It was nice in the past week to think spring was finally arriving, with milder weather and noticeably more daylight. This, however, appears to have been cruelly taken away today, which I think was in direct response to me saying yesterday, "The good thing about March arriving is that we shouldn't get much more snow or ice." Ha. As always, I was wrong.
A summary of the week:
Monday 27 February - 60 minutes of swimming. As usual, I have no recollection of this. It must have been okay.
Tuesday 28 February - not a great night of training. Andy was climbing so I set out to Cockfield Fell on my own. However, there appeared to be some sort of freak weirdo on the fell with a very bright torch, who kept shining it at me, then turning it off, then shining it at the graveyard, then turning it off, and not really moving. I jogged on anyway but then got the heebie-jeebies after he (I'm making an assumption here it was a man; it may of course have been a woman, but we'll assume not) shone it at me for a good few seconds. I turned round to jog back down to the stile to run on the road, and his torchlight followed me all the way back. This was quite disconcerting, so I went on the road, warmed up for 20 minutes, did 6 x 60s fast on the road, then warmed down, did a few jumpy/hoppy plyometric things, then went home. This took about an hour in total: not enough, and not of high enough quality, but it was late and my initial plan was foiled so it was better than nothing. Henceforth I shall be training on the North York Moors on a Tuesday straight after work, in order to try and squash in a training session before it gets pitch dark.
Wednesday 29 February - 90 minutes of swimming. This went well: we did a pyramid of backstroke which was something of a shock to my system. Normally I replace part of this with crawl but I thought I should persist with backstroke so did 4 x 50m, 2 x 75m, 1 x 150m, 2 x 75m and then 4 x 50m. This is the most uninterrupted backstroke I have ever done, and it was part of about 130ish lengths. Nice bit of variation and although the word 'fun' is perhaps overrating it, I quite enjoyed it.
Thursday 1 March - Hamsterley Forest. The club was doing 6 x 10mins of hill reps, with a minute between each set. I wanted to warm up properly with lungey skippy things and some strides, so joined in partway through the second set of 10 minutes, then did the next three sets, and didn't do the last one. I thought it was best to play safe after last week's Achilles problem.
Friday 2 March - rest.
Saturday 3 March - 60 minutes of very easy swimming and drills, and 40 miles of cycling with David. This was a slightly longer version of the route I did a few days before Christmas when I was blown off, and although it was breezy, it was quite a treat to never feel at any time like I was going to be blown into a ditch. I did the whole thing with just a banana for sustenance, which left me quite hungry at the end but which was quite encouraging. It rained horrendously for the first half hour and we thought the whole thing might be cold, wet and miserable, but then it dried up and was genuinely a pleasant spring day for the afternoon. It was an absolute treat to go out again on a reasonable length bike ride in relatively pleasant weather.
Sunday 4 March - Brough Law fell race in Northumberland. 5 miles, 400m-ish of ascent. I went off quite fast and Will said that if I kept it up I would get a course record, but then some of the leading men went the wrong way and there was a bit of route confusion, which meant I lost focus a bit. Fortunately I was within earshot of Will for when the men went the wrong way further on, so I took the right route. Nice grassy runnable route, weather not so pleasant. Freezing. Although, actually, it was snowing a bit when I woke up, so it could have been worse. During the race we were troubled with a bit of rain but not torrential, and visibility was good. I think I could have gone slightly faster but I was first woman and got the course record by over a minute so I can't complain. It did, however, take about an hour for my feet to defrost, and talking to Denise and Lou at the end my face started to actually freeze.
All in all it's been a fair week, and I feel like I'm getting back on track. Now I need more quality intense sessions if I want to do well at the Championship races; I don't think I'll be in peak form for Lad's Leap in 2 weeks but I feel like I'm getting there. I plan for a hard week this week, and then a few days of tapering before then. I do love a justified taper.
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