Training Log Archive: rcro

Been quite a hard week, and with nobody wanting to do anything interesting and weather not good opted to just stay and home and take it easy. Reasonable climb for 6k road, taking in a couple of alley ways I wanted to confirm I've mapped properly.

Pissing down with rain - which was nice - completely soaked through by the end. Dried off then took the car to the supermarket rather than get very wet again...

https://www.strava.com/activities/1735619445

Between rain showers.

Whole body pretty tired from yesterday so didn't feel up to much and expecting a slow one. But got a quickish start (by no means flat out though...) and once clear of the traffic at the start of the wiggly bit was able to start picking up the pace and take advantage of the ground being very firm - better than it was on my birthday.

Overtook Matt Unsworth just after the 1k point so empty space from there, and with some effort was matching Ben's pace right through to 3.5k and was steadily gaining from there. Finished 6s behind, and 9s off the unexpected PB. 4th human, only 3rd NGOC...

Third time sub-20 on the FoD course this year, and those 3 have been my fastest. And that's 2 of my fastest 4 "official" 5ks in the last month (others being flat tarmac Little Stoke and Cardiff... and an unofficial Little Stoke race of champions also beats both). Gets to a point when these can't all be flukes and just have to accept I've found some form despite not training for it... Pretty sure I'd have been close to, or better than 19 if I skipped last night! Another time...

https://www.strava.com/activities/1732609794

For an "easy" day, exceeded 15,000+ daily step target with no difficulty at all, it being on 37,800 when I noticed in Swindon at 2 o'clock. Either somethings wrong with the sensors, I did quite a bit more walking than I thought I did, or the ride on the new trains is so rough it can't differentiate between walking and sitting still...

Event: Summer Street Challenge
 

Street-O around Bishops Cleeve in 30+ degree heat. Legs tired out from a hard week and struggling with temperature so getting quite sluggish pulling away as it went on, and appreciably slowing down on uphill and against the wind.

Caught Ben at 4, then misread where control was on 6 so left 5 the wrong way then had to double back letting him get ahead. Effectively together the rest of the way but taking different routes on 8, 9, 11 ans 15 - but there being minimal difference in time. Aced the complicated bit and then found Tom C exiting 19 so knew I'd beaten him for a change.

Traffic pretty bad at start and end - which is the downside to parking at Tesco. Given I ran 100m less than the shortest possible route, note I could have saved a bit more on 1 by cutting through bottom of Lidl. I didn't like my route 3-4 but looking at it it's shortest valid route - north would be slightly shorter if running off the map. Mistake leaving 5 - so in total think sub-9k is possible.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1729555826

Feeling pretty tired so today should have been very easy and was pretty close to calling it a rest day given I could barely stay awake and walk coming home... but I just missed 2 KOMs on Monday and was on a mission to get them back.

Tried pretty hard, felt fast - and was fast, so have a big lead on the longer one with odd start and finish, and about 4% ahead on the "short" one.

Very easy rest of the loop to get to 5k - managed to stay on the "map" for the whole run.

KOM count now at a healthy 37.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1727637595

25th July was my sister's birthday and generally things go badly for me on that day - worst being 12 or 13 years ago where I was caught up in a hit and run incident then later the same day was the victim of what's best described as an "unprovoked attack" - which was pretty bad and stuck with months of dealing with a police force 200 miles from home and the joke that is the CPS... Still, touch wood, today has been mostly ok.

MDC run around the Neuadd Skyline. Made a bit longer by the main car park being shut and not enough space for everyone to park at the top.

Legs pretty tired but was going reasonably well - except on the steep bits. As it was such a long run not so much time spent regrouping and waiting which was nice.

Pretty good on the rocky section after Corn Du - some signs of improvement? But purposely slow going down at the end as tired out and trainers weren't so brilliant for that section, with lots of lots of sliding (similar trouble going up start of Cribyn).

Lift back to the car from Ben since I had beer from Waun Fach to give him

Briefly had yet another KOM - a silly one that nobody is ever going to try seriously, so possible to knock a good 10-15 mins off what I did...

https://www.strava.com/activities/1725450221

Surveying and mapping gone well this evening, so when saw Ben had been doing some long flat intervals thought it would be a good time to force myself out to do some sort of effort to match. Unfortunately not much flat around here to show how much slower I would be from poor fitness and illness but enough short hills that I could just about do an effort on before lungs give out.

Had an idea of getting back some of my KOMs, and thought best shot would be Llanthewy Rd as steepest - so did that first and hard. Very unpleasant and wheezing quite a lot - but 31s up on my previous best and 7s clear of the KOM.

That broke me enough that anything more would be a bonus - and despite that still within 4s of KOM on each of the three other efforts. So the others are all still gettable if I want them - even at current fitness.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1723111514

Currently on 33 KOMs showing - which is the most I've had at any one time for about 4 years.

HR was giving bollocks most of the time. Either that or I am super fit.