Reflections on a Big Training Weekend

I thought Australia Day weekend was a tough one.

I was wrong.

Saturday saw me scheduled to do a 2km swim, 100km bike and 90 minute run off the bike.

Sunday was for another 100km bike and 90 minute run off the bike.

My reflections on the weekend?

Attempting 85% efforts for 2km ended up being an "F" for execution. But I did as I was told by Coach D and got out of the pool as soon as I felt that it wasn't coming together.  Hated the fact that I had only managed one set (250m) though.  Never mind, onwards!

Sydney drivers in the Northern Beaches this weekend were awesome.  Thank you for being considerate around me and giving this solo chick a safe amount of space on the sometimes narrow winding roads.

Lace monitors are wicked!  Spotted a huge one on the side of the road during my monster climb out of Church Point.  (Much like this one that turned up at the Hornsby RSL last December...) Not much less than 2m long but he didn't want to hang around for me to get the camera out.  Another thank you to the car ahead of me on the road that actually drove around the goanna rather than run over him when he was half on the road.

Doing two rides on consecutive days totalling 200km is tough but including 3000m of climbing is even tougher!  But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

Running in 28 degrees plus, with no aid stations available to throw water over yourself, is a killer.  I must be acclimatising to Sydney though - a couple of years ago 20 degrees plus would have killed me off!  It did mean, however that our 90 minute runs got cut back to 60 minutes.

So the aborted swim and shortened runs meant this weekend was far from perfect - but still tough.

And while this Type A personality hates not hitting the sessions exactly as they've been set for her, as Coach D says "Progress, not Perfection".

And I definitely got that one right.