Week 5

Target 12:28
Achieved 12:30

What a week. This was the toughest week thus far and not because of the time. The plan was to do 2 hours on Tuesday take Wednesday off and do another 2 hours on Thursday with a 5 hour ride on Saturday with the balance split between Friday and Sunday.

I started on Tuesday with the planned 2 hour indoor trainer and within 5 minutes I knew it was not going well. You get to know yourself after a while and I knew I was not into a good training session. After about 30 minutes I started feeling much better and finished the 2 hours as planned.

I decided to check my resting heart rate the next morning and as I thought, it was up by 7 beats and my Polar put me into “Training Affect”. This means that I was on my way to over training and thus had to change my strategy. If not I could over train and end up loosing several weeks.

The suggestion here was that I take a couple of days off followed by a couple of days of easy and light training but I was also in the longest week of the program so far. What to do? I took Wednesday off and decided to test my RHR again on Wednesday. It dropped by 2 but was still 5 up from the usual 45. On Thursday morning I decided to do the RHR before I planned anything and once again it was sitting at 49 and 4 up.

I decided to take another rest day on Thursday. Friday I did another RHR and it was still sitting at 49 and I decided to put in some time on the home trainer. I decided that I would watch my Heart Rate and get off as soon as I felt just a little weird.

I ended up with 2 hours on the home trainer and I felt quite good. Did a RHR on Saturday morning and it was once again at 49. Decided to do some riding and ended up with 3 hours on the clock and with 7 hours thus far for the week.

Did a RHR on Sunday and it was again at 49. I decided to get on the road and play it by heart rate. I ended up in Suikerbosrand and finished it and rode back home and ended up with 110km on the clock and 5:30 for the day.

I achieved my time and managed to stay out of danger with my Heart Rate. Thanks to Polar and their system that warned me early. I did my HR on Monday morning and yip you guessed it I was still at 49 beats. This is good news as it shows that I am training hard but keeping within normal range.

I am planning an easy week this week with short interval training. I will also rest next week as I am doing the ATTEKWAS (http://www.dryland.co.za/) on the 17th January and I will have to taper just a little for it.

Both Rick and I are going to do it and it will be our first chance ever to see where we are at in relation to the Epic and also each other. We will follow this up the next week with the EPIC training Camp. I am Planning to do my entire week within the one day and thus use the rest of the week as a taper

This week in conclusion:
It was the end of 2008 and the start of 2009 with some partying. A work colleague passed away and it shook me. We were not that close BUT we always spoke about work life balance and as a result it was again proven that we should not wait until we retire before we start to live. We should live now for today and let tomorrow take care of itself. RIP Meryl. My condolences to her husband and 3 children whom I am sure will sorely miss her friendly attitude towards life.

I also hit training effect but managed to put in the hours needed to call this week a huge success. I have been toiling with the idea to do IronMan South Africa one week after the Cape Epic finish and with all that happened this week I decided to give it a bash. After all we only live once and I am so looking forward to spend the week in between IM and CE with my family in Knysna.

Until my next update, train hard and do not leave anything for tomorrow if it can be done today.