For the last few days I have been suffering with a cold or as it is more commonly known – Man Flu. It truly is a killer and have ensured that everyone in contact with me is told about it especially Mrs O. It was her birthday yesterday so decided I would take a 12 hour break from moaning – today was not her birthday so back to moaning and making death noises every time I sneezed or coughed.
Yesterday was scheduled for a short light piece but opted for a rest day and managed to leave work early and returned home and to bed for the afternoon. This morning we spent a few hours down at the farm with the horses before heading home for lunch and then into this weeks final session.
4x750m (3r)
I have only ever done this session on 3.30 rest and was unsure how to attack it due to my snots etc. If I remember correctly I started to tame last time and felt like there was too much in the tank for the final piece. Even if today was to be slow I still wanted consistency – I hate having a huge last piece finish as it doesn’t represent the session as evenly paced. I read all too often of people doing this, unable to hold an average split for the whole session and flying in the last set.
Plan as always was to rate high and resist the urge to bring on the power until the end of the last set. I wanted the legs to take the brunt and make them work.
Usual 5km warm up or thereabouts with bursts and felt good with the HR behaving. However as Beowulf once said ‘sometimes great warm ups end in horrible sessions and bad warm ups end in great work outs’ – don’t be fooled.
First set went well and felt light with a nice SPM. Decided after the first I should have squeezed it on more. Second was ok as was the third and only really started to bite in the last 250m. Into the final set feeling strong under control and sat on the average until 200m when I stepped on the gas with some power using back and arms to grind the finish in for a fast set (annoyed that I did exactly what I didn’t want to do and had a whole 1.0 sec/500m difference between 1st and 4th set).
Breathing controlled itself reasonably quickly but my legs (quads) had other ideas. Hobbled up and down the road outside whilst they tried to behave themselves and I attempted to stop them buckling underneath me (various cars that drove past must have wondered what was going on!) I returned to the erg about 5 minutes later to paddle for another 8 minutes cool down and bring everything back to normal.
4x750m (3r) 1.31.8
1.32.3 @33
1.32.1 @33
1.31.6 @33
1.31.3 @33
Rest day tomorrow and into a slightly lighter week next week, challenge series mile is beckoning.
Royal Navy 2k Championships – 26 days.