Training check-in
What’s going on?
It’s been a while since I did a little training check-in. So if you were looking for clothing advice or food recipes, this is not the blog for that. This is going to be a plain old boring look at how the training has been for me in the last few months, what is that I am training for and what is my general feeling about things. To be completely transparent with you, I am also watching the Cyclocross world championships at the same time as writing this blog and how the hell are the Dutch and Belgians so good at cyclocross? Also, how the hell can Pogacar beat Van Der Poel in Roubaix when Vanderpoel can take corners like that. I digress.
Season so far and upcoming races
Life is busy since I chose to become the manager of my team. Last year was about dismantling the old team and old partners who were not aligned with the future of the institution and hiring a new team and new partners. That does put a lot of stress but I am enjoying this process. The hiring seemed hard in the middle of last year, but I was able to recruit 2 new staff in my team. As they are new, I have to adapt my schedule a bit to them and as such adjust my training accordingly. To be honest, it is not that bad. It’s just that some home office days have to be eschewed to be available for the new staff. It is nice though, I’m not complaining.
Having said that, I have been able to put a solid 4 weeks of training in the last 4 weeks. During the 1st week of the year, I was able to get a solid training week but no threshold on account of it being rather cold. Since then the weather has been a mixed bag, but as is the case with late winter, it is not -10 anymore. (At least for now). Since then, the last 3 weeks I was able to find a rhythm, even with different schedules and with the uncertain weather and do some threshold sessions and long runs. I even found good company on some of these morning threshold runs as Tom was able to join me.
Van Der Poel just jumped his bike up a hill like in motocross. Wtf.
I will open my season with a 10k in Payerne on March 1st. Then I will build a bit more in terms of threshold strength, do some workouts which are specific to the half marathon and 2 weeks before racing the Geneva Half Marathon, I will (believe it or not) race the 1st 5k of my life at the 20k of Lausanne. I have run an official 100k, I have done Ironmans and even an Ultraman. But unlike all my fast friends, I have never run a 5k. So that’s going to be interesting. I will not peak for the 5k but the goal, as Jake said is to learn how to race. Plus, the idea is that if I can run 5k pace 2 weeks out from the half marathon, it will make the half marathon pace feel “easier”. Well, not necessarily. What will make the half marathon pace feel easier is specific training, long runs with the half marathon in mind, threshold sessions like the infamous change of pace tempo session (where you run 4 minutes at 5–10"/k faster than threshold, then 4 minutes at threshold, followed by 4–6 sets of 2 minutes faster than threshold and 4 minutes at threshold.) and proper rest and recovery from these sessions. But then when it comes down to race day, a strong mind which is capable of racing will serve me well. This is where shorter races will help. I will see based on how the training is going to add another 5k in the middle of all this.
The last 4 weeks of training have gone relatively well. The last week was a bit more tiring as I didn’t sleep that well on Sunday night, began the week with a sleep deficit and wasn’t able to recuperate the hours. That combined with doing threshold sessions in the freezing rain accumulated a bit of fatigue. If the race was 4–6 weeks out, I would’ve pushed through it. However, the A race for the spring season is 14 weeks out from the day of writing this blog. Simply put, if I begin to push through the fatigue now and just maintain my mileage to assuage my ego, it won’t work out very well for me in the long term. Even long term in the season. I will, therefore, take a down week in the upcoming week, to let the body absorb this fatigue, I will try to also focus a bit more on sleep though that given the work stress etc. is a bit more tricky. But hey, why not try. Even if sleep comes easily or not, I will at least do my best to rest up, not build up too much training stress and absorb what my body has been able to do in the last 4 weeks.
Van Der poel is now 46 seconds ahead with 3 laps to go. More exciting is the 2nd place race between Thibau Nys and Tibor del Grosso.
Then coming back from the down week, the idea is to begin adding a couple of weeks of Vo2 max workouts. Payerne 10k isn’t even my C race and my only goal there is to check the 10k fitness off barely 2 weeks of Vo2 max training and around a month of threshold training. Adding that to the roster will not make me feel like I’m showing up to a gun fight with a knife. I know I am saying it is my C race now but I also know if it doesn’t go well and if I lose to people I don’t want to lose to, it will hurt a lot more. The idea is to find a good balance between finding decent fitness for a C race and racing it well, with the right mindset and working on the right tactics than trying to put all my eggs in the same basket and burning out.
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Nys seems to have broken Del Grosso. Del Grosso is taking breaks to stretch out his back. Van der Poel on the other hand….
Also this season is about the two simple philosophies I talked about in one of the earlier blogs. I will reiterate them again.
The 1st thing is well encapsulated in this blog: https://fs.blog/avoiding-stupidity/
A good example of this is to trying to continue to run high mileage when the body feels fatigue and work stress is consistently high. One down week, when I am not necessarily falling apart, is going to do wonders in terms of preservation and long term planning.
Wait, Del Grosso is coming back on Nys. Van Der Poel is almost doing a victory lap on the final lap. It is raining now, making the muddy course even more muddier.
The 2nd thing is this famous quote from Mark Allen:
As I am growing older (I am not old, but at 35 I approach things differently than I did when I was 25), I resonate more and more with this quote. I am no Mark Allen. Not even close. The man won 6 Ironman world championships, in 6 consecutive years from 1989 to 1995 after having lost it for one reason or the other from 1982 to 1988. In the year he won, he beat his greatest rival, Dave Scott, coming out with him on the swim, getting off with him from the bike and running next to him for nearly 40 kilometers before finally breaking Scott on Palani hill, running a mind boggling 2:40 marathon in 1989 in the process. The year Allen won, he let go the desire to win. He states that when he was in the Kailua Kona bay, before the race started, he was floating peacefully thinking that he had given his best in the training. Whatever came after the gun went off was out of his control but he had given his best to arrive at that point. That’s where I want to be. I cannot really control the factors which are not in my control. I am not a full time athlete either. I compete and I race because I love to do that. In the end, I cannot really control the results which will arrive. I cannot even control the weather or how work/life will let me train. But I can control my attitude. I can still be consistent, I can be quiet and I can do what I am supposed to do. I can avoid making stupid mistakes. And with that, I can be at peace with myself when I arrive at the start line of any race.
Van Der Poel wins his 8th Cyclocross worlds, becoming the winningest athlete in history. Del Gross 2nd, Nys 3rd. Excellent racing.
I think that’s that. That’s where training is right now. I don’t really have that much more to say. I am really happy to be able to get Tom’s companies on some of the morning runs, it makes me feel less alone. It also really helps that the days are getting longer and slightly warmer. Hopefully, I am able to run with some of the readers of this blog in the upcoming weeks and race with you guys too!
That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!
