. Perfect for 16x 1 min max effort, 1 minute recovery. I was actually putting out a decent amount of power, turning out about 350W for them, except the last where I managed to hold 400+ watts. Pretty pleased with that.

Thursday was another horrific day in the lab, barely got a break all day, so swimming wasn't as much fun. I was just dead, so doing 25s and 50s at max effort was not pretty. Not much to say about that really other than I was hurting by the end.

Friday, well, by the time I finished work and set off for my lunchtime run I was a zombie. Wasn't expecting much from it at all. Idea was a run out to the lakes, run round and back. we set off and then when we got to the new OS building Mike took us on a back route. Wouldn't have been so bad if I'd put my calf guards on, but I didn't, and the narrow path was lined with stinging nettles. Didn't feel them at first, but they kicked in a bit later on. Ouch. After that it was across a lumpy field then out to the lakes, multi surface running, but none of it too bad for road shoes thankfully. Once at the lake we did a lap at 'your own pace' I seemed to have plenty of pent up aggression as I went off like a madman, running 4 minute kilometres, I was loving it. Built up quite a lead too by the time I finished the 2.5 or so km. Then we agreed to run easy on the way back, I think my idea of easy ended up being a little harder for the others. Oh well.

Saturday was another parkrun day. Given how I've been feeling all week I went into this with few expectations. In fact I'd pretty much decided it wouldn't be a PB run before I started. As the start gun drew nearer I realised I need the loo again. Great. A second week with a bursting bladder. Only 20 minutes though right? I made sure I was nearer the front this week after last weeks poor start. Turns out the opposition was a little better this week too. The guys started off pretty hard and I followed. 0.5K in and a glance at the Garmin told me I was in danger of overcooking things, 3:32 or so. Still, I wasn't feeling too bad for it, so pushed on, managing 3:38 for the first, the pain started to draw in on the second and slipped to 3:42 Halfway through the second lap and the suffering started to take hold, pace slipped a little more and the elastic was starting to break on the guy in front as he slipped out to 10m, just keep running, looked at the pace, I had about 20s in hand compared to last week's average at this point by my reckoning, so just kept pushing. 3:49 3rd km, slipping now. Onto the final lap and the push. Overtaking people now, making life a little tricky, 3:59 through 4km. Deep inside the hurt locker now, got passed by a guy in a 50 shirt, tried holding on to him, someone came up alongside me, she got a cheer from some 2nd lappers, she was the first lady. Damn, got to old on, avoid being chicked. Glance at the Garmin. I've definitely gone sub 20, can I push on for sub 19:50? Keep holding on, catch 50 timer, first lady finds her finishing legs, I try but just don't have it and Mr 50 passes me in the finishing chute. I'm not bothered though. I've gone sub 20 :-) Sub 19:50, sub 19:49 too ;-). The Garmin reckons 19:38, seems I started and stopped right as that was the official result. Placed 31/233 in the end, 30th male and 2/16 in SM25-29, taking 25s of last weeks PB. Wow. Not gonna have time to do it for a few weeks, but sub 19:30 has to be the goal now, sub 19 would be nice for the new year too. Plan on giving Bedford a try, a tarmac run with shallower bends might make things a lot easier. We'll see about that one... You can see the suffering here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/130945533

And finally Sunday, got up feeling surprising perky for 6am. An hour of the day that should only exist when it involves a sporting event in my opinion. Unfortunately it was to go into work for 5 hours again. Plan was to head into the forest afterwards though so I packed up all my freshly laundered, and just about dry, running kit and headed into work. Mid morning break came, and given last weeks epic fail of a trail run based on 3 crumpets for breakfast and no lunch thought I'd join Leigh in a trip to McDonald's for a bacon roll and coffee. How is it possible to get a bacon roll wrong? Even using proper bacon it wasn't great. Felt a bit off afterwards, that'll be another 6 months until I go to McDonald's when I forget again why I don't like it then. Finish time came and I headed off to do the route I did last week, well mostly. I slightly modified it, it was to be a figure 8 rather than a loop, going from the top of the sandy slope where I was mentally broken last week. I headed off for the first loop of the plains. Bit less wet this week, although that meant I got muddier as I didn't pick my way around the puddles so diligently. Picked the right underpass too, after finding a ford to cross a stream at rather than a leap of faith across a steep sided bank. Back through the car park and down into the woods. I was running pretty well and the kilometres was flying by. I even remembered the route perfectly, no map checks required, so pleased about that wasn't quite as short as I'd planned, ended up being 24km in the end, taking just over 2 hours, 23 minutes quicker and only a mile shorter than last week. If I can run trails like that with a pack on my back, then a road half marathon shouldn't be too bad. I'm feeling it now though, legs were pretty sore on the drive home. Hoping my f-likes will hold my legs together and refresh them overnight.



