hpatraininglog

Intro

With the Marathon Champs fresh in my memory, and in my body. Now my attention turns to recovering as much as possible. But also trying to enjoy being at Kielder Forest.

My body is a wreck.

No pretending I’m fine to ride my bike when I’m clearly not.

Monday

Day after the night before.

Sore elbow from wiping out the day before the race.

Feeling like I’ve been run over by a bulldozer from the race itself and my central nervous system in complete shut down.

My body feels like an absolute shell.

Managing to get out of bed feeling like I’ve got shell shock. Food and coffee consumed, I’d agreed to go out for a super chilled out recovery spin.

Not much energy or motivation I manage to get out on the bike. And since my shoe was broken, I had to use some zip ties to keep it secure to my foot.

We hit up the blue route called the Osprey loop.

What I was told was going to be a super easy ride, turned out to have a ton of climbing in it!! So using the easiest gears I’ve got and keeping the legs just spinning we got it done.

Taking our time, the ride was pretty good!

When I got in, I had shower, food and went straight to bed where I slept off an on for two hours more or less.

Waking up feeling ever so slightly better, ish. The rest of the day was spent in lounge ware and reading my book.

Recovery kick started.

Tuesday

If anything I think I woke up feeling even worse.

Talks of going out for a 25 mile loop around the reservoir, but you know what. I just couldn’t face getting on the bike. My CNS was in the absolute bin and I felt like I had no energy whatsoever.

So I didn’t ride.

Instead I walked up to the dark sky observatory a few miles down the road (or up as it’s on top of a big ole hill).

Nice steady walk up and some great views at the top.

Unfortunately the observatory deck was inaccessible as its all under construction.

Nice steady walk back down, I felt spent just walking.

Got back, had lunch and you guessed it! Another nap. Sleep is key to recovery!

Eat. Sleep. Nap. Repeat.

Again spent the remainder of the day in loungewear and chilling out.

Wednesday

Travel day back home.

Got the vehicles packed and before 0930 we were out the door. We all decided to stop off at Newcastleton on the way home, only half hour down the road, as there was a great cafe there called Mollies that did this tray bake we all friggin’ loved.

We discovered this cafe after the race on Sunday and all decided we needed to go back there one last time.

It served as a good place to get coffee and breakfast before the 3.5hr drive back home.

Feeling a little more human today, but still not perfect, the good coffee and food helped too.

Journey back home was good as it was midweek, the traffic was steady. The scenery is so much better in the north than it is south of Preston.

Getting home we spent the rest of the day sorting kit and the van out. All the usual admin and getting back to some sort of normality.

Thursday

Today is a Zwift kinda day.

Still feeling knackered but also the weather is poo.

So a gentle recovery spin on Zwift it is.

Nothing exciting, an hour and 40 mins spinning the legs at a high end Z1 effort.

Job done.

Friday

Again more Zwift! and another recovery session just to spin the legs.

Getting a little more power out this time but not putting any pressure on myself to hit any specific watts. Just to spin my legs out and get the blood flowing.

Saturday

First longer ride since the race almost a week ago.

3 hours endurance today, so for ease of mind body and soul I took the road bike out as it was already sorted. Nothing needed doing to it.

I wasn’t exactly feeling that perky today. Having a headache I couldn’t shift, I spent most of the day trying to keep hydrated and seeing if I could shift it.

Decided by early afternoon just to go out for a spin around a local loop a few times, so that if I felt like I wanted to stop I wasn’t too far from home.

When I got out and got going I actually felt a lot better.

For the first time this week I was starting to feel like normal.

In the end I got 2 hours 40ish mins done, so pretty happy with that, although. my legs still felt a bit heavy afterwards.

Sunday

Making the most of the good weather whilst we still have it, today is a endurance gravel ride.

A bit of bike faff to start however, getting the rear mech charged, pedals on the bike and swapping wheels about.

Another slow start to the day, but when we were out it was a good day for it. Not too hot, sunny and dry.

Cycling to a local ish woods we’d found on google maps we wanted to explore what it was like and if it was any good for off road training, specifically for cyclocross.

It had good fire roads and plenty of gravel, but unfortunately any single track in there was so overgrown we had to keep getting off the bikes and walking through it getting attacked by thorns and foliage.

A bit of a failed mission in the woods, but it was nice to explore an area we hadn’t been to before.

On the way home I went the long way round to make up a bit of extra distance on the usual roads I use for training.

Then, on the way home, my bike started making a horrendous noise.

I stopped. Checked everything I could think of. Nothing obvious.

Fine. I’ll deal with it when I get home.

I picked the bike up to put it away and heard metal rattling around.

Oh.

The cassette had come completely loose.

GREAT.

AliExpress strikes again.

What this week reminded me

Don’t buy from AliExpress.

Seriously though;

SLEEP. This is so essential for recovery. After the race I may not have slept much longer in duration at night, but the afternoon naps were pretty essential. Otherwise I’m not sure how I’d been able to function to be honest.

FOOD. I think I needed to eat more and eat more varied food. Especially fruits and veggies. This lacked a little this week, but for me it would have made me feel a bit better mentally I was getting that sort of thing in. But ultimately carbs were my best friend this week.

Going easy. No pressure to hit timings for watts, just spinning my legs to get the blood through to promote recovery. I felt much better for it in the end.

This weeks stats;

Time; 10 hours 25 minutes

Distance; 159 miles (some indoor miles)

TSS; 380