week 22 in review

153

This week I have tapered for my first HIM race simulation. During the week I felt like I was in a constant rush, going to Barcelona many times and moving from one place to another, such Terrassa or St Pol. It has not been an easy week to train. I also felt like I wasn’t training enough, nor tapering well either.

I should also rethink about my IM goals, are they too high? Are they too low? Let’s think about them.

The split times where S:34m 30s, T1:4m 5s, B:2h 54m 6s, T2:1m 34s, R:1h 29m 30s. I am quite happy with my swim leg, I predicted to be around half a minute to a minute slower than what I did. My T1 was slow, but I had to do a lot more than the last time, I dropped my gels and I had to put some anti chafe on armpit to avoid any possible rush, I was also distracted by some people from the tennis club while I was getting dressed. The bike leg was disappointing; I was 20minutes slower than what I wanted to be. It is true that I was carrying 5 bottles of water because I did not have a support crew this time, so it was harder to go up the first hill. It is also true that I found a lot of crosswind which it slows you down no matter what direction you take. I also suffered a lot from my lower back, for the last hour I felt some discomfort leading to pain; I had a hard time pedaling the last 15km or so. The course was not considered flat either. According to mu watch I ascended 750m and I had a temperature of about 30ºC. T2: was good as always. And the run was not as fast as I expected but considering the bike and the heat I did fairly well, I averaged 4.15mins/km. Running under 90mins was not bad and it was within the limits of being acceptable. As an anecdote, my weight before the beginning of the simulation 74,5kg (I had had breakfast and 0.7l of sports drink), my weight after the simulation 70,4kg (having drunk at least 4l of fluids).

The week before this one I was not able to do the two most important sessions of the week, the long ride and the long run. Also when I swam on Tuesday, it was the first time in a week, and I only swam half of it, and because of the tapering, I hadn’t swum more than 1,5km for over a week and actually the swim leg was the best of the three and the one that I probably felt the best.

The week started on Monday doing half of the training, half the swim and half the run to rejoin everything on Wednesday, although it was already tapering time.

Probably my mind hasn’t been working properly this past week because of all the University problems that I am going through. My future is wide open right now and I don’t know what is going to happen. I was also unhappy with some of the decisions that one of my flat mates had made, although I want them to be good decisions after all. They also look worse to me because of the uncertainty of my future.

This week I have started to see someone. I am not sure where this is leading to but I am not too confident about it. It doesn’t help that I don’t know what is going to happen to me in the near future and it doesn’t help that she doesn’t leave far from me or close to me. We are both very busy and I need a lot of time. And meeting her after being highly disappointed by my exam performance did not help to make things better. I don’t know if I can make things better because there will always be problems, but this last time sure was hard for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4jR9P9YJGo