Sometimes training is easy, it’s just some thing you do. The hardest bit is finding your running shoes and before you know it you’re out the door. Other times getting out the front door feels like the hardest thing in the world. This week was quite a bit of both.

This week I was mostly in Minnesota and was feeling pretty chuffed with myself last weekend for getting organised enough to complete my cycle and long run and doing it on the back of travelling. The week continued like that really. I get pretty bad jet lag and my sleep pattern never really recovers to normal. Usually I find this highly annoying, this time it worked for me because I was getting up at 5:30 to do my training all week. I love cycling in new places, you really get to explore, so I found some interesting places and really enjoyed it.

The running was fine too all week, there are some pretty nice lake routes near the hotel and a nature reserve too. I knew it’d be pretty tough, when away I always eat too much and when you go out for food you always have a drink or two, but every night I was done in by about 9:30pm and each morning I was out the door by 6am. By the time I travelled home I was feeling pretty smug with myself!

I was pretty confident I’d get out running on Saturday but when I sat down in the flat I was so tired it just wasn’t going to happen. I texted my training help friends (Nic and Viv) and they both suggested resting. Viv came up with a plan to do a 4hr ride on Sunday and tie it with a 1hr run. It sounded good to me. Sunday rolled around but before I could get going we had some allotment business to take care of, so combined with lunch I didn’t get out on the bike until 3pm. This made me grumpy and I really wasn’t feeling the ride at all. As is always the case when things are going badly they got a bit worse in the form of two punctures. Party because I ran out of inner tubes, partly because my heart wasn’t in it and partly because I arranged to go running with Viv at 7pm, I cut my ride to 3hrs 15. Grumpy grumpy grumpy.

The run with Viv was ace though, without company I probably wouldn’t have gone back out, with company it made it a really good run and time flew by. I’m a bit annoyed I cut my training short, but it’s a sign of my shifted expectations that a 4hr10 brick session is now a bad weekend! Many thanks to Viv for getting me through it!

This weekend has really shown how crazy this training now is, there is not a lot of time to fit in the things we do and it’s going to get worse over the next few weeks…. but really it is only the next few weeks. I have a half ironman a week on Sunday which is really my longest training day, then two more weeks of hard stuff before hitting my taper. Now I just need to hang onto the last few weeks of my plan and just keep going. It’s so close!

[table]Day,Type,Time,Details
Monday,Rest,,
Tuesday,Swim,0:30:00,#13
Tuesday,Running,1:15:00,Z1 to Z2
Wednesday,Cycling,0:45:00,Z2 (QC)
Wednesday,Running,0:30:00,Z2
Thursday,Swim,0:40:00,#14
Thursday,Cycling,1:15:00,Z2
Friday,Running,0:45:00,Z2
Sunday,Cycling,3:15:00,Z2 (QC)
Sunday,Running,0:55:00,Z1 to Z2[/table]