So another week down and another successful week of training and results to go along with it. I’ve lost a total of 3.0kg so far and I’m pretty happy with that. I’ll show you all the details at the end of the post.
Monday
At lunch time I went for a swim. As the focus of this whole programme is about consistency and making positive changes, I’ve decided that I’ll do two swims per week and work through a training programme I have that is based on doing two 2,000m: 4 Weeks To A Faster 1,500m. I did the third session in this programme, which involves a set of 8x 200m all on a 30 second Rest Interval (RI).
Having not done much swimming in a 25m pool recently, this session enabled me to set a new 100m record as recorded on my watch. As I spend more time swimming in a metric pool I should be able to get a few more Garmin records.
Nutritionally I had been aiming for just over 9,000kJ of food daily as my baseline with exercise, lifting this higher depending on how much exercise I do. I played around with the settings within My Fitness Pal and adjusted this down to only 7,615kJ as my daily benchmark. Today my exercise allowed me an extra 2,000kJ of food and I consumed all but 700kJ of it.
Tuesday
I got out on the road today and rode my usual block. As I’m working through my cycle programme I conducted what my friend Lisa has named the Quad Crusher. It’s a tough workout, involving 3x 10min at Level IV. Within each of these 10mins, every 2min doing a sprint for 12-15 pedal strokes (you can see these peaks in the pink lines).
Nutritionally I had a good day with the Quad Crusher allowing an extra 3,200kJ of food. By only consuming 8,700kJ all up that meant I had a surplus of 2,100kJ (despite having a beer with dinner).
Wednesday
I got out for a run at lunch time and headed up into the Wither Hills. I did my longer loop in the hills with 372m of vertical climbing. As you can see from the pink line my power was all over the place with the steepness of my run.
This run burned 3,800kJ and by eating 10,000kJ meant that I was in credit 1,400kJs.
Thursday
Here I did the next session of the 4 Weeks To A Faster 1,500m programme, which involved four reps of 300m with a 45sec Rest Interval (RI) between them.
Nutritionally I had a bit of a blow out today. I grabbed some pizzas for lunch before I had my workout and I was in a negative balance kiloJoules wise. After my workout I had a light dinner to finish nearly 3,400kJ over my limit.
Friday
Today I continued on with some power testing for running, doing a 30min Running Power Test. I did this on the river banks of the Taylor River, which had only just receded enough for me to run along the path getting muddy shoes in some places. This was a tougher test than I recalled from when I did it a couple of months ago. I managed to maintain an average of 339 Watts during the 30min segment (4:29 min/km).
After yesterday’s blow out I was a bit more focused on my nutrition, but knew that with an extra 4,100kJ burnt during my run I could enjoy some chocolate with my partner as a dessert treat whilst watching television. This tipped me over by just over 100kJ.
Saturday
Weighing myself this morning I weighed in at 86.8kg with 17.8% Body Fat. This means I’ve lost 3.0kg overall thus far and reduced my Body Fat percentage down 1.8%.
I jumped on the wind trainer today and spent an hour at a steady power, staying 97% in my Endurance Power Zone.
The 2,100kJ expended from the wind trainer session meant that when I consumed 10,100kJ of food I went over my daily limit by 400kJ. I had a few beers with dinner.
Sunday
I got up and went for a long run 1:25hr in the morning maintaining a pace of between 5:18-5:48 min/km (spending 63% of the time in that zone). I went down to the Great Taste Trail heading out to Rabbit Island for about 42:30min before turning around and returning home. I had a great run and really enjoyed getting out for this duration. It’s been a while. Towards the end of the run I included four accelerations/stride outs, each 5 minutes apart.
Due to the 5,500kJ expended during my run and consuming just above my daily base line meant that I had 4,400kJ surplus.
Weekly Summary
This week with my decreased daily baseline of only 7,600kJ; I averaged 3,200kJ of exercise each day meaning I can consume 10,800kJ of food, but I only consumed on average (despite pizza-gate) 10,100kJ meaning I had a nearly 700kJ surplus each day.
As you can see on my Performance Management Chart (PMC) my fitness (blue line) is growing, however my fatigue (pink line) is also growing. That makes sense: the more training I do, the more fatigued I get. As a result of this fatigue my performance or form (yellow) has also decreased.
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/