Flatout at work

A good week in Spain training followed by a difficult training week at home.

My final week;s training in Spain was good with my first sub 23min (1500m) swim and 2 very successful sessions where the heat and lack of hydration opportunities made them pretty hardcore. One was a 2.5hr trail run in the mountains and the other was a 5.5hr ride where I averaged 280W in the middle 4hrs. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Both done at altitude (well 1500-ish metres for a wimp like me). This made for 19hrs training during the week in total. Nothing earth shattering but I don't need a training camp at this stage that takes 3 weeks to recover from. All in all good stuff.

This week has been a bit a struggle and the lack of consistency has be hard to swallow as while I can't hit any of the high volumes regularly that are taken as the ideal, I have tried to make up for it by religiously hitting my key sessions. This week, however, I had to deliver a course single-handed at short notice and prepare a big presentation which meant little sleep and 3 days of zero training hours. One way of getting a recovery week in I guess (in hours anyway) but I did manage to do a 2hr run and a 4hr hardcore turbo session.

Looking forward to a couple of good weeks training and the Taper leading to Roth. Should be a fun race as I'm in the elite AG wave. Ha, ha. Oh well my swim and bike will probably stand the test. Before that though there is a flat 156mile sportive to attend to aptly named 'Flatout in the Fens' near Peterborough. I will be putting my bike strategy to the test there. The hardest part will be getting the 350+ calories in every hour so I don't bonk over that length of time.

Gettin' it done.

Neilly G