The Road to Roth – Week 6 – Close call on the crash

After another 17h week last week, I was quite tired starting week 6. It wasn’t bad though, I just felt like a needed a few days to get back into it. I weighed 80kg on Monday morning, but was holding water (and other things) from the weekend still.

Monday

Cycled to swimming, legs felt good. Swam for 1h05 and cycled home.  I’m not sure why we swam shorter than normal, I would have rathered do another 10 mins, but we had to get out at about 9pm.

400m in, 6x100m flippers, 8x50m drills, 100m easy, 6x150m arms, 100m out. 2500m?

Tuesday

Weighed in at 78kg, almost back to normal, diet is on again. Ran after work, 3×4.5m fast was planned in the middle of a 1h run.  I did the first one straight uphill from Bodenheim, the second was rolling but ended up a 10% gradient, I extended this interval to take the Strava CR, then the last one was pretty flat. They were all decent efforts but the steep uphill was the only full on part.

I felt really good, my HR was 141 average for nearly 15km at 4:42/km for a hilly run. I’ll take that.

Wednesday

Not a day that I look forward to. I had a 1h15 bike with 8x3m intervals, followed by a 30min brick run planned.  I went back to Laubenheimer höhe for the intervals, I had in my head that maybe 6 would be enough after LBL a few days ago. Anyway I started off strong and felt good throughout, so stayed to do my 8 repeats in about 3 minutes each.  That only got me to 47 minutes, so I rode around a little until 1h had passed and called it.

I quickly changed and started my run. Again I felt good from the start. I ran at 4:38/km for just over 30 minutes and my HR was only 137 average – excellent.  No nature stops required – bonus

Thursday

Before going to bed I wanted to move the bathroom scales from under the sink. Fully clothed and full of wee I weighed myself and was 79.8kg.  I was excited that I would be light on Friday morning. When I woke up I was 76.7kg! That’s a break through right there. I am only about 0.5kg from my adult low weight. I guess I might not be 100% glycogen full, but it still counts.

In the evening I cycled to swimming as normal. Swimming was pretty good. The fast lane was almost empty so I swam there. The main set was 10x100m. I thought 1:45 would be fine, so send off on 2:00. I was actually a bit faster swimming 1:40 or 1:41 in clear water.  With 900m of flippers stuff at the end, we swam a long way over almost 90mins.

400m in, 2x150m, 8×50 drills, 200m easy, 10x100m, 200m easy, 3x300m flippers, 100m out. 3500m?

Friday

Weight 76,4kg

Had a 1h15 run planned. Again after work I wasn’t feeling too motivated, but out I went and ran. I should have run 10m faster, but the wind looked good so I went for the Kesseltal strava segment that has alluded me.  I always mess up where it starts and stops, so I did more than the 1km. At 3:18/km pace I ran 4mins and took the CR. It was tough though.  Ran 16km total in 1h15 with a low 138bpm HR.

Saturday

76,0kg, crazy and a bit weird. just going to keep on with the diet and see if I fluctuate back up a bit.

Cycled with Vörwarts Orient, it was a bit of a longer ride and went up a 350m hill in Oberheimbach. I rode pretty well in 5th place from about 15. On the downhill people were really pushing the pace, a lady was falling off the back, so I decided to ride to the front to tell the leaders to slow down. As I moved left, almost the entire group crashed.  I haven’t ever seen a big crash like that, I guess 10 riders were down. 5 bikes were broken and a few riders pretty badly injured.

just after the crash
Just after the crash

We waited for over an hour until they were all sorted for rides home or to the hospital, before riding on. The rest of the ride was a bit cautious but not bad.  I ended up with 125km in 4h15 riding time.  As soon as I got home I changed shorts and ran for 45mins.  I don’t love brick runs (Koppeläufe) but it was okay with a 4:43/km pace and a nice low 137bpm hr.

The ride was a bit too eventful for my liking, some people will be having trouble sleeping for a while and some expensive bikes were broken. It could have been the end of my Road to Roth. I will have to have a think about future group rides.

Sunday

I got up ate a bit and went for a 1h15 easy mountain bike. After that me and Katja went into town and walked about 8km. When we got home, a 1h long run was in the plan. I was feeling quite tired and it was pretty warm, but I did the run at an easy pace and ended up with 24.2km in 2h. My HR was low as it was easy, but I was still feeling pretty tired.

So I had about 16:30 training time at the end of the week. Pretty decent all round, especially coming down from Liege Bastogne Liege.  I am just happy not to have been involved in the crash.

Next week is Mainz Half Marathon week, so I will have to rearrange stuff to get to the start line fresh.