Week 9

My ever so beautiful wife is celebrating a landmark birthday this week, and we'll be having a birthday party for her. I won't be so crass as to mention her age, that would only be rude of me

I took full advantage of Monday's rest day. I could still feel the tightness in my calf, but at least I was moving freely. how it responds over the next day or so will determine my training for the rest of the week.

Tuesday's swim was a bit of a long one again (3,000m) with the main set of 4 x 125m; 4 x 175m; 4 x 125m. I cramped a bit towards the end, which may possibly be due to the calf strain.

I ummed and ahhed all day whether I should risk causing damage to my calf by running (or training at all on Tuesday evening); my final decision was to run in Z1 along the prom. It was a great night for a run and I had no ill effects after the run, in fact it felt a little better than before.

A row followed by a strength and core session was the order of the day for Wednesday morning, with the proviso of omitting calf raises. Despite there being no after effects from the training this week I felt that this exercise could cause some damage.

The recovery of my calf goes from strength to strength, the Z1 spin on the turbo on Wednesday evening went without any repercussions.

Thursday's swim consisted of a main set of 16 x 25m, 1 x 400m, 16 x 25m. It's amazing what thoughts go through your mind when you spend an hour looking at little blue tiles. Thankfully for everyone reading this I'll keep those thoughts to myself.

Thursday's brick session was the first Z2 effort since I'd tweaked my calf, bike element went without a hitch. I could still feel the area whilst running but I would not classify it as pain. Pleasingly, there was not a deterioration in pace.

Back on course for Friday's Z2 run, however, just to be safe I strapped up my calf. Ran at my usual pace of approximately 5:10kms.

I brought Saturday's long ride forward to Friday night, so that involved 2 hours and 45 minutes on the turbo. This meant that today was a heavy load, but at least I'll be free for all of Saturday's festivities.

Ang had a great day on her birthday, not having to get out there and do a training session meant that I wasn't dictating any of the proceedings.

Despite having a late night, James still played rugby on Sunday morning, and played well scoring two tries and the boys winning their last game of the season. 

My plan was to run home from the rugby ground at Hendy. I estimated it to be about 8 miles, I was about 2 miles out as I ended up running over 16km.

  
Despite the run being a bit longer than expected, it was nice and flat. This meant that I ticked along nicely despite running into a head wind for most of the way

Summary of Week 9

Activity	Actual Time	Planned Time	Variance +/-	Percentage
Swim	2:23	2:00	+0:23	20%
Bike	4:30	4:30	+0.00	38%
Run	3:43	3:30	+0:13	32%
Other	1:08	0:45	+0:23	10%
Total	11:44	10:45	+0:59

Despite starting the week tentatively due to my calf strain, it was all fine and dandy by the time I got to the end of the week. 

Cumulative Summary

Activity	Actual Time	Planned Time	Variance +/-	Percentage
Swim	19:36	18:00	+1:36	23%
Bike	29:48	29:15	+0.33	35%
Run	26:44	26:45	-0:01	31%
Other	9:32	6:45	+2:47	11%
Total	85:40	80:45	+4:55