Author: NUFCrichard

It’s Thursday and I have a little bit of free time in lab, so here is a midweek update!
On Monday I cycled to Mombach and had the 4th swimming lesson with Max. I don’t think I learned so much, but the drills were good. We had 5x50m races again, I won them all but we had to do press ups between each race. The first 50m was in 40s, but that quickly fell to 50s for the last set. Embarrassingly, I struggled to do the 5 sets of press ups, something to work on me thinks.
One good new thing I learned was how to breaststroke properly, I have been pushing back, when I should be bringing my hands inwards.
So to and from the pool was 20km on the mtb and I reckon I swam 2km or so.

Tuesday is 7x1km intervals day, so I did 7x1km intervals! It went pretty well, I am feeling healthy again, I was running the last km at 16km/h when with 350m to go all of the treadmills turned off at the same time! Apparently the circuit breaker was tripped. I ran another km or so at mid tempo and called it a day. I did some leg strength stuff beforehand but saved the upper body so that I could swim again on Wednesday.
On Wednesday I cycled an extended route to Nieder-Olm through Hahnheim making it a 1 hour ride, and more importantly, it counts as a ride rather than a commute! Swimming was going as badly as last week in Nieder-Olm, when I decided to do some backstroke. What a difference that made! I felt like my arms were free and I started swimming 10s/100m faster! I did lots of sets of 25m crawl, 25m back or breast, then 50m crawl. Unfortunately I started cramping again after 1.7km so I called it a night. 90mins of mtb cycling for 31km and 1.7km swimming for the day.

Ok, to the good news, my weight was 76.7kg this morning. After Sunday where I was 79kg, I must have peed about 20 times on Monday. On Tuesday and this morning I have been under 77kg, so that counts as more than a blip :-).

The rest of the week is in limbo a bit, tonight I will run a middle distance run, ie 15-20km, I am thinking of throwing in a Mona Fartlek in the middle. Tomorrow I need to run, but just a slow recovery run, swimming isn’t out of the question either. Saturday is either race day if Jochen is doing it too (thus giving me a lift to Hanau), or a long run with some marathon pace mixed in. For Jantastic I said I would do a long cycle of 125km this week, I now see that that was foolhardy! It’s going to be zero degrees with possible snow on Sunday. I am going to have to do my man-suit up very tight and get out and do it.  Should be fun!

Next up will either be the 10km race report or my end of week post. For the record, if I race, I will be happy with a PB, but I have a feeling a that sub 38 might just be possible!

So with more sleep and less illness, lets hope for a better week ahead!

Tomorrow at least swimming with Max, maybe cycling or running beforehand.
Tuesday 7x1km intervals,
Wednesday easy run or cycle.
Thursday outdoor 15-20km run.
Friday swim.
Saturday 10km race in Rodgau and
Sunday long cycle.

Looking back at last month, I think running has gone well, cycling pretty badly, but it is the middle of winter, and swimming was quite bad too. I need to regularly swim twice a week and every now and again swim 3 times a week.  I can't see it happening at the moment, but I need to combine swims with runs and cycles so I can fit them in easier.

So it’s been eventful if not very successful so far this week!
On Monday, I did my hilly intervals, they were ok, nothing special. I did a bit of upper body and core stuff too. I think I am going to change up this intervals set next week, maybe 2x5km at half marathon pace, or about 4:05/km.
On Tuesday I got home and thought I would go swimming, but couldn’t find my goggles. I searched the entire flat but couldn’t find them, after 45 minutes I was pissed off, so decided to cycle to the swimming pool 11km away in Mombach, hoping to buy a new pair there. Well for some unknown reason they don’t sell or lend out goggles, so I ended up leaving un-worked out and not in a good mood. I figured that I probably left my goggles in Nieder-Olm swimming pool on Friday last week, so I emailed them. They had some matching the description, so I decided on Wednesday to cycle to Nieder-Olm in the snow and wind, to get my goggles back. It seemed stupid to cycle to a pool and now swim so I would swim too. Well the cycle there wasn’t very pleasant! It was freezing and against a headwind all the way. I got my goggles and swam badly for 1500m before starting to feel a cramp coming, so I cycled home, nice and easy with the wind, the only problem was navigation.

Now I don’t usually count cycling to and from places as training, because it is more like commuting. I mean, I cycle 15-20 minutes twice a day to and from work, but it isn’t a workout. So I decided that Tuesday’s 22km ride didn’t count. Then yesterday I did another 21km to and from the pool, and screw it, I am counting it. I can’t let a total of 43km on my mountain bike not count for anything! That’s like 60km on my road bike! So the 43km are being counted in my total and as 1 workout for Jantastic. I think when the weather is better (it can’t get much worse) the cycle to Nieder-Olm pool will be quite nice. I could extend the ride back too so that it is a 30-40km total, making it a nice little brick session.