The week was pretty good in the end I think, only managed 8h15m of training, but I needed some rest and the quality was probably better as a result. 2 weeks until Bedford half marathon and I have a lot to think about, what time should I aim for? and what pace to set off at? In theory I should be able to do a 1:30-1:31 based on extrapolation from my 5K time using a few different formulae. Is that too quick? or conversely is it too conservative, parkrun has come out long the past 2 weeks, it's on grass, and has 6 tight bends on each of 3 laps. I shall have to ponder that one. Oh and the toughprint paper I mentioned last week, another thumbs up, I put my parkrun bar code through the wash by mistake, and it came out fine!

Oh, and turbotorment news, apparently mum has secured 50 t-shirts from Mencap for people who want to come and take part, which is a great bonus!

An Excellent Weeks Training

It seems it has been quite a while since I last wrote something. Funny how life gets in the way sometimes. A lot seems to have changed. Following the post Ironman blues I cracked on and got eventually and started reaping the rewards of Ironman training as my speed and power increased and I smashed my PB at the Bedford Autumn Sprint. Not before I managed to sprain my ankle though after getting cocky on a trail run, slipping on a patch of mud and sprain both the ankle and probably the metatarsal ligaments. Of course having entered a triathlon I rehab'd it for 10 days and (foolishly?) cracked on, then flew to Italy rested it for a week and did another tri a week later. The sprain has kept me from running for a while so I got stuck into cycling instead, getting a lot stronger on the bike, and dusting the turbo off.

Along the way I decided to do something stupid. If you've read this far then you probably already know about http://www.twentyfourhourturbotorment.co.uk/ an idea that sort of morphed out of a desire to do something big for charity. Not content with just riding the turbo for 24 hours, I foolishly added the challenge of doing all The Sufferfest training videos back to back as part of it. That is probably the most stupid thing I have ever done. There is no backing out now, I still don't know how to train for it, and I still haven't got the hang of going a bit easier to do just 2 of them back to back. I'm left wondering if I'll still be alive in March next year. Please check out the pages, spread the word, and 'like' the facebook page too (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Twentyfour-Hour-Turbo-Torment/274568199231603). Oh and if please donate too!

So that kind of brings me to this week, and what should have been an easy week of training. Somehow I was convinced to give parkrun a try, and so I signed up and the focus of the week became maintaining training and getting to parkrun in peak physical shape. So Monday kicked off with a quick 10K run, I smashed my PB on a training run last week, so went out pretty hard, especially considering it was dark, and came home in 45:23 for 10.14 k, 7 days earlier that would have been a PB so I was pretty chuffed I'd managed to do it twice in 7 days, shows it wasn't just a fluke.

Tuesday brought Masters and the one aspect of training that isn't going well for me. My ankle just can't handle swimming and 7 weeks of arms only has taken it's toll on my legs and form, I'm now free of the pull buoy but I'm stuck in lane 1. Having been leading lane 2 the week of the sprain. Quite a fall from grace. The swim started great and I thought I was finally swimming well, then we were split up to do the main set with 75s, and things went downhill. I felt like I'd been hit by a train by the time I got home.

Wednesday was turbo day, opted for "Hell Hath No Fury" from the sufferfest collection. Another one that hurt. The first 20 minutes wasn't too bad, but suffered through the second 20 minute effort. 75 minutes of footage of from the pro women's circuit ought be be enough to motivate any guy on the turbo, I just ground the pedals praying for it to stop.

