Week 13 - Unlucky for some including me

AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

Had to get that out of my system. Just when I was starting to make some real progress, I have had a bugger of a week.

Last Sunday I ran my first ever half marathon.  And I mean ran, I didn't walk for one step.  It was a training run and I felt strong. The run was scheduled for two hours on my plan and I secretly hoped I would get 13.1 miles completed in 2 hours. I just missed this target by six minutes but I was so overjoyed with this as my PB for 13.1 miles was 2:27.

I set new PB's for 15km, 10 miles, 20km and 13,1 miles. And I just felt strong.

However just when I was starting to feel good. I got up on Monday and I had a niggle in my foot. I hoped this would ease through the week but it hasn't. I tried to go to track on Tuesday to see if it was just muscular but it wasn't. I only managed a portion of the main set.

Meh.

Again I hoped it would improve over the week but it didn't.

I went to the physio and while I was there it felt better but when I got home the pain on the outside of my foot had returned. It wasn't as bad but it was still there.

I've decided I'm not going to run until this pain has gone. If I need more physio I need more physio. I hope it just goes naturally though.

Also this week I've been struck down with a head cold. It's not stopped me training per se but it has hampered progress slightly. Take today for instance, I should be doing a 2 hour turbo session but I neither have the energy or the inclination.

I have made some positive gains elsewhere however.

One of my swimmers had a breakthrough. This is always enlightening as a coach and is such a good feeling. I used some of the drills from my Swimsmooth course last weekend.

I've also made some positive gains on the bike. When I started using TrainerRoad in December the first workout I did was an 8 minute test and after this test the software estimates your FTP.

FTP is the theoretical power you can maintain for one hour.

In December my FTP was estimated at 205 watts. Following my lactate test with Blizard Physio I upped this in the software of TrainerRoad to 211 watts.

On Thursday I repeated the 8 minute test and got a new FTP of 246 watts.

Thats a 20% increase in power output in 10 weeks. Yes I realise this is theoretical power and is based on a turbo trainer but it is a benchmark for me to monitor myself against. This means my power output per kg has also increased and is now above 2.5 W/kg for a period of one hour.

I now need to take these gains I have made and turn them into real world gains by cycling outside more.

There is one downside to this increased power though, the TrainerRoad workouts are going to get harder. Progress is progress though.

This afternoon I have a coached swim with Dave Akers and he is going to do some video analysis of me. Last time I went to see Dave I managed to maintain an average pace of 1:33/100m through the entire set. So hopefully after two hours in a 50m pool there will be some gains to be made.

I am super excited about this as I have never swum in a long course pool. I hope that the depth and temperature mean quicker swimming from me.

Thats all from me, thanks for reading,

Michael