Week 5 / 7

I'm writing this in the airport, waiting for my very delayed plane (thanks to strikes in France, again). I'm off to Brussels for the day - thanks to minimalist running shoes I'm able to pack a spare shirt, toiletries and full running equipe in my briefcase.

Workouts this week worthy of mention, in no particular order except the order I did them in... On Friday I did series of 4 minutes hard on the spinning bike. The last one I really went for it and finished at over 170 bpm, which is very high for a bike workout. Amazingly, after just two minutes (my watch measures this automatically), my heart rate had fallen to 60 bpm! Normally my heart rate stays around 80-100 bpm for some time after a hard workout. This is due to a phenomena called EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption). I've seen one workout programme designed to give you a "six pack" based entirely on maximizing tho effect.

On Sunday I went for a long ride (120 km) in Ciudad Real on my triathlon bike. Without too much effort I was able to average 32 km without being sheltered by the peloton of a group ride. It was fairly flat and I managed to stay in the aero position most of the time. At one point I ended up going through a village - the one that Pedro Amoldovar is from, in fact (Calzada de Calatrava) - and almost collided with a bunch of people in cloaks and pointed hoods getting ready for the Semana Santa procession.

Normally I cut the week there, but the brick (bike-run) I did today was a left over from last week, which I had to jiggle around because of my trip o London the week before. As I took today off, I could afford to spend 3 and a half hours training although, to be honest, I would have rather spent more time with the kids. It was a pretty tough one with lots of medium and some high intensity, most of which I did inside. It's left me struggling I replace the fluids I lost in sweat and with a bit of a headache, which isn't predisposing me well towards the French and their plight right now.

If I'm up to it, I'll try to find a decent gym tomorrow and do my hard workout. If not, I'll run around Brussels a bit and see what I can see. I can always do the hard workout another day and better to do it when I can be sure to do it well.