Another strange week. The first couple of days of the week were ‘off’ days – a bit of recovery from Sunday’s Olympic Tri (in which I placed 2nd – my first podium – even if it was a pedestrian field), and also some travel back from Hyderabad. And then at the end of the week, I had planned to do Nandi Epic (112km) ride, but couldn’t because I was feeling a bit under the weather.

Managed to squeeze in one swim, and got a few encouraging sessions in. One was the 18km run on Saturday, where I was able to hold 4:46/km for 14km. And the trainer sessions forced me to ride reasonably high intensity despite heavy legs.

So not a great training week, but kept it ticking over. The focus now is on my last 3-week run block towards a half marathon. And I’m about 13.5 weeks away from Colombo tri. Hence, I’ll move into a tri-specific training block with a greater emphasis on swimming and longer rides once the HM is done.

Another thing I’m going to start throwing in is running in the heat (whenever I can) so I get acclimatized at least a bit.

On to week 47.

A bizarre training week. Travel, festival, illness and some logistical challenges. Tuesday was a holiday so I managed to do a hard 2-a-day run/bike block. But the second half of the week was difficult. First, the pool was closed for 3 straight days for Diwali – so no swim midweek! Then I traveled to Chennai for work on Thursday, returning late on Friday, so a little tired and sleep deprived. But that wasn’t the half of it.

We were scheduled to go to Hyderabad for the Hyderabad Tri (Olympic distance) and spend a weekend with friends there. A few hours after I returned from Chennai, and just a couple of hours before we were scheduled to fly to Hyderabad, I had a scary experience. I had the mightiest of headaches (and I rarely experience headaches except for the odd hot-day run or a hangover). The headache was so severe it woke me up! And then I started to feel nauseous. I was feeling so unwell, we ended up not leaving on our morning flight (bye, bye tickets). A little later in the day, I was still unwell, had a ‘hangover’ headache and general uneasiness. But I didn’t want to waste the planned weekend. So we took a later flight. All this meant that I wasn’t remotely well enough to train on Saturday, so I missed a second session (a hard run this time). As we went to Hyderabad, I still hadn’t made up my mind whether I would do the triathlon the next day.

Late on Saturday evening, I decided to give it a go. So, I went to the bike shop to rent a bike. Wasn’t a very good bike, but was functional and I wasn’t planning to ‘race’ as much as use the event as a good, hard training session with some transition practice.

Come race day (Sunday), my event was scheduled to start at 8.30am with a pool swim of 1500m. We ended up waiting in the sun to swim our turn – and by the time I started, it was 9.25 (and nearly 30 deg!). Scorcher.

The bike leg wasn’t enjoyable either since there were no road closures and we rode with traffic, the heat and the wind. And with a heavy bike, a size too small, that didn’t run very smoothly, it was a challenging ride. But since I was looking for a hard training session, it certainly served that purpose.

The run leg began at around 11.30 for me – a high noon 10km on a hot, hilly course wasn’t easy. But once again, if I were to look at it as a good training session for hot 70.3 races like Goa and Colombo, it certainly served the purpose. Had a reasonably strong run under the circumstances and finished in about 53 mins.

I scraped together a 500TSS week which wasn’t too bad given all the logistical challenges, the sudden illness and the travel.

On to the next (hopefully more routine) week.

This was a good, tough week overall – managed to hit nearly all my sessions. I missed one swim, but also moved a swim from the previous week into this one, so I still got one swim done. Two runs, in particular, felt quite hard. One was the Thursday 13km – which pushed me quite a bit. I was glad to run with company for that one. And I came within a minute of both my 5km and 10km PBs for that one. I think I should be in good shape to beat both PBs in the next month.

This was also my first 500+ TSS week since training for Sunshine Coast. So it’s been a good 3 months since I did this kind of a week. Feels good.

I also had some hard trainer rides – now that I tested a higher FTP last weekend. While I tested a 245 on the ramp test, I was advised by my coach to keep it at 235 until I adapted (otherwise it would be more than 10% jump from what I was training at). This has served me well so far – even the sweet spot rides have been enough of an effort so I can tell the difference.

I’m not happy with not getting my swims in. November is the month in which I want to make sure my swimming gets back on track slowly. I’m still in the middle of my run block, but leading into my swim camp on Dec 6th, I don’t want to be totally rusty.

My diet has been a little erratic – holidays, events and late nights are contributing factors – but it hasn’t been out of control. So I’m still on track to try and get close to 76kgs without loss in power by the end of the calendar year.

Traveling to Hyderabad next weekend, so going to do an Olympic tri on a rented bike and a pool swim. So, while it won’t be ideal ‘racing’ conditions, I intend to use the event as a good brick session, and transition practice.

 

This was an easy training week, which was for the best. Mid-week, my work got very intense and had a couple of nights of sleeping at 2.30am. So, I moved rest days around to give me at least a bit of sleep on those days.

This week, I focussed on: (1) recovering from the Achilles pain that had started to bother me towards the end of the last week – likely because my run intensity and load has increased (2) testing my FTP so that I train on the bike at the right intensity.

With only two runs (and a gap of a couple of days before and after each of them), my Achilles seems to be doing better. I’ll only really know this week though, as my running frequency picks back up. Also, a bit of a cheat – I moved my only swim for the week to Monday and made it a ‘recovery swim’. This was because I couldn’t squeeze it into the week. But from the coming week, I need to make sure I get the swim(s) in the right time of the week.

I was a lot less diligent about tracking my caloric intake. But on the days I did, it did help me keep track of what I was eating. And I continued to be conscious of the little things I was doing through the day that all added up to quite some (junk) calories. I’ll get back to tracking this week.

The training block continues this week. 2 weeks to Hyderabad Triathlon (Olympic distance) which I intend to use purely as a hard training session. I’ll see how well I can do a 10k run on tired legs (ROTB). And it’s been a while since I did a 1500m straight swim, so that’ll help as well.

Another green week! It was harder to maintain the streak early this week, as I overslept on Tuesday morning, and had a couple of two-a-days. But a holiday on Friday allowed me to make it all up.

Ankle and lower calf started to hurt after a somewhat high intensity run on Wednesday. Had to nurse it through the week by (1) massaging the Achilles myself (2) some foam rolling (3) lots of heel and calf stretches on the edge of a step. A rest day and a swim session coming up early in the coming week – so hopefully the rest and some more stretching will help me get back to normal.

I successfully tracked a lot of my food intake this week using myfitnesspal. I don’t trust that it’s very accurate, but like a weighing scale, I think it allows me to compare one day with another. Since I’ve been aware of the need to log it, I’ve also been more conscious of my food intake through the day. Even so, the odd meal out and some mindless eating result in huge spikes.

It’s also really driven home the point that the calories I burn as part of my training are the only reason I can stay in reasonable shape despite the caloric spikes. Of course, this also explains the rate at which I put on weight (and girth!) when I stop my training even for a few weeks – like when I broke my collarbone earlier or the vacation in Aug/Sep.

The week ahead is a recovery week, so I’ll focus on:

1. Resting, stretching and eliminating the pain in my leg
2. Doing a 20 min FTP test on the bike
3. Continuing to track my food intake to see if I can stabilize it

On to week 4.