Given that I started training properly at the start of April, 7 weeks ago, I guess I am now a third of the way into my training. Which is a little scary. Still, I've come on a long way, especially on the bike,
Today I'm feeling really shattered. Achy, miserable and tired. I came back from the beginner's session (where I didn't exactly exert myself, just had to deal with 11C water...more about that in a minute) and slept. Which feels a bit odd given that I had a rest day yesterday. I'm taking the rest of today as more rest because I have a race tomorrow morning but I'm expecting myself to be feeling a bit more vigorous by now. On the one hand it's not unexpected as it is about 3 or 4 weeks since I've been able to stay in bed past 8am (and 14 more days until I can next do so) but on the other, I always expect myself to be superwoman. It's very difficult for me to separate out what is depression and what is expected tiredness from the amount of training I'm doing, so just got to keep plodding onward.
We had the third beginner's openwater swim session today. I thought as May progressed, the water was supposed to be getting warmer. Last week was the coldest I've ever swum, at 12.7C, this week it was even colder at 11.1C. Horrid. The beginners manned up though, and it felt like it was only me struggling to keep going! I worked with an ex-head-coach of the club today which was superb as he introduced some excellent drills to help the swimmers learn to cope with having to swim close to other swimmers. He also praised what I was doing with the group. We also had another cake sale to raise money for Mind and managed to raise £95 towards my fundraising total which is slowly starting to get a bit higher.
What did I get up to this week?
Monday am: 2.5k swim (felt super fast in the water); pm 1.2k lake swim (1k wetsuit, 200m without)
Tuesday am: 9k run (superfast but frustratingly my GPS didn't activate so can't tell quite what my speeds were); pm: 20 minute turbo.
Wednesday: 2.5k swim; 45 minute pilates class. Unfortunately the new pilates class was rubbish so I'm hoping that I can scrape together some pennies to have some individual sessions with the teacher of the class that has stopped to tide me over until September. Have also ordered a pilates DVD...
Thursday: 4.5k swim (a rather successful one where I did 3 x 750m intervals. The first one I beat my pool 750m pb by 2 seconds, the second, where I beat the new pb by 10 seconds. The third one I was too hot to try again but still beat my previous pb).
Friday: rest
Saturday: 1kish swim with the beginners' session.
Sunday: race - I still have a race to do this weekend.
What is the plan for this week?
Monday: am: run - distance depending on how feel post race - pm: lake swim (easy 1k)
Tuesday: am: 2.5k swim, pm: bike of some description
Wednesday: am: run - 8 or 9k pm: pilates (even if I have to do a DVD at home)
Thursday: am: 5k swim, turbo 35 minutes.
Friday: off
Saturday: am help beginners swim session. Pm, depends on how long my magazine photoshoot takes (watch this space for more on this..)
Sunday: bike ride.
I'm still not quite there with adhering to my training plan but I'm doing a bit better...! I at least managed to fit a bit of biking in amongst a week geared towards swimming and running. Will try harder this week - I think it's swimming's turn to suffer a little from what I'd like to achieve.
The weather here hasn't been conducive to training either--very wet and cold this week. :( It's great that you're paying it forward and helping with the beginner swim sessions. We were all newbies at some point (and some of us still are ;)), so giving back when you can is a great thing to do.
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