This week started with my most important session to date I feel. Not because of what I achieved in it, more from what I didn’t achieve in it and learning from that!
The session was my usual 2 hour progressive long run – 1 hour in Zone 2, 40 minutes in Zone 3, 10 minutes in Zone 4 followed by a cool down of 10 minutes in Zone 2. I’ve done this session the last 3 or 4 weeks with mostly positive results, however this week my day didn’t really go to plan.
I work 9 till 5 then do Personal Training on an evening and complete this run 8.30pm till 10.30pm. Well the day was a nightmare. I didn’t plan my lunch or evening meal very well and just had little snacks throughout the day, normally bad choices! So leading into this run, I was tired, hungry and not feeling positive at all. I was very naïve to think I could complete this run as Ray had scheduled. So to cut a long story short, after a day of failings In nutrition and life this session was poor. The first hour went ok, 9:57 per mile and right in the middle of the designated zone, which is pretty much about as good as it gets for this workout. After that the 40 minute section went downhill right from the start. I managed about 20 minutes and just had to stop! Now this is where my thinking cap was put on. I was about 5 miles from my car with no other way of getting to it but by a run/walk/ shuffle back to it. Now this gave me a lot of thinking time about what had gone wrong! My first thought to myself was “what the hell am I doing?”. I am supposed to be a fitness professional and the reason for me walking down this never ending road could have been easily avoided if I planned my day in advance. I say this time and time again to clients I work with, but am not doing it myself. Change is required, so I’m going back to basics and planning everything. I’ve got one week to my first tri, 6 weeks to my first Olympic, 8 weeks to my first 70.3 and 6 months to my A race.
Time to bring my A game. Lets do this!
– Mike Catton
Mike is training for some triathlons and half Ironman in 2019. Check in next Monday for his next article about his training journey.
Check out last weeks article here:
All his previous articles are stored here:
http://www.coachray.nz/category/client-stories/mikes-middle-distance-magic/