Recovery week before my first race of 2016

It’s been yet another busy week without enough time for blogging. Does anyone have any magic answers for making more hours in a day?!

On Monday, I went to my usual STC swim session. I really like starting the week with a swim, but think I need to push myself harder. I am determined that I will move out of lane 1 this year!

Tuesdays are my rest day and this week was extra restful. I’d got really organised and wrote a shopping list at the weekend, so I rushed to the supermarket straight after work and was able to buy everything really quickly, which gave me plenty of time to make lunch and prepare dinner before Becky arrived with her massage table.

I’ve got a course of massages booked with Therapy2Fit between now and Southampton half marathon. Becky is a brilliant sports masseur and I’m really looking forward to trying out one of her hot stone massages soon.

Last week, I met up with Rob from Southampton Tri Club on Wednesday lunchtime and we did an interval session, but I got the time wrong this week. In a way, I think it was probably for the best as I’m still not fully recovered from my cold. Instead of pushing ourselves too hard, Sarah and I enjoyed a steady-paced run of about 6km.

It was the alternate week, so I didn’t have to coach for Lordshill, but I was looking forward to Ant’s track session. Unfortunately, it was really cold and not long after I arrived, it started raining really hard. I ran four laps of the track whilst talking to a new recruit, but was feeling so cold and tired that I went home after that 🙁

2016 is supposed to be my year of cycling, but it hasn’t been a terribly successful start. Last week, I dropped the chain on my bike for the first time – I was only metres from my house, so I can only assume that it had got knocked in the garage. This week, I got partway u the hill and then stopped making progress. I assumed that I’d dropped the chain again, but when I looked down I realised that it was just that my back wheel was spinning because the hill was so icy. I got off to push, but just getting to the kerb was tricky. I ended up walking on the grass verge as I got a little more grip there. Fortunately, the subsequent downhill section had been in the sun, so it wasn’t slippery going downhill.

On Thursday evening, I went to a SUTRI spinning class. I arrived reasonably early, but didn’t spend long enough setting up my bike, so I had to get off in the first ten minutes to adjust the saddle height. I didn’t adjust it quite enough, but it was definitely and improvement. It was a different instructor from usual and I quite enjoyed the session. It was also nice to just switch off for an hour.

It was my intention to swim on Friday evening, but I was so tired that I decided to take a rest day. It’s frustrating that it’s taking me a long time to recover from being ill.

On Saturday, Abi come over to my house and we went to parkrun together. I didn’t intend to go too quickly, which was just as well as ice along the edge of the path made for a slow start.

If only the third and fourth kilometres had been the other way around, this would probably have been my best ever negative split! I am also surprised that the final kilometre was under 5 minutes – I didn’t think I was capable of that at the moment!

After parkrun, Abi and I came back to my house where we set up two turbo trainers in my bike room. Abi’s never used a turbo trainer before, so it was a fun session. We had a short break in the middle when I tried to adjust the saddle on Abi’s bike and failed (it was screwed on so tightly that I couldn’t adjust it). I didn’t push too hard as I was saving my energy for Stubbington, but it was nice to do my first turbo session in my new house.

In the afternoon, I did a bit of organising. I don’t have as much wardrobe space as in my old house, so I decided to use an Ikea Billy bookcase as t-shirt storage. It’s not as neat as it could be, but it does make it easier to match t-shirts to shorts!

How’s your week been? What were the highlights?