Good news, bad news, time to build my run

Good news

COLD hill ride

The good news is: I'M BACK TO MYSELF!!! I felt seriously lousy until Wednesday. I got out of the pool after 900m on Tuesday - I was swimming 1.43 for a "hard" 100m, when I have been swimming under 1.25. I had a good chat with Xavier, my coach on Wednesday and we made a bit of a plan to keep me ticking over, without causing any extra fatigue. The main thing was to remove any intensity from my training. (See bad news). I was feeling a bit better throughout Wednesday, although I struggled to teach my practical class in the afternoon, and just couldn't stay warm. But Thursday I woke up and instantly knew I felt better, refreshed from sleep and raring to go. I held myself back in my swim, but the energy was there, and times were good. I managed a good run the same day, and absolutely nailed my Friday 4x1km swim, despite really holding back.

My main goal for the entire week was to get through the weekend without hurting myself. My hill ride on Saturday didn't feel amazing, and my top end power wasn't there, but I certainly had plenty of energy. I needed it - it got ridiculously cold up there! 

Run home from the market

I ran twice on Saturday instead of the XC race. 30min off the bike, then 30min home from the market. I was looking on the bright side of not racing - I got to buy nice food and enjoy shopping at the market, in place of the race. 

Sunday went well too - more on that in the last section.

I'd love to know what was wrong for those 5 days. It may have been some kind of virus, especially given my inability to regulate my body temperature. Or it could have just been the culmination of overdoing things with the trip home from Cebu, travelling, working all the overtime and still trying to train. Regardless, I seem to be past it now, but just to be careful I'm seeing a sports doctor on Tuesday to get bloods done in case there was anything amiss. 

Bad news

Obviously I was sad to miss my last XC race of the season, but I made peace with that pretty easily.

I'm not going to go into much detail, but twice this week I had really bad news from people I care deeply about. The first, on Wednesday absolutely floored me, mainly I think because I was still feeling bad myself. It's so hard to be strong emotionally when you're struggling with illness or fatigue. The second lot of news, on Friday was even worse, but I was feeling much better, and I've been able to deal with it (as best I can). This is where mediation comes to the fore again. All the thoughts going around my head, all the "what ifs?" All the emotions. Mediation just brings me back to the present and helps me focus on what needs to be done now. I cannot recommend it enough. It's definitely changed my life for the better.

Time to build my run

So just leaving the present aside for a minute, now I'm feeling better I have been able to just (a little bit) look forward to the coming weeks. As I mentioned previously, we front loaded the prep with more juke volume, slightly less run focus. But despite the extra weight I'm carrying into this race, I don't want to feel like I've neglected the run. Today was a 2h15 long run, which was made INFINITELY easier because I hooked up with some friends at the Tan running track (3.8k loop) and we ran one way while other friends were doing a marathon (that's 11laps 😳) the other. I was so, so grateful to have some company, and the time flew. 

With the double run yesterday, that's 35km in 24hrs, and Xavier has given me an 1 hour run tomorrow morning, so I'm excited that those 3 days will give my run a good boost going into the final 6 weeks. I will chat to Xavier about how he wants to build up my run fitness, but more importantly strength for that back half of the marathon in Kona. Much as I LOVE hard efforts, they take me a long time to recover from. So I suspect there will be plenty of hills on my running horizon in the coming weeks. And no matter if it's riding or running, boy do I love hills! (Maybe it's the Welsh part of me!) 

7 weeks to go

Week totals