I was wrong

You know that bit yesterday when I said it had been a while since I had last hurt like I did during my run session. Well that was up until today. Today I suspect I hurt just a little bit more.

My session on the bike today was a couple of hours but it included a 40 minute time trail. A bit of a power test. I guess the fact that it hurt is probably not surprising, in fact it is kind of the point. That doesn't really make it any more enjoyable though.

Other than the pain, the TT went well. Pretty well anyway. I had some bike issues, plus I went out too hard in the first 10 minutes and was really suffering between 25 minutes and 35 minutes. On top of that, I realised very early on that I was still carrying a bit of fatigue from my run sessions on Wednesday and Thursday in the legs. That meant that the pinch came on sooner than I would have liked. When a time trial is starting to hurt after 10 minutes, you can bet that the next 30 are not going to be a whole bunch of giggles. Still I muscled through, fuelled mainly be stubbornness. Interestingly the result was almost identical to a power test I did in April. Being four months ago, it would be fair to expect some improvement, which I didn't get. On the surface that should be dissapointing. However, my last power test was after a week of recovery and this one is at the end of a couple of solid weeks of training. Given that, I am actually pretty stoked to have matched my performance.

My ride might have been the most painful part of my day, but it wasn't the only bit of training that has happened today. I also headed down to the pool for the Friday morning Swim Smooth session and got a lesson on just how much of a factor your mind is when it comes to training.

See, the swim this morning wasn't on my program. The only thing on my program was the TT, but in my wisdom I decided that I would like to get in an extra swim this week so I was determined to head down. Last night I found out that the session was going to be the dreaded Goldilocks set, about the hardest thing we do on a Friday in the pool. This played on my mind, also playing on my mind was the fact that we had a busy day today with lots of running around and I had to find time to get the bike ready for the TT. Having all these distractions bouncing around my head meant that I didn't sleep all that well last night. So this morning I headed down to the pool, a bit tired, for a tough session, that I wasn't really committed too since in the back of my head I had noted it down as an extra. And guess what, it didn't go well. Amazing I know.

It just goes to show how important being mentally engaged with your training is. Being both engaged in what you are doing and also committed to it. Yes I admit it is hard to be totally focused on every part of every session, but often training is a self fulfilling prophecy. Expect rubbish and you usually aren't disappointed. Sometimes you surprise yourself, but often you don't.

Still it was good to be able to bounce back from that disappointing session with the positive TT session. I look forward to carrying that on to tomorrow.