Fading away

After my concern about rain yesterday it looked all clear this morning so headed out on the P5. Turns out it wasn't quite as clear as the radar made it appear. No deluges, but certainly a lot of wet roads and drizzle. Enough to mean the bike was up for a cleaning when I got home.

The ride went well though. You forget just how fast a TT bike goes. Combined with the 5km TTs I was doing, it ended up being a very rapid ride. Not that long, but one step at a time. Was very reassuring to see just how well the TTs went. Reasonable power levels, but still working within myself. All good signs.

The second session for the day was the Saturday afternoon Swim Smooth session down at Claremont. I am pretty sure I have mentioned before that Saturday swim sessions can be fairly painful. Today was no different. It contained the usual open water practise stuff, sighting, polo, drafting practise. But the bit that was really painful was 10 x 100m dive start, head to head efforts. Dive, 100m, climb out, 20 seconds rest, go again. I was seriously close to seeing my lunch again by the end. It HURT. Good to do the work, or at least that is what I was telling myself over and over.

Besides training I am working on something else at the moment, my weight. A lot of people have the misconception that athletes do a lot of exercise so they can eat whatever they like. To a certain extent that is true, however, it only goes so far. When it comes to racing there are very real benefits to not carrying unnecessary body weight. It is a fine line in my books, I think some people take it too far and get too lean, but within reason it is a good idea. It is one of those 1%ers that can make a big difference. I often race a bit heavier than I should for somebody my height. What can I say, I really like food. But since I have been sick I have put on an extra couple of kilos over my usual weight. Before I race next I really need to get rid of that. I would like to work on getting down to a more reasonable race weight too, but first I need to get back to my old race weight. That means really keeping an eye on what I am putting in my mouth. Indulgent evenings in a french restaurant aside of course.

I sometimes get asked what diet I follow, low carbs, paleo, vegetarian, low sugar etc. I think some find it disappointing that my answer is none. Really the diet I follow is one of moderation and common sense and I don't see that we need to make it any more complicated than that (unless there are dietary intolerances involved). I don't think eating healthily is all that difficult, most of us have a good idea of what food is good for us and what isn't. Sure sometimes I don't eat well, but I am usually fully aware of what I am doing. Actually I think the reason that a lot of people keep looking for the next 'super diet' isn't because people don't know how to eat well, but more because, as humans, we like things that promise us a silver bullet to our woes. The thing that is going to suddenly make the difference to our training and racing. In the end though the only real silver bullet that most of us need is training with some discipline and consistency. 

Sometimes it doesn't need to be more complicated than that.