Many Happy returns of the Day

Well the wet weather has returned to Perth, but hopefully just for today this time around. We shall see. Strange, since whilst it is wet, it is actually kind of warm. I was very tempted to run without a shirt this morning, which is something I haven't done since well before winter. I did manage to get out and get my training done before the weather rolled in though, so that is an upside to it all.

Training today was a bike and run session. This is the first ride/run session I have done since coming back from Bintan and in the lead up to the session I realised that I was getting myself a bit worked up and apprehensive about it. I didn't have any good reason to feel this way, but upon closer introspection I realised it was from the weight of expectation I was putting on myself to really nail the session. Prior to Bintan these sessions had been going very well, with a series of running PBs and I realised that I was putting a similar expectation on myself leading into this session. Once I was out on the ride I told myself that I was getting myself worked up for no good reason and to just relax. Today may or may not be a PB, but in the end it is training, not racing and so the focus of the session had to be on quality rather than speed. In the end the latter will follow the former anyway.

The run wasn't another PB, but at the same time it wasn't that far off. It is tempting to start second guessing and wondering why this run wasn't as quick as pre-Bintan, but I am not going to let myself head down that rabbit hole. In the end it was only a little bit slower and there are so many other variables, training yesterday, training over the past week etc that I don't think there is much to be gained by examining it to closely. If I had been 10 minutes off my hoped for pace I might be asking questions, but even then I would probably just be putting it down to an off session. This certainly wasn't that, in the end it was still the 2nd fastest 14km run I have done, it just wasn't quite as quick as the one I did a couple of months ago. I can live with that.

Queen's Birthday tomorrow, well at least for us Western Australians anyway, so no work in the morning. Very nice. Looking forward to the sleep in. Tomorrow proper Ironman training starts. Next week is going to be my first +20 hour training week in the block. I think I will need the sleep.

Happy Birthday Queenie.