Fortnightly Review - Weeks 17 & 18

So I was about due for another stupid injury, and this one was as close as I have been to causing a missed training day for the last 2 years. I had a collision at basketball that compressed my neck and left me with a possible concussion, and a notable neck injury.

I went to the GP and the Physio and got contrasting advice, and then obviously followed the one I liked. Two weeks off all training was never going to happen, especially this close to Romania. Being careful, not doing anything risking a potential crash on the bike, avoiding tumble turns, upside-down yoga poses, anything that caused dizziness, nausea or headaches, and not doing anything that caused greater than 4 out of 10 pain in my neck, I could work with that. 

I missed the whole week of swimming from that point, and gave up yoga and weights as a precaution. I only did a very short jog on the Wednesday, and I am going to have to fluff my "How little can you do and still call it a session?" down to 0.8 miles to keep my consecutive days of training streak. But after the stronger anti-inflammatories kicked in and the physio exercises and treatment started working on my neck, I was back to almost normal by the weekend. 

I skipped the Parkrun, knowing that I could have two fast runs in the second week with the next in he Proms 3K series and a Parkrun to come (more on them later).

I did a very long turbo ride on the Saturday, and was back out on the mountain bike on the Sunday (although not for long as I punctured early and decided to cut my ride in half) and managed to run on the back of that with no problems. I decided that was good enough evidence that I was clear of any concussion risk and while I skipped basketball as a precaution, and have gone back to the physio for massage and exercises, I am back on normal sessions for the second week. 

Running is continuing to be ridiculous. I did a road PB for the Proms 3K on the Wednesday night, running 10:40 despite puncturing my road bike on the way there and having to cut my warm-up by the length of time I lost to the tube change-out and then pacing the race badly. And that is enough to put me in the overall lead or the series. (n.b. it is still early and my 6th place finish is more like where I will finish the series once those faster runners do multiple races). 

Then I rode to Parkrun on the Saturday, felt completely empty on the start line and knowing there was a headwind on the return leg, I decided to go out at my target 5k pace for next weekend, see how long I could hold that with the wind behind me and then once I started to suffer into the headwind on the way back I would just ease off and jog home. I turned at 9:05, pretty much spot on where I wanted to be, but then kept moving well to the 4k mark when I really did run into empty legs. But I was close enough not to just jog in and eased it off enough to not do any damage, but hadn't realised that even with that I would come in just 4 seconds off my PB. 

So within this week alone, I have beaten all my new run targets again. I am not going to move them again until after Romania, but I am going to move them again (probably to 10:20 and 18:10 but the North Champs in Inverness next week may invalidate those guesses as well.). 

This was my last fortnight on the big swim miles and small bike mile targets. From next week I expected to be doing more outdoors and more cycling as the weather improved. I have already been on the big bike miles and the increase is minimal so I won't even notice that. Being able to drop a swim session might be handy though. Now I am back in the office 5 days a week, trying to make everything fit is starting to be a problem, and being able to lose one swim a week makes a big difference, especially for flexibility about swimming outdoors. 

Actuals, (Target) - 

Swim 4.7 miles / 7,610 m. (5.6 miles).
Bike 109.1 miles. (79.2 miles). MTB 22.7 miles. (19.8 miles)
Run 50.9 miles. (40.6 miles).

1 short core, 1 short light weights and 1 stretching / rollering session. 0 mins of yoga. 

Cumulative Actual, (Cumulative Target), [Cumulative Stretch] -

S 54.4, (50.4), [55.4],
B 877.5, (659.6), [725.5],  MTB 244.6, (164.9), [181.4],

R 413.1, (371.2), [408.3].

Core         - 20, (13), [18]  
Weights    - 20, (13), [18]

Stretching - 20, (14), [20]
Yoga         - 27, (18), [36]. 

Fast run sessions - 21, (>18).