A Hard Easy Week!

Another challenging week. It was meant to be a recovery week with less km's than last week. I have also substituted runs with sessions on the bike in the garage. So Monday was actually 50mins on the turbo trainer and Friday was a Run/Bike session. The best for the week was Thursday nights Club Handicap run (see DMVAC link). The handicap race is a 5.5km, 2 loop run through Dorking/Pixham. Last month, having never done it before I had a really good handicap and came in 2nd. This week my handicap had another minute added on and I came in 5th. 5.5km in 22:55 With a time like that I could not stop extrapolating from it get to a 10km time of 42mins. Thats 4 mins faster than I have actually achieved. If only I could do it for real!

This week ends long run was 15 miles, it should have been easy compared to the 32km last week or next week. But, I don't know if its the Thursday night session or the cycling, it sure did not feel easy, and I was glad to get it over with.

As hard as it gets (part 2)

Back in December when I said, 'As Hard as it gets', I never imagined a week like this. It all started on Monday, Sarah was due to go into hospital for a gallbladder operation. Instead she went into Casualty and was admitted for gallstones in the bile duct. What this means is Sarah was the same colour as Homer Simpson and feeling terrible. She has spent the last week in St Helier hospital waiting for an ERCP which I am more than glad to say she had done on Thursday, but wished could have been done earlier.

The kids are on half term this week, so I drove them half way to Cornwall on Sunday and swapped 3 children for 1 mother-in-law (fair trade?). Then this week was the first week of my new work contract and I also had to fit in 80km of training. So the schedule this week has been, up at 7am, run 8km to 12.8km, home, shower, breakfast, hospital, work, home, hospital, home, phone, bed, sleep .......... Thank God for having my mother-in-law to stay, or I would not have eaten and would not have had the energy to this weeks running.

Saturday was my long run and not having done a long run for the last 2 weekends I was keen to get one done. The plan called for a 32km (20 mile) run and thats what I managed to do. Don't feel too bad for it either. My knees are not too sore, energy levels were good whilst I ran and another week of the plan is ticked off. The first of a series of 80km weeks. Long runs are not easy to find time for and recovery time is equally hard to get when shopping needs to be done.

Sunday I drove half way to Cornwall again to pick the kids up and my sister-in-law and my niece and we have all come back to Surrey for the next week. After this I did the final run of the week, a short 8km run. The heart rate monitor showed high readings, but the run did not feel that difficult. Maybe a lack of glycogen I don't know, it was all a bit strange.

So back in December when I said it was 'as hard as it gets', I had no idea that the hardest week was yet to come, and it was not going to be made hard by the weather but by general life things that training needs to be fitted around.

Roll on next week.

More things that stop you training

What a week and what a discovery of things that can stop you training. I give you exhibit 1. This little pink squishy thing is bured deep inside your body attached to your liver. It's a gallbladder and the little things shown inside it are gallstones. When one of these little stones decides to go on holiday down the 'bile duct', it goes out with a song and a dance. One that leaves you, its owner, flat on your back in utter unimaginable pain. So this is exactly what happened to Sarah on Monday. But in good old England we have a NHS system and our thought was. Well, Sarahs in A&E, they will take her to the operating theatre and remove the thing. Well slap me wth a cold cod, thats not what the NHS does. The NHS might deal with you immediately if your in a car crash, but not for a gallbladder. No, A&E 'manage' your pain, then tell you to goto the GP, join the waiting list that will probably take 20 weeks. Or you can go private and it will be done on Monday. Welcome to the real world and I believe its time for everyone to have private medical insurance, just like in the US, but with the double whammy that you also pay tax that goes to the NHS. What an eye opener this experience has been.

The other thing to stop training is snow. Thursday bought 4 inches of it and Boxhill looks really pretty. The schools all closed, the train system chugged along slowly and the only thing to do was stay at home for the day or suffer 4 hours commuting. So stayed at home.

But to be honest, I have managed to keep to the plan this week, fitting in the shorter runs somehow. The weekend is still to come though and a 24km run needs to be done.

The weekend has passed and I have missed the long run. Thats the second one, but it's still early in the training plan and I am sure I can still get the long runs in, in the coming weeks.

Sarah really is not well. She now appears to have a stone stuck in the bile duct and is desparate to get help tomorrow. I dearly hope the blood tests are OK in the morning and she can get the operation done. Again, this is a total eye opener for me, and the lesson is, if you have a non urgent condition, the NHS will fail you. But lets not turn this into a NHS rant.

Things that stop you from training

A poor week for me this week. I managed to keep up with the mid week schedule and was going to do the Watford Half marathon as my long run for the weekend. But Saturday night I did not sleep well and Sarah was not feeling great either, so I did not goto the Watford Half. I intended to do 13 miles as a training run on Sunday afternoon, but the kids homework sucked the life out of me and I have not done my long run for the week.

Thursday was my best session this week. Thursday is DMVAC club night and we went off to the hills of Dorking and did alot of timed or fast uphill sessions. If you want 'porridge legs', then go do some hill workouts.

This week I have been in the gym on Monday, Hyde Park on Wednesday, Dorking on Thursday, gym again on Friday and Boxhill on Saturday for a total of about 30 miles. It has been a bit tough to fit training in this week and I wonder how people training for Ironman manage.

But 1 bad week does not mean failure. You just have to get back on plan next week!