Fine Print

Anyone who read my blog yesterday might remember that I spent a bit of time getting the race wheels on and getting the bike ready for my brick session this morning. Today, in the process of getting ready for my ride, it occurred to me that the session would be much easier logistically if I did the ride legs of the brick on the trainer. It caused me to wonder why the session hadn't specified the trainer. This in turn caused me to check my program again. At this point I noticed that my program did indeed call for the ride legs of the brick to be done on the wind trainer.

In my defence, the word TRAINER was only written in bold and highlighted on the program. It is not as if I am a mind reader.

Whoops.

So after a bit of time spent getting the bike onto the Kickr, I finally got the session underway, late but undeterred. Once I did finally get going the session went really well. The brick this morning was a warm up then two lots of a 30 minute ride and a 5km run, then a warm down. With the ride legs I deliberately took a conservative approach and was careful to stick to the prescribed power levels. I am getting a bit more of an understanding of just how much damage to your run leg pushing too hard on the bike can do. This is particularly easy to do on the trainer, where the temptation is to always bump up the resistance by a couple more watts. Today I wanted the run legs to go well, so I stuck to my targets on the bike.

Whilst I wanted the run legs to go well, I also wasn't going in planning on chasing a PB or anything. The goal times for the runs were fairly conservative. I knew I would be able to be be comfortably under them, but I didn't set myself any targets other than that. So with this in mind I was pleasantly surprised by the first 5km piece. I held back a bit on that one until the last 500m or so when I stepped it up because I was still feeling good. But it still went well.

The legs took a little while to adjust back to the bike for the second ride leg, but after five or six minutes they were back into the rhythm.

The second run leg was the real highlight of the session though. Since the first leg had gone so well, I was keen to push the second one a bit. After the second kilometer I felt like I was moving well, so I just kept pushing that pace. It got tough by the end, but I was very happy with the result. Not a 5km PB, but certainly one of my top times. The real highlight for me though was that it felt good doing it. It hadn't felt like I was just holding on by my fingernails, but more that I was in control of the run. It has been a long time since running has felt that way, but over the last couple of week I have been getting that feeling more and more. It give me some hope that come the run leg next weekend, I might be able to do better than just survive.

Rest day tomorrow. This last week has been a lighter one, but taper proper starts now. With the morning off I am keen to get a nice solid sleep. Keeping in mind that there is an even chance that my son will be up before 5:00, I will head to bed on the early side, with the goal of getting a decent night's sleep no matter what time he wakes up. If by some miracle he sleeps until 5:30 then bonus. If not, then I want to make sure that I wake up feeling good anyway. Time to start resting up.