So at this point it must sound like my week is going rapidly downhill and the title has lured you in on a false promise. well things start picking up again. Thursday's masters session wasn't too bad. I was swimming well in the warm up and started the main set swimming well. Of course I set about destroying myself by going too hard on the 2x75m IM, making the rest of the set tough. Apparently my catch has improved though, so swimming in lane 1 has helped me iron out some of the problems at least.

Had the day off on Friday to get the tumble drier fixed, so did a short run before lunch, the Garmin froze so I was running blind. It was easy, and 6 K in under half an hour. Then, bearing in mind the parkrun I had on Sunday morning I opted for an easier hour on the turbo, and did one of the trainer road workouts. A 3 repeats of 3x 2minutes below FTP, 2 minutes above. A nice set and it did me good, my legs weren't too bad afterwards, possibly as I held a nice high cadence of 100, but I still got a good workout. Looking through my training log for 2011 on Friday night I realised I had got up to 398 hours, 48 minutes. So It was looking like I'd break the 400 hour milestone on Saturday!

Which brings me to Saturday, the best day of the week. So having been talked into trying parkrun by a number of people I opted to attend the one at Eastleigh, and they were holding a newbie friendly one, complete with pacers. I've never 'run' a 5K before, done more, but nothing as short. So wasn't sure if my strategy of holding the pace I thought I could manage would work. So, in the spirit of trying new things I opted for someone else's strategy, go out hard and hang on as long as possible. I thought I'd try this by trying to hold on to the sub 20 pacer. Of course it started all wrong when I got caught behind slow runners, so I nailed it to catch the pacer. Well it does fit the strategy of going out hard. Caught the pacer and hung in there, 1st km in 3:50, 2nd km in 4:00, On the second lap, I decided I got out run the pacer. Looking at my 1K splits as they happened I knew how much time I had in the bank for a sub 20, with a 3:53 3rd km I now had 17 seconds in the bank, well the Garmin bank, as it was coming up slightly short of each marker. Onto the third lap and I was now feeling it, just kept telling myself there was only a mile to go. 4th km in 3:58 and I had 19 seconds. So it seemed the 19:49 I'd been asked not to beat could be in danger. Alas it was not to be, going out hard was really starting to take it's toll, people were overtaking me, and according to the Garmin I slipped to a 3:59 5th km, but the 19:49 was still safe, as there was an extra 100m to run in the real world. Taking me an extra 23 seconds and completely lacking a sprint finish. 20:03 was my official time, getting pipped into 25th spot on the line. So a fantastic performance, far better than I'd thought possible, and what a start to the day.



Have to say it was a lovely friendly event, with lots of nice people and even a few taking (and sharing online) photos. I'll be back next week I think with the aim of starting at the front and going out slightly less hard and trying to hold pace. The other bonus was the option to enter a competition for a London marathon place, I somehow doubt I'll get it, but why not try something else stupid in 2012?

Saturday didn't stop there though, after the run I headed home for a few minutes to change, grab a snack and head out to meet Bob in Fareham to go for a ride. It was a lovely day for it and we had a nice social pace ride out to New Arlesford, a stop for coffee and cake before a nice ride back again. A perfect 68km ride really, and I didn't feel bad for it.

Today was a nice early start, the wonders of Sunday working. Of course that puts a limiter on training. Of course I'd planned a way around this, I took my run kit to work with my pack all ready to sling on too. I figured I might no have the time to make it out to Boldrewood and run trails there, so I'd bought some toughprint paper (great stuff, expensive but worth it), planned and printed a route on OS getamap and tied it to a strap on my pack and hit the trails around Denny wood instead. Now the route I'd planned worked out at 22K, I new I'd cut a couple of corners so expected 23K. Of course I hadn't banked on knee deep mud making parts of the route impassable, carrying on (lost) until I found a river I couldn't cross, doubling back, finding less deep mud and getting back on course. Then running an unfamiliar route took lots of map reading, slowing me further. By the time I got to 22K I was flagging. And I knew I still had 3+ km left to run back to the car and light was fading. Skipping lunch for a long trail run was seeming a bad idea 8 hours after a 3 crumpet breakfast! Still I made it through 25.6 km in the end. So happy about that, the pace less so, but I ought to be able to run it faster next time now I know the turns.

So that concludes a great week. A (well earned) rest day tomorrow and hopefully another great week to come!