This week has flown once again, it feels great to be ticking off green sessions one after another. Training is going great!
The weekend long sessions were like it was completely different seasons if I’m honest. If any of you watched Ironman Cork on Sunday basically that’s what conditions I faced on my 3 hour ride. Throwing it down with rain, cold, wet and idiot drivers splashing through puddles and driving way too close for comfort! I persevered for 2 hours and just had enough! I was close to home and figured I’d had enough. For the two hours I did I was pretty happy. Felt good and maintained good power throughout. Hoping for better weather next week for the long one!
Which brings me onto the long run, it was completely different weather, lets face it! I wouldn’t be British if I didn’t complain about the weather. It was WARM to say the least. Completely change in weather this week. Hot, humid and not ideal for running long distances. Before the session I was naïve to the fact it was this hot and took the distance and time I was running for granted. After all I’ve been doing 2 hour runs for over 6 months now, it’s not like I’m not use to the distance. Well I am used to the distance but I’m definitely not use to the heat! Every week I complete the run with one gel at the 1 hour and that’s it. This week I was a ball of sweat at the 30 minute mark! I managed the first 95 minutes. Then the efforts started. Now I’ve done this no problem in previous weeks, but not in this heat! This was brutal I did the first then I just called it a day. I’m glad I did as for the next 24 hours I had a bad headache and felt really lethargic and dehydrated. I won’t make this mistake again and will ensure to take fluids if the weather is this hot again! School boy error really!
However by the Wednesday it was what I like to call “big power bike day” Ray has been putting these sessions in recently and I love them. Short eye watering sessions at VO2 max power. I’ve been killing these sessions, great sessions and I can really feel a difference in my power increasing and my ability to hold the power! Im putting out my best power ever for durations I literally couldn’t hold for 30 seconds not that long ago! So that is definitely a highlight of the week.
To finish off the blog Ray had me do a 1,500m TT on Thursday. My previous time for this was 26:43 1:47 per 100m. Well this week I pulled out a 25:36 and 1:42 per 100m. 5 seconds per 100m faster for the full 1,500m. Really happy with this especially with the one swim a week, I’m hoping to add another swim in if possible over the winter period and give myself an even better chance of coming out the water with a good swim time in my 2020 races.
Anyways that’s enough waffling this week, thanks for reading everybody and I’ll be back next week with another blog.
– Mike Catton
Check out last weeks article here:
All his previous articles are stored here
http://www.coachray.nz/category/client-stories/mikes-middle-distance-magic/