Done and Dusted

The weeks are rolling on by quickly.It was only yesterday I was starting my Half Ironman training.

Well the last long hard week is over .It wasn't particularly hard in the end.

Wednesday , I did my swim in the morning and that was a hard session.We did a 800m warm up and 300 m drills and then 8 x 100 m easy and fast .I kept up with the group which was a bonus but I was tired by the end of the swim.I then did a 400 cool down. In the evening I got home pretty late and ran in the evening doing my intervals with 5 x 4min at threshold. I ran pretty comfortably and finished the run feeling  good.not fast but kept the pace at sub 5.30 per km .

On Thursday , I had a 2hour high cadence ride and rode from home at 5.30am .i got to Nedlands and decided to just ride around and do laps .Jeremy was out there and joined me.the rest of Exceed was doing a speed session to between the narrows and UWA .Did not see them at all. I saw Tony riding at Birwood so joined him and then rode into town and had breakfast at Tiger Lily's .The gang  were not there so I suspect they went off to another cafe.It started raining and fortunately I had done my ride.

Friday , I was feeling quite tired in the legs and I decided to skip my swim and just do my run in the evening .Could have just been lazy. But I was glad I had the extra rest in the morning . The run was an easy 1.15 and I ran to Light street reserve from the pool and then back and around Yokine reserve.

Saturday .My last long ride . I was pretty comfortable in bed and when the alarm went off at 4.30am I quickly shut it down and lay there and dozed off .I eventually got up at 5.15 and got myself ready.I was out and at the Narrows bridge by 5.40am as there was little traffic. Got everything ready and set up .My bike was serviced this week so it was feeling good.My gears were out of kilter but Phil had adjusted them.

I had with me 2litres of water. A bidon of Gatorade concentrate and a Kellogg's bar, hammer bar , 1 banana ,lots of dates and  4 gels in a flask.

All up I had about  330 -350g of carbohydrates , with 1800mg of salt and  some protein in the bars. I also picked up another 1.2 l of water on the way back.

the wind was blowing around the cycle path from the start but it was nothing out of the norm .It was always blowy . Just knuckled down and tried to stay focused . I did have some technical issues with the Garmin as it was showing a HR of 200 bpm which was not possible.So for the whole ride I just had to go on feel. I did 4 efforts of 30 min trying my best to keep at perceived threshold.

I managed to get to the end of the bike path in 2.17 hr and then rode pass Pinjarra Road across the river for a further 1.5 km and then turned back towards Perth to give me a 150km ride.The wind was tough at points along the way but managed to get my pace up. Had the usual magpie attack atLlakelands and about Baldivis I was passed by a younger rider training for Busso on a Look .I could not keep up and he was about 500m ahead of me. I passed him a few km later as he helped 2 girls with a flat. I stopped just before Safety Bay Road to get water from a guy whose son was doing Busso.He was selling drinks to the cyclist along the freeway bike path with his granddaughter. Had a quick chat with him and then back on the ride. The Look cyclist caught up with me and this time I managed to stay with him and hung behind his wheel and then drifted back to the regulation distance and then tried to catch up and repeat the whole exercise just to see if I could crank it up. I stayed with him till Murdoch and then passed him and headed back to the Narrows as quickly as I could. Did the ride in 4.38 and averaged 32.2kph so i was happy with that.

Got back to the car and did a quick change ,packed the gear .that took 3 minutes and then went for a run.I did approx 6km but again the Garmin was off with my HR . Averaged 5.25kph which was comfortable.