Realistic expectations

At the end of my blog yesterday I said that I thought that I earned a ride. To be honest I kind of thought I had earned a better ride than what I got.

It wasn't a bad ride, but boy was it windy.

I am not entirely sure why I continue to be surprised by that. After all I do live in Perth, which is something like the third windiest city on the planet. Nonetheless, I still find myself stepping outside to find it blowing a gale, thinking to myself 'Oh darn, its windy'. Possibly something to work on.

Anyway, so the ride was windy, but other than that it went well. It was a reasonably short, but in the end tough session, which I finished feeling slightly shattered. Not entirely sure why, since on paper it didn't seem that bad. The ride did contain a bunch of intervals, which were fairly solid, so I think that was part of it. I suspect that the combination of the intervals and the wind were the source of my shatterisation. The intervals went well though. On the back of the TT that I did last Saturday we have recently rejigged my target power levels for intervals like this. They have been re-calibrated to hurt more. Joy. Yesterday's ride was the first test of that. Thinking about it, perhaps the reason I ended up so shattered isn't really a mystery after all.

This morning it was down to the pool for a bit of 'swim hard till you think you might throw up' type training with the Swim Smooth squad. Otherwise known as a Threshold Set. On the menu today was a main set of 8 x 200m. There is something about a set of 200s which sends a chill down my spine. I don't have anything against 200m efforts, in fact it is one of my favourite distances to swim hard. I just get edgy when there is a pack of them. They can smell fear.

As you may have gathered by my above description it was a tough set, but I was very happy with how it went. I got through the second 200 thinking, ouch, not sure how I can sustain this? Turns out that one at a time is the answer to that. In that way we got through. It hurt at the end though. Hurt a lot. The sort of session that is satisfying to complete though.

I don't have a session this afternoon, so now that the swim is done, so is training for the day. I am very much looking forward to heading home and being done with what has been quite a satisfying week. Bring on the weekend and the rides that call it home.