I then managed to get outside Wednesday and Thursday for some outdoor bike sessions, which I always look forward to. Reasonable sessions, just putting the volume in at Z2, and spending some time spinning at 100+RPM.
My first outdoor run came on Friday, and I felt up for it but as soon as I started I knew it was going to be tough. My body seems to dislike any more than 4 or 5 days off, before it begins to forget how to exercise. The legs felt completely blocked and even the slowest pace was tough going. I stuck with it and got a solid 45 minutes in.
Then came the weekend and a few home truths really started to kick in, with a few realizations and what I hope will be light-bulb moments too! I shall explain.
I've made no secret of the fact that I've always felt that my strongest discipline is my cycling. A 1:02 split at London Triathlon on my road bike, is none too shabby in my opinion. Last year I also managed over 150 miles in a day and felt pretty good at the end of it to boot. It was always my thought, that if I could improve my cycling from there, I'd be in good stead for a decent IM bike split.
However the last few rides have been disappointing to say the least. Even taking into account the windy and rainy weather they just haven't been up to par. I've got off the bike feeling wiped out after 50-60 mile rides, pace has been mediocre at best, and I've been petrified of bonking again. (Pathetic I know, but I've really not experienced it until this year). For context, the 150 mile ride I mentioned earlier was done on a beautiful day, with not much prior thought, at a 15.5mph average, and feeling good after. My previous longest ride was just over 40 miles at that point!
So I got off the bike feeling pretty gutted at being completely shot, after just 65 miles at 15mph average, albeit in pretty harsh conditions. It just didn't seem to stack up. I'd never been this bad at cycling, and I'd taken care of everything before during and after the ride nutrition and hydration wise.
Some deep thought, and a post on Tri-Talk (Thanks very much for your genuine help everyone on there!) I had a couple of things to think about.
Firstly I took a look back through all of my bike training this year. I estimate about 65-70% of this was done on a Turbo to begin with. Nearly every single ride was Z2 as well, barely anything above a 140bpm average.
Secondly I looked back at all my training prior to London Triathlon. Now I know the ride is much shorter, but as I didn't really know too much about training back then, nearly every ride was spent sprinting, or at Z4 for anything from 20 minutes up to an hour. So I really knew how to rev the engine and go for it. Something I appear to have completely lost.
Thirdly I remembered how to pedal properly! This sounds utterly ridiculous, but I put this down to spending the winter almost exclusively on the Turbo. On an easy Sunday ride I realised my pedaling technique had gone wrong. I was constantly pedaling toe down, and had lost the good technique I previously had, which was much more shared amongst the large and the smaller leg muscles. I had been spending all my rides previous to now just mashing toe down, with my quads. I just hadn't considered it in the least. No wonder my legs were burnt out after a ride. I was concentrating everything into poor form. And the results had been showing for the worse. I'm yet to do another long ride, but am sincerely hoping this is almost completely what I've been doing wrong this year. I'm pretty sure it is, so am looking forward to this weekend for that reason.
Not to mention the fact, that I've also decided to change some of the prescribed Z2 sessions, for slightly harder Z4 sessions to really get my top end power going. These two things combined I'm hoping will see me making some progress soon.
So after that reasonably eventful Saturday I hit my Sunday goal of a 1:30 run. Much better than Friday's effort, my legs felt decent, and I just struck out and kept a decent pace for the whole length of time. Covered almost exactly 10 miles in that time. Now I know this is pretty sedate pace, but its an improvement for me and I'm pretty happy with my running overall now.
All in all a good week. I feel slightly revitalized due to the rest, and keen to crack on. Looking forward to getting more decent cycling miles in too! Almost 3 weeks until my first race of the year is helping to focus my mind.
In total my week in training has looked like this:
Swim: 1500 Metres
Bike: 95.7 Miles
Run: 15 Miles
Thanks for reading!
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