Well this week was a mixed bag, not overly bad, but poorly planned. My training was ad-hoc and so was my nutrition. Consequently my results weren’t that great.
I’ll show you all the details at the end of the post.
Monday
After a busy day at work I ran out of time to get a workout done, so I got out for a short run late in the evening after I had finished my consultations for the night. It wasn’t hard or fast, but I got out and did the minimum of 30 minutes.
Nutritionally I consumed 8660kJ’s of food which is a little over my daily allowance of 7615kJ, but as I had done 1937kJ of exercise meant that I had 892kJ to spare.
Tuesday
After another long day. I got home and didn’t feel like doing any training. My motivation was seriously low. However I forced myself to spend 30 minutes stretching.
Nutritionally, the day was as bad as my exercise was. I had some nachos and beers. If I had have done some exercise it wouldn’t have been so bad kiloJoules wise, but it was compounded because I didn’t have a strenuous workout. All up I consumed over 12,500kJ but only did 385kJ of stretching and exceeded my daily allowance of over 4,500kJ.
Wednesday
I headed to the pool at lunch time and got the seventh session of the 4 Weeks to a Faster 1,500m programme. This session involved a couple of 800m reps which I did in 13:34 and 14:07 respectively.
Nutritionally I had a balanced day, consuming nearly an equal number of kiloJoules as I expended, leaving a balance of just under 300kJ.
Thursday
Thursday I was back onto the Windtrainer for the Quad Crusher III. This is a challenging workout that was made easier by doing both the Quad Crusher I and Quad Crusher II in the previous weeks. This is a tough session that is made up of three 12 minute reps with a sprint every two minutes and a short rest of six minutes between.
Nutritionally I would have had a really great day with homemade muesli for breakfast and a freshly made smoothy for lunch with a healthy beetroot salad and lamb kabab for dinner. However I was hungry on my drive home and purchased both a pie and a sausage roll to eat!!! This blew my energy intake up to over 12,000kJ and exceeded my daily allowance (including the exercise) by nearly 1,700kJ.
Friday
Another day to get in a swim workout. I completed the final session of the 4 Weeks to a Faster 1,500m programme. I did my 1,500m Time Trial (TT) and did it in a time of 25:15. However, I stuffed up my counting of lengths and swam an extra 50m. Lucky my Garmin Forerunner 935 records each length automatically.
I originally started the programme in a 33⅓ yard pool, but due to it’s closure for maintenance I’ve had to change my training venue to a 25m pool. Originally I did a 1,500 yard TT at the start. As this is ~1381m, I’ve modified my 1,500m TT result to an equivalent 1,500 yard TT time of 23:14. This indicates an improvement of 1:51 (8.0%) over the last 4 weeks.
Unfortunately my food this evening was based around takeaway options which blew out my energy intake of nearly 12,000kJ once again. At least this time I completed more than 2,000kJ of exercise, meaning I only blew it out by 2,000kJs.
Saturday
With the weekend rolling around far too qwikly, I focused on family time and watching kids sport and doing some jobs around home. At the end of the day I completed another 30 minute stretching session.
Having weighed myself first thing in the morning at 85.1kg and 17.3% body fat means I’ve decreased my weight 4.7kg since I started 4 weeks ago, although my body fat isn’t as good as it was last week due to the blow out last weekend and a few times this week.
Nutritionally I was very focused. I even enjoyed a glass of wine at dinner time. Despite minimal exercise expenditure, I had just over 300kJ in credit for the day.
Sunday
With it being Father’s Day I was treated to a great breakfast of pancakes (at my daughter’s request but made by my partner). I then looked after the kids whilst Rach got her run in, then at lunch time I got out for my own 90 minute run. I had a great wee run out on the Great Taste Trail here in Nelson. It was a beautiful day to get out and there were plenty of families out there enjoying it too. I even bumped into World Champion Adventure Racer Nathan Fa’avae with his wife Jodie and their kids enjoying the day as a family.
Nutritionally I was focused (taking into account the pancakes) and was able to enjoy a glass of wine with my partner for dinner. As I had expended nearly 5,700kJ on my run and only consumer 8,500kJ of food I had a daily surplus of nearly 4,800kJ.
Weekly Summary
I averaged nearly 2,200kJ of exercise each day meaning I could consume 9,800kJ of food, but I consumed on average nearly 10,100kJ meaning I was on average 300kJ over each day. Despite this I still managed to lose weight (and keep the amount of fat constant ~14.7kg). This occurred due to the limitations of the accuracy of the weights of food I entered into the My Fitness Pal app and therefore the estimation is probably a bit out. When entering the data into the app, I err on the side of caution and use options that give me a higher energy value.
As you can see on my Performance Management Chart (PMC) my fitness (blue line) is still growing, however my Fatigue (pink line) has dipped this week due to the easier week of training. My TSS is the lowest it’s been since I started four weeks ago with only 68. This is for two reasons. Firstly I’m getting fitter and training is getting easier, but more importantly I did less training this week (less than five and a half hours, compared with over twelve the week before). As a result of this I’ve freshened up and you can the yellow Form line is coming up.
Here is a summary of my daily and weekly training since commencing this journey.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aMDHbOCtpD4jUQHb5rCkaK2P_WXgowN2uEohFnLTKWM/edit?usp=sharing
PREVIOUS WEEKS TRAINING
Here is a link to last weeks Coach Ray’s Suffering:
Previous weeks of Coach Ray’s Suffering can be found here.
http://www.coachray.nz/category/adventures/coach-rays-sufferings/