Ups and downs

It's been a busy week at work, with quite a few late nights and a lot of stress flying round the office. I'm off to London this afternoon which means I've had to put back seeing Sarah until next weekend, which has left me a little on the irritated side, but there's nothing to be done that grin and bear it. I'm off to London again this time next week too, but fortunately I'm seeing Sarah on the Saturday and Sunday, so it doesn't cause problems.

Training has been going pretty well and I'm continuing to build up a pretty solid base. Stupidly forgot to set my alarm on Wednesday morning, meaning I missed out on my swim for that day, but everything else is going OK. I set a season's best for the hilly 8k around my house on Wednesday evening in a time of 31:34 (previous best for the season was 31:38). Sounds good, but I actually got my pacing hopelessly wrong. I went off far too fast, and was 32 seconds up on the PB at the half way stage. A little simple maths would show that something went badly wrong in the second half, and by the end I was really just hanging on by the skin of my teeth.

More positively, I'm going well on the turbo, spending the vast majority of my sessions after the warm up in mid to high zone 2, with bursts into zone 3 as and when required. I hope to improve on this, and maintain high zone 2 for longer periods of time - it should pay dividends come race season by ensuring I have not only endurance, but also the speed to match. Thursday night swimming with the club is coming on brilliantly too. I'm averaging around 2:42/200m in those swims, which is excellent, and far faster than where I was last season. Long may it continue.

In other news, I really want a time trial bike. And I'm looking for sponsors! Anyone interested should raise their hand!

23/10/09