Week 7 - Wood, trees, what?

8 weeks ago I realised I was in trouble.

The event I'd been training for, and everything else around it, was cancelled due to Covid.  Following a short recovery period of doing nothing, I was falling into bad habits, eating at my desk, not training and generally gaining weight and losing fitness fast.

I needed a plan.  The old plan (which went up to 25th May) went in the bin and I drafted a schedule to get me through to a rescheduled race (still on as far as we know), the 3 Peaks (now cancelled), the rest of the cyclocross season (tentatively cancelled), a race I couldn't ride before (but might be able to now) and a race I should have entered yesterday (but whose entries have now been delayed till later to see how it goes).  Finally, my plan came out of the other side of the 'cross season, into February, March, April and next year's May event. 

Pretty heavy stuff.

But damn it worked.  I've not stopped training.  It took me a while to get going and consequently I missed a few sessions.  That shows how much I had lost.  I was looking at this plan which seemed tame at the time and thinking, "How the hell did I use to manage this?"

After week 4 I had started to catch up on the sessions I'd missed which was really satisfying.  My approach of using short runs (strictly short) to keep running through my bike training meant that I could manage a 3.5km run and then a bike ride to catch up on something I'd missed.  When I finally did catch up, the feeling was amazing.  The sessions were just starting to get hard again and so keeping on top of them became essential - and I'm managing it. 

It makes me stop working at the right time.  It makes me get up early.  The benefits to my mental health contribute further to those associated with the exercise itself - which are already massive.

I occasionally am overwhelmed by the urge to tweet furiously about the benefits but fear it would just be boring to most - so it's retreated here, to my lair.  To what was - originally - purely intended as a training diary for me.

So be it daily, or weekly, I'll try and be here from time to time.

And this weeks thoughts - how is it Thursday already?

I was supposed to train on Monday but a bikepacking trip at the weekend took more out of me than expected - because I took all the things.  So I rested Monday instead and have been riding / running ever since.  That's all well and good but I still have an intervals session and a 6km run to do and my Parents are coming on Sunday for dad's Birthday so, I have to do Sunday's session on Saturday on a straight-through basis.

At least it's raining this morning so I can sit in a chair until it's stopped and I can climb on a bike this afternoon.  Again, an excellent excuse to stop working.