Rest for the wicked

It’s been three or four days since I last posted and, given that last time I reported that I’d been hit by a dose of the often-deadly man flu, many of you doubtlessly feared the worst and thought that maybe I didn’t make it.

Fortunately, I’m a brave soldier with a steely nerve and a robust immune system. Even in the darkest moments, when I was sneezing my way through a pack of tissues, dropping Strepsil like Smarties and downing yet another glass of OJ, I refused to give up hope. ‘Not like this,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

Amazingly, I have survived but medical students of the future will not study up on my case just yet because I’m not quite out of the woods. I thought I’d kicked this man flu’s ass yesterday but today I feel a little run down again and the dreaded ‘tickly cough and sniffles’ have returned. But not enough to stop me racing in tomorrow’s Aerofit Sprint Triathlon down in Ghantoot.

In fact, aside from the obvious inconvenience of basically being on death’s door, it’s been an enjoyable week as I took almost three full days off training and have gone very, very easy for the rest, with just one swim, a one hour bike ride and 90 minutes of running to show for the week. And, again, other than being ravaged by a life-threatening man flu virus, my body feels good – rested and recovered for the first time in a while.

This actually reminded me that my best two performances this year came on the back of small bouts of illness – and, therefore, enforced rest. So, rather than the usual attitude whereby extended rest days just remind me of what I’m not doing, I’m trying to think of this week (and next... as I do a small taper for the Abu Dhabi International Triathlon) as ‘improvement recovery’ – a necessary time required in order to continue my progress not ‘missing out’.

The lull in training has also given me time to reflect and there are a few conclusions.

 This may well just be a bug that’s going around that I’d have picked up anyway (half of Dubai appears to be under the weather), but I’ve been going too hard for too long. That’s not necessarily about training – just training combined with 60 hour/ 7 day working weeks and trying to keep up something resembling a social life. I can and (as IM Austria approaches) will train more but I need to find a balance. If work does take over for a few days or a week here and there, then sessions have to give way rather than be rammed in at 10pm or 3am... that simple.

Like anyone who rushes from one thing to the next discovers, you may do more things but the quality suffers. I suspect that, although I’ve been racking up some good kilometres over the past month or so, the quality hasn’t been great. I read a really good piece of advice about that recently which said you should identify your three (probably one each sport) key sessions each week and hit them hard. The rest you cruise. I like this sort of simplification and will be trying it out in March.

So, ready, sniffling, and sort of raring to race. And aside from the race, this weekend I’ve around six hours of training to fit in. Sounds a lot but not that much.

Old me: Easy. Smash the race, get yourself to a brunch, grab a few hours’ drunken kip, sea swim, five hour bike ride, coach dirt run and then make it to the pub for a football/rugby beerathon!

New me: It’s a big weekend of both training and racing. Smash the race. Focus on recovery, and have an easy day of chores, a movie and maybe even a well-earned nap. On Saturday, keep the sea swim steady (it’s not my key swim for the week), cut the bike ride to an easy 2.5-3hrs and see how the legs feel for the run. If there’s time, a couple of drinks watching Wales smash France in the Six Nations would be lovely – but, if not, just watch it at home.

I guess sometimes, when you come this close to man flu-related death, it just makes you look back on your life and make some changes. And nobody, as we’re always told, ever lies on their death bed and utters the immortal words “I wish I’d spent more time in work”. Although I’m pretty sure plenty of people have looked up and friends and family, as their grip on this mortal coil slowly started to loosen, and whispered: “Bugger, if only I’d stayed between 60-65% maximum heart rate on my Monday night bike rides...”

Easy like Sunday morning

It's all been pretty whistlestop since I got back to Blighty. Between my overnight flight, heading down to Cornwall at 4am and a morning swim session, I've still not had a chance to have the lie-in I'd been so looking forward to. In fact, I've been just as busy as when I'm in work!

Although in Ironman 'you're really only racing yourself' etc etc, I see rest and recovery as one thing I should have over most of my fellow competitors. Sure, I've weddings and friends to see and some work to do from home, but compared to the majority of folk who'll likely have their 9 to 5 to maintain right up until a few days before, for a lot of my time I'm free to train, taper and chill out.

