Mixed Bag

Little bit of a mixed bag on the recovery front today.

I went for my walk/run yesterday and it didn't go as well as I had hoped it would. The session was really just a tester to see how my back was going. As such it was mostly walking with five, one minute running pieces included.

The pieces started off a bit uncomfortable but not that bad and got worse from there. They gradually got more painful to the point where I didn't do the fifth one. I tried starting the fifth one a couple of times but it became obvious quickly that the pain was enough to be effecting my form and running was therefore not a great idea. By the end of the session I was properly hurting, not so much in my back, but more through my glute and my hip. Not sure what that means.

The upside to all this though was that by this morning I was feeling mostly okay again. I was really concerned after last night that I had put myself back to square one, but I don't think that is the case. I am hopeful that my recovery is still on track. I have a couple more sessions like last night coming up in the next few days, and I plan on using each one as a bit of a gauge. Not pushing on if things aren't right, but just trying to get a feel for where I am at.

Other than that the training has been going okay, and it has reassured me a bit that I still have a bit of fitness floating around.

Swimming this morning went well, it a session we do semi regularly called a Goldilocks Set. At first I thought that Coach Paul had said it was a Golden Oxe set and I spent about two thirds of the session trying to figure out where the Oxe came into it. Whatever you want to call it though, the session always manages one thing, it hurts.

The Goldilocks (or Golden Oxe) set is made up of:

• 4 x 100m
• 200m
• 4 x 100m
• 300m
• 4 x 100m
• 400m

The trick to it though is that the pace for the 200m, 300m and 400m is supposed to be at the same pace as the 100s. It gets pretty though by the 400m bit (the 200m and the 300m are not walk in the park either come to think of it).

Doing that this morning meant I was asking a little bit more of my body, but encouragingly it seems to have responded okay. Still not rocket ships, but a bit quicker than on Wednesday. Combined with my ride from yesterday it has given me some confidence that the return to race fitness may not be as long and winding as I first feared. Just have to get the running sorted.

As I mentioned yesterday I stopped by the Subiaco Bike to Breakfast this morning. Wow, that was a lot of Lycra in one place. With so many cyclists in a confined space the wait for the breakfast part of the Bike to Breakfast was pretty long, to the point that I didn't bother waiting for my muesli in the end. No big issue, complaining about your free food taking a long time seems a bit ungrateful. Besides I got to finish off a friends bacon and egg baguette, so I can't really complain.

Pretty cool of the various City Councils to put the Breakfasts on though. See, perhaps cyclists and the rest of the world can really just get along (he says while looking up the words to Kumbayah).