Week 16 Progress

Week 16 is complete and I am now inside the last 15 weeks of my next ironman training plan.  I am still not running and am just starting to get a little nervous.  Although my physio & GP both assure me I will be back running soon enough and will be fine 😉  I wish I had their confidence.  Last week I had physio and acupuncture on my achilles and have now been put on Celebrex anti inflammation tablets to try and bring the pain under control and get me running sooner.  I have repeat appointments again this week.  Hopefully back running sooner rather than later.  The recovery process is taking a lot longer then I anticipated.

So in the mean time last week was all about zone 2, steady, conservative, watching the heart rate.  I banked 5.5km in the pool swimming, 191km on the bike and a very painful 5km parkrun with my eldest daughter.   Totaling just on 9 hours, it is a little below my target for the week of 10hrs, but I’m confident at this stage it was enough.

My middle daughter has re-commenced Wednesday evening swimming squad, so this is my perfect opportunity for 1 swim session.  The 2nd swim was squeezed in on Saturday afternoon as the weather was no conducive to be out riding before parkrun.  Ok, the rain scared me away!

On Friday I was struggling for motivation so I tried something a little different and decided to ride nude!  Ok, not actually sans clothing, but without watching a GPS device.  I still wanted to keep a log of the session, just didn’t want to be watching the data live!  So I started my watch and put it in the pocket of my cycle jersey.  I cannot explain the struggles I had.  It was all by feel…. Feel good go harder, struggling back off a little.  But the longer the session went on the more distractions started to creep into my mind, how long had I been riding, was I going to be late home and subsequently late for work!  Crazy stuff, as I was riding a familiar 1 hour (30km) route and left home at my usual 5am time.  It was mind boggling how much doubt crept into my mind, just because I didn’t have a device to give me data & information.

My Saturday swim was a compromise for the lack of cycling due to a few showers that scared my off the road at 5am!  In the end it wasnt all that bad, I got to the pool mid afternoon and had all 8 lanes, the entire olympic pool, to myself.  So a steady 2km warm up followed by a brief 1km interval session!

This week I am planning on trying to hit a minimum of 1 session each day Tuesday to Sunday, with at least 1 maybe 2 double ups (2 sessions in 1 day).  I have further treatment booked in for this week and will continue with the rehabilitation plan, hoping to introduce some running by the end of the week!  I am also looking to introduce something I have only dabbled into in the past, some body weight strength work in the lounge room.  I don’t normally have the discipline to add this type of home workout into my plan, but I’m going to give it a go.  Starting out with some basic 5 to 10 minutes of core and strength work for runners this week.  Squats, lunges, planks, bridging & extensions ect ect…  I’ll report back how this fits in, if I stick at it and if I feel any benefit over the coming months!

So the goals for the week are over 200km on the bike, 5km in the pool and 5km rehabilitation running, targeting 10 hours!

Till next time build consistency, keep smiling and live to Tri!