Yesterday evening, we headed to Liverpool to visit my grandfather, aunts and uncle and it was fairly late getting back. I was due an hour in the pool and an hour on the bike today but, as tomorrow is just a 50 minute steady run, I opted to postpone the early swim sesh in favour of not setting an alarm clock for the first time in ages.

It was lovely tho the extra hour or so in bed (I was still up by 8.30) just made me even more tired and I even feel a bit ill today – my glands have swollen for sure. This always seems to happen – perhaps you carry all those little ailments and fatigue in your body and, while you're going 100mph it doesn't have a chance to catch up, but when you do finally slow down...

Better it catches up now, is my theory. So, this evening I did an hour at a spinning class with my mum (although it's not a permanent substitute for cycling in any way, I like spinning to mix things up from time to time and add some higher intensity work than you do on the road) and now I'm planning a bit of a read and an early night.

Tomorrow, it's an early start for that swimming session I missed today and then a 50 minute steady run. Other than that, I think maybe a bath and a nap may be in order. And much the same for Thursday, if you please!

Taking it easy is something I normally find pretty hard work but, now I've started thinking of it as my secret weapon, it's something I'm much more willing to embrace.

Finger-tapping time off

Confession: remember that morning coffee ride I was planning on Saturday? Well, I jacked it in. Officially, according to my programme, yesterday was a day of complete rest – my first in more than a month – to round off my recovery week ready for two weeks of the tough stuff. Feeling energetic and committed and all, I decided that I’d ignore that and add an extra 60-80k of riding but, fortunately, common sense prevailed.

I’m conscious of how tough the bike leg of Ironman is going to be – not only because, at 180km, it’s the longest part of the day but also because bike fitness determines how well you run off the bike – so that was the justification for the extra off-programme ride.

The reason for not doing it? That mantra, that I said I’d keep repeating but seem to keep forgetting…TRUST THE PROGRAMME! In the end, I turned the alarm off and had my first proper lie-in (not my usual 6.30 counts as a lie-in as it’s not 5.30, but an actual get up when you wake up lie-in) and it was great. I was up and about with plenty of energy at around 9.30, had a nice big breakfast and then went about my day, getting lots of chores done. Given that I’m still pretty busy in work, it’s less than two weeks till I head back to the UK – and need to pack for hols, training, IM (so a bike and lots of bike gear) and two weddings! – and I’ve lots of training to fit in between now and then, I think it’s a good job that common sense won out. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that more mileage doesn’t always mean fitter or better prepared.

So, with a little of a handle on the chaos that is my life, I had a great night’s sleep last night; also, thanks to having no workouts yesterday, it gave me the chance to eat some good food and get plenty of fluids in. I’m pretty careful about hydrating but, when you’re doing 15-20 hours in 40C, no matter how careful you are, hydrating is likely to be an uphill battle. I’m feeling in fine fettle all old – good news.

It’s tough getting used to these rest days or weeks; triathletes, by our very nature, are usually workaholics – whether we’re in the office or on the bike, we like to dig deep. Therefore, stepping back a little feels like wasted time – I just end up thinking about all the swim/bike/run that I’m not doing. I’m getting better at dealing with this tho – and know it’s essential for making sure I can keep training hard and don’t arrive at the start of Ironman Wales injured or burnt out.

Anyway, it was just a one hour easy swim on the programme today and I decided to head to Dubai Masters’ early session at 6.30am to get that done before work. A very steady 2,400m in total, with lots of work on stroke and technique – the perfect session to warm up into the week. Showered, dressed, swallowed down a chocolate milk and straight to work, safe in the knowledge that my training is done for the day so I’ve another night to myself to relax. Is 11 days too early to start packing? I decided it was this weekend, so instead started an exhaustive list of everything I’ll need to pack to take back with me, which has helped to put my mind at rest a little.

Hmmm, maybe I could fit in some extra run sprints tonight then…just kidding!