8...

A(nother) busy week. Work has been busy but steady & will shortly wind down (*yippee*). Thankfully this means that I will also be working on a part time basis from mid-December which will give me a wonderful opportunity to get my business officially up & running (*yippee*).

Mon: a short 25min walk/shuffle today. Probably more walking than shuffling but as I haven't run - sorry, I meant shuffled - much in recent weeks, I took it very easy today. Swim squad after work was a solid session with 8 x 50m breaststroke kick (ie, no arms) and later 4 x 200m, each one successively faster. Ouchy! 2.45km

Tue: I had planned to go to the gym straight from work but managed to leave my gym bag at home. Stoopid. So rather than waste time travelling to/from the gym, I decided to spend some time 'playing' with ViPR instead. 25mins in total consisting of sets of 45sec effort & then 45sec recovery. A short but solid session.

Wed: 60mins pilates with Carly.

Thu: a big-ish day of training for me. 70min interval session on the windtrainer at 5am. My legs felt flat & as such I probably didn't work as hard as I did last time. Oh well, it got done. 24.5k before my cadence sensor on my bike died at the 58min mark. Then at lunch it was off to the pool for a 2km swim. It was a solid session and finally I felt like I am starting to swim well again.

Fri: a 45mins walk/shuffle along my usual route. I haven't done this distance in several weeks now so I took it very easily with only short 'shuffles' intervals and regular walks.

Sat: up early for my 4hr long ride before a busy weekend. I set out from home just before 7am for the ride out along Cobbity Rd. I haven't done this ride since June & so was very uncertain as to how it would go. Cobbity is a bit like a roller coaster; the initial hills are short & sharp. Each hill then seems to get longer & harder until the last hill makes you feel like someone is trying to remove your lungs via your nose (*apologies for anyone eating whilst reading this*).

The last time I did was ride was on June 5. I didn't feel like I was riding up the hills any faster - I certainly saw 9km/h more than once - but I certainly felt like I was recovering faster from the hills. Despite the lack of big mileage lately, when I checked my stats when I got home I was very pleased to see that I did this ride 9mins faster than I last time. Beautiful weather for a hard ride. 92.7km in 4:03 (av. 22.8k/h)

Sun: an overnight trip to Newcastle for my aunt's surprise birthday, and the logistics associated with it, meant I wasn't able to ride this morning. By the time we got back to Sydney it was raining, so I headed to the windtrainer in the garage for my 80mins ride. So I did the first 80mins of one of the aerobic endurance Spinervals DVDs that I recently added to our collection followed by a 5min cool down. A (very) solid, and sweaty, session - tiring but good :-) 36.7km in 1:25.

A recovery week to look forward to now after another solid training block. Oh, and a trip to New Zealand ;-D

MTD:
Swim: 13.5km
Bike: 402.1km