Week 15 / 20

Phew that was a tough week! It started off innocuously enough but culminated in a 2 and a half hour run on Thursday, followed by a 5 hour ride on Friday and a "brick" (bike-run) of 3 and a half hours on the bike - 2 and a half of which at Half Ironman intensity - and a brisk 1 hour 40 minute run... Practically a Half Ironman on my own. To make things harder, this was during my Easter "break" in Asturias so, lots of hills and everything on a heavy heavy mountain bike. It was nice to have a change of scenery and the routes I took were jaw-droppingly stunning. Thankfully, the weather forecast was totally and utterly wrong; not a single drop of rain which is really saying something in these parts. They say that you can experience the four seasons in one day in Asturias. In fact, it did rain on our house but not on us - we were elsewhere. In Madrid it rained, apparently, while in London the weather was incredible.

I had to cycle through Poo

By the way, I ended up having to do the brick run in an old (but well before sell by date) pair of Nike running shoes from back in the days when I thought cushioning was a good thing. They are fine for the bike but running in them after all this time in minimalist shoes felt like running in boots through sand. I couldn't help thinking that Bill Bowerman, the inventor of the waffer thin waffle shoe and founder of Nike, must be turning in his grave.

Running in Asturias is something else...

It's hard enough fitting the training in around family commitments but to then make the same fuss about food is just too much, especially when I've either been tired or sleeping the rest of the time. Today I fell fowl of the massive calorie deficit from more than 3000 calories burnt in training and less than half a day in which to make up for it. The dog ended up paying for it - after pulling me around all afternoon I lost my temper with it and yanked it about and called it all kinds of things that I'm sure it didn't understand. To do this Ironman lark properly you really have to be equally pedantic about what goes in (food) as what goes out (training) but, unless you actually make a living out of it, it is hard to make a case of it.

So that's it, really. I'm into the final straight. I've done the work to get in good shape and now it's just a question of reducing the load while maintaining fitness. It's about not screwing anything up between now and the Ironman; there's not much I can do now to be any fitter or faster on the day.

The training is having an effect on my subjective load... (I renumbered the weeks again - week 15 is week 13 on the graph)

I have to decide with Jonathan whether to go all out in the Lisbon Half Ironman - perhaps risking injury or delaying recovery - or to do it at full Ironman pace. I know what the sensible thing to do is but who said that doing Ironmans was sensible?