Week One

We were 19 weeks out so I decided to up the training and blog about it as it helps me with accountability. I got a plan off trainninpeaks.com and rearranged it a little bit as the cycling part I found quite confusing. So for the bike I've just put in a Zwift FTP builder plan in it and I do a long bike on the weekend.

Here is what my week looked like, I think it may possibly be the most I've ever trained in one week in my life.

I did a FTP test on the 7th of this month and to my horror, my FTP had gone down. I felt like I'd be training hard so was really disappointed with that. So I decided to try the Zwift FTP builder plan, it involves 6 hard enough turbos a week and I'm adding in the nice long bike at the weekend. I'm hoping after this 6 week block to be a beast on the bike.

My swim for the last few years has been a strong point but I was swimming with Titans 3 mornings a week and they were generally hard tough sessions. For the last 6 months I've been swimming twice a week once with the Tri club and once with Thursday morning sessions. I really feel like my swimming has gone backwards in the last 6 months. 

I'm also a member in Westwood Club they have a 7am casual enough meet and swim group there. All the swimmers are a lot better than me and I'm usually hanging on for dear life, I'm thinking I need to add this to my other morning swim sessions. 

For the long Cycle on Saturday we got up at Silly O'Clock and went down to do a reccie of the bike course I bought the togs with me thinking we'd get in for a dip but after one lap on the bike I was too cold/tired to be dealing with the sea without a wetsuit.

I was really surprised by how tough the bike course was. I wasn't really expecting much climbing but there's actually about 1k of climbing each lap. The road surface is lumpy, it's just hard to get momentum on it. The potholes aren't really the problem because the surface is so harsh there's no roll on the bike so no free energy you really feel like you have to push for everything. The wind when we were down there was very strong and I suspect come June it'll still be strong. The one big hill that they keep talking about "Windmill Hill" is short and sharp, it is steep but it's only about 500 meters or so long.

So for the first time since I remember I actually hit all my sessions this week and managed 14 hours of training, I did a 10k run and the calf and Achilles felt really tight so I've pushed out run sessions till Wednesday