It's only been a couple of weeks since my last blog, but how things can turn around in that time. After getting back from Tenerife I had a few easier days, but then got back on with training, yes fatigue was there as you would expect, but nothing unusual for me.
It wasn't long before things started going pearshaped, sore legs that just didn't seem to ease and although I was completing sessions, they just felt harder, also I did notice my HR was low for the power but again this isn't unusual for me. Still I pushed on and looked forward to the next rest day.
Then I just popped, what should have been a fairly simple session to completed ended in failure. Even then I tried to complete it, but the body, or more importantly the legs said no way. It was the first failure of a session after 3 months of solid work, and although I reasoned it wasn't surprising, the lack of recovery from the session was a bit worrying. More worryingly for me was it was the bike sessions that were really suffering, the swimming and running seemed to be going OK.
Here is where having a very wise and understanding coach helps massively, it would have been so easy to say "hey ho, bit of a failure but let's just carry on with the plan". Yes I could have done this, the weekend's training would have got done, but the fatigue would have only had got worse. Ruth in her wisdom told me to can the Sunday long ride, and get as much recovery in as possible. I did more than that though after a difficult swim I decided to can the rest of Saturday's training as well, and do some much neglected family stuff instead.
Sunday was even lazier I suppose, I couldn't be bother to get up at 6am for the morning swim, thinking sleep was far more important, I ended up with a cracking 10 hours sleep. I felt a huge amount better, I still paid heed to Ruth's words though and did a short turbo session and a short run. These felt good and not stressful at all, very much needed I feel. The chilled out weekend was a real godsend in the end, it really was received well from all the family :)
I was very close to the edge and toppling over it, I think with some wise decisions from Ruth and myself, I have taken a step back and now can think about carrying on and still getting some decent work done in the next 5 weeks. I do ask myself why I felt so bad, was it lack of fuelling, was the deep down fatigue really that bad, why did it hit over a week after Tenerife. None of these are easy questions to answer, nutrition didn't seem any different from before, I have done big training weeks before without that sort of impact, and normally after a big week I feel it a few days after.
One thing is true however in that I have never had such a sustained training load, I have had 3 very solid months of 70+ hours a month training, in fact January hit 80 hours (a new high for me). I guess that in itself means a huge amount of long term fatigue, and perhaps 80 hours is the maximum I can sustain, I have to remember I am not a young 20-30 year old anymore :).
I remain positive though, it's not like my acquired fitness is going to disappear overnight, I also remember back to March 2012 when I went through a similar rough spot, that ended up being OK. The best thing is motivation is still high, so that gives me a lot of confidence. It is now trying to put together that final push to get as fit as I can in the next 5 weeks without going over the edge.
