Catching up on the last few days, feeling like Mario and my old enemy is back again.

Thursday 31st January 2013

Swimming (00:36:30 / 1600M – 18M Pool at Gym)

Back in to the pool at the Gym again.  It’s been a while and I’d love to say that I missed it but that would be a bit of a lie.

That is in terms of both the location and the activity.

I don’t know what it is but I am really not enjoying swimming all that much at the moment.  It is just plain boring and I may have become a bit resigned to the fact that I am not really going to improve my technique to the point where I look and swim half decent; rather I am more of a mind-set that if I can work on my endurance and make the swim feel comfortable rather then particularly quick then that’s where I am headed.

With that in mind I will still try to make at least one of the club swim sessions every week to at least avail of the excellent coaching, but I will do at least one more session each week just purely focussed on grinding out metres in the pool to build endurance.

I’m sure if Oliver Harkin is reading this he will be frustrated at my probably stupidity in this matter, but I have to feel comfortable with what I am doing and if it means that I may only improve my Half Iron or Full Iron distance swims be a few minutes, I can live with that.

So – the session today went pretty well, although I haven’t had a long swim just straight through like this for a few months as it has been most sessions with the coach in the Club, so I did start to feel a little fatigues towards the end. This just hit home to me how much mu endurance has faded.

Sunday 3rd February 2013

Cycling ( 00:45:00 / 9.33 Miles / 12.40 Mph / Cadence 93 rpm) TURBO Session

Sunday was meant to be my long run day this week.

I was looking forward to cranking out another 18 mile run and hopefully building on the long one last week.

Alas, my Achilles had other ideas.  The pain is BACK!!

Not as bad as it was before but enough to let me know that any plans to put the trainers on and crank out a long run were pie in the sky.

Frustrated, I decided to hit the Turbo to at least get some athletic benefit out of the weekend.

I focussed again on following the format of the Spin class on a Tuesday night with high rpm activity and really pushing things hard for intervals of time.

It went well and I finished with 8 simulated 30 second efforts out of the saddle sprinting up a hill with high resistance.  My legs were burning and left me with a sickly feeling as I collapsed on the handlebars at the end.  It felt good to feel bad.

Hopefully the rest will do my Achilles good, however, it is going to take a heel of a lot more than that to rid me of my sense of annoyance and frustration that it has flared up again.

       Now I know how Mario Balotelli felt.

 

 

Monday 4^th February 2013

Swimming (00:35:33 / 1600M – 18M Pool at Gym)

Gym pool again and it felt a bit easier today than last Thursday. Almost a minute faster is good news, but it is sadly nowhere near where it was this time last year – but that will come back again OK.

It might be time for a new set of goggle as the current ones are just leaking all the time now.  I’ve had them a while and they saw plenty of action last year, so there is probably no shame in changing them at this point.  I just need to find a bargain now.