Kevin's Training Blog of 2019

I am going to take a break from blogging.  It has just become a tracker for training and since I am not going to be racing any more there is no reason to be training and there isn't any real point in blogging about what I am not doing. 

Monday was hard work. My legs are still very heavy from racing on Saturday and my sunburn is very painful. I took a pair of easy rides but the weight of my backpack was pretty intense on the burns. In the evening I went to swimming. The first 30 minutes or so was fine but beyond that I started to run in to a wall of fatigue and the pace dropped off.  Tuesday I did an easy ride in to the office and then an easy run home. Only neither were easy. It still feels like I am using someone else legs. That didn't improve when I went to the pool in the evening. I started a reps session, struggled through 4 x 50m and then bailed out for an easy recovery swim.  Wednesday I abandoned my plan to run to work and instead just jogged round to the train. I am still not in the shape to run two 7 milers for consecutive commutes. After work I went to see the Detective Pikachu movie before riding home. The lack of traffic on that ride took the best part of 3 minutes off the time.  Thursd...

I am going to up all my miles this week. As much as I have been doing pace work I have been neglecting my underlying fitness. So I am going to run two of my commutes this week, and then do a speed session on the weekend as well.  I am also going to do a bit of mountain-biking at the weekend. Partly as prep / recce for one of our internal club duathlon races later in the year, and partly to consider whether I want to do a cross-tri or cross-duathlon later in the season.  Targ ets -  Swim 2.5 miles,  Bike 36.0 miles,  Run 11.0 mile s. Stretching session x2, Core session x1, Weights session x1. Yoga session x1. Fast run target 6:40 / mile (4:09 / km).

Monday I did an easy run lap of Vigo town centre while taking some photos of the sculptures that I had missed through the week. In the afternoon I decided to chill out on the hotel terrace for a couple of hours. I wasn't paying enough attention to the clearing clouds though and ended up with a front-side sunburn.  Tuesday was a lost travel day. I was home in time to do a run or swim in the evening but decided to chill out instead. I did do a bit of stretching whilst trying not to aggravate my sunburn.  Wednesday was my first day back at work. I did a couple of easy commutes and then a short brick run. Thursday I road to work at a ridiculous pace, hit every green light on the way in and I think there was tailwind to boot. And it wasn't a huge headwind on the way home. In the evening I dragged myself to the pool to see how I would cope with my sunburn in the water. I paddled along an easy 20-minutes which is definitely going in the 'junk swim' box.  Friday I had as c...

400m Hurdles My warm-up was ‘bitty’.  I did a few hurdle drills. I walked around a lap stepping over hurdles. I did a few strides and mobility exercises. I put my spikes on and did all of the same drills again. My race was merged with the Senior and U20 Women’s races so I had two female athletes outside me (going over lower hurdles) to pace myself against.  My actual race was a huge (13 second) improvement on last year. Some of that was down to the improvements in my ankle, but a lot of it was down to a much better pacing than last year. The time was still so terrible that I am not going to write it here.  When the gun went I pushed about 4 strides but as soon as I came out of that, instead of moving through a drive phase, I eased into a more relaxed position. I reached the first hurdle on a near-perfect stride, with a clean left lead and cleared it almost level with the two other athletes on the outside. In hindsight, there were possibly two extra strid...