So I plan to run my intervals this evening, 7x1km as always! I would like to tag on a few extra K if there isn’t a queue at the treadmills. Jochen has hurt his foot, so didn’t fancy doing outdoor intervals yesterday. Tomorrow I will definitely run, and maybe swim too. 1.5km isn’t exactly a full weeks swim training, so I will either fit in another swim on Friday or Sunday.
Saturday will be an early long run, followed by the weekly coffee and bagel in town, then I’ll be watching Mainz beat Paderborn. 30km+ should be fine, no need to go mental with 35km+ routes yet.
Sunday could be the group ride, but might not be. The current forecast is for -4 degrees. If it is that cold it will be difficult, but I will probably go for the previously mentioned Nieder-Olm swimming pool loop, though thinking about it, that would mean I would swim 2 days in a row, as I have a training session on Monday, maybe Friday would be better after all…

Just as general notes, the diet is going well but I am not sleeping well. I keep waking up at 4am and dosing until the alarm goes off (or not as was the case on Monday!). I’m going to try to reduce my caffeine intake late at night, I can hope for a sleep in on Sunday too 🙂

The week ahead.
I said I would do intervals with Jochen on Wednesday, that kind of screws up my plans a bit, but should be ok. We will do 7x1km probably at around 3:45 pace.
I will do my hilly intervals tomorrow so that I fit in the key run workouts. On Tuesday I think I will go swimming and maybe run home after (I always say I will and never do!) That will leave a cycle on Thursday and either a swim or run on Friday.
I want to do another good long run on Saturday, before another 10k race the weekend after. 32km+ would be good. Hills seem to be my friends nowadays, so I will probably head south again through the Weinberge.
On Sunday it looks like there might be a little chaingang going on. Our Cologne Bike and Run team is planning a ride, even though it might be 0 degrees out. It’ll be good to get a decent length ride in and hopefully they don’t want too many explosives on the climbs, I don’t think I am quite ready for that yet!

With no midweek update this week, it'll be a bit more about the workouts this week.
Monday was a rest day, it was partially planned as this week was an easy week, but work went late and my MTB was at the train station, so I didn't get home until 7pm, so I just took a rest day.
Tuesday I did a 15.6km run outdoors. It was a base run, with my HR somewhere in the 130s and the pace at 5:20 per KM. It was nice though.
Wednesday I did some upper body work in the gym, followed by a boring 1h on the bikes in the gym. They are obviously better than nothing, but I can't say I look forward to them. I might start to do some midweek rides outside in the dark. I have bright lights, it should be ok.
Thursday was my one intervals session of the week. 7x1km on the treadmill (1% incline) at 15.6km with 250m rest at 8km/h. I was a little apprehensive as it was the 0.6km/h faster than normal, but it was pretty easy to be honest. The last one was a little more difficult, but there was always some left in the tank.

Friday I had Swim training session 3 with Max at Nieder-Olm swimming pool. Me and Jochen decided to get some private swim coaching as we are both a bit rubbish. We had the first 2 sessions in December, but due to illnesses and holidays we haven't managed to get the last 3 arranged until now. Max is still ill so sat on the edge of the pool to watch our techniques. Apparently my technique is quite good, I turn my head too much to breathe and my kick gets a bit wonky, but otherwise it's not bad. We had quite a lot of fast intervals in this session, the hardest part being 5x50m races between me and Jochen. I managed to win them all, but they were close for the first 25-35m then I moved clear. I think the gym upper body work might be helping out there. Anyway, it was a hard session but it gives me hope of doing a decent swim split in a half later this year, and surviving the full distance swim!

Yesterday was snowy, cold and windy, but it was long run day, so I did a long run. Running against the wind was horrible as the snow went in my eyes about every 0.3 seconds, but after the first few km it was almost always a cross wind or tail wind. I tried out a new route to Klein Wintersheim – Nieder-Olm – Zornheim – Ebersheim – Home. It was going to be too short, so I went for a loop in the industrial park in Hechtsheim to get it over 30km. It ended up being 31.4km at 4:57/km. A decent pace but my HR was only high 140s average. I was still feeling pretty tired at the end though.
Today was still cold, but dry and not too much wind, so I decided against dying of boredom in the gym doing a 2h session, and went out for a ride. It was surprisingly good! Only 63km in 2:20, but its a start. I felt like I could keep pushing a little even at the end. 250km is still a long ways away, but I have time on my side.

https://www.strava.com/activities/245406094

Weight 78.2kg (+0.3kg)
Running 58km (220km YTD)
Cycling 91km (272km YTD)
Swimming 2.2km (9.15km YTD)

I am not surprised that my weight is up, it was a good week for my diet, it's just that last weeks weight seemed like a low blip. This weeks weight still puts me down 0.8kg in the last 2 week, so I am still pretty happy with how it's going.