9....

What a week. The earliest I've stopped working this week is 9.30pm & two nights I worked until after 11.3pm (and I've worked about 5hrs each day of the (long) weekend so far). Far too much work & food and far too little sleep & training. It's 9 weeks to race day today; I'm determined to nail every session from here on in. We'll see if work lets me do this..

Mon: up at 4.45am for a run, this time around the (cold) streets. 3 x 8mins (for the first time) w/2min walk recovery. I actually felt reasonably comfortable running so long as I was on a dead flat stretch of road. Anything resembling an incline or even false flat sent the HR skyrocketing. 4.3k in 30:23 for my shuffle/walk outing. Missed swim squad because of work.

Tue: rest (scheduled)

Wed: rest (unscheduled).

Thu: short strength session at lunch, more for my mental health than physical one. Trying to suppress panic about being under prepared for the 25% IM.

Fri: headed out at the decadent hour of 6am on the coldest morning of winter so far (the first time for frost/ice on the windscreen) for a run. Another 3 x 8min run w/ 1:30-2min recovery in between. I won't go so far as to say it was 'comfortable' but my first comfortable run this comeback is getting close...

Sat: after 9.5hrs of sleep, I woke actually feeling human for perhaps the first time this week; yippee! We were lucky enough to have company on my 2hr short/long ride today with Gnome & TA heading west for a visit. Out & back along the Northern Road for a relatively easy ride followed (of course) by breakfast. Thanks for making the effort to travel; lovely to catch up with you as always (*waves*). 45.4k. 1:57. 23.2k/h

Sun: the long weekend gave me an opportunity to swap sessions around. So I did my usual run / swim from Monday & will ride long tomorrow. After 10hrs sleep (still catching up), I took the opportunity to drive down to the river to run/walk the 2 bridges loop; Penrith's version of the Bay run but the people are much friendlier ;-P It's a 6.7km loop so I walked for 5mins to warm up then did 3 x 9mins run w/ 90sec walk recovery. HR was a tad higher than normal but this was no doubt due to the different terrain (one side of the river is footpath & the other side dirt tracks with smaller rolling inclines) and a touch of vanity fartlek.

Headed home for some breakfast & a stretch before heading to the pool for a 2km swim which started with 1.2km (23:47) to simulate a race (ie no warm up). This swim left me feeling comfortable that I'm not going to drown during the HIM swim but even more confident that I'll be able to achieve the goal I set for myself for the swim leg at Nepean this year; it's a sekrit.

Afterwards it was home again for a(nother) shower then R & I headed to Max Brenner at Blacktown where i had a chocolate souffle - for my lunch :-D

MTD:
Swim - 4.25k
Bike - 202.8k