A bit of a weird week for me training wise, good points during the week and bad point in others. You'll be able to tell from my training what I like doing most and what areas I need to improve on. I have a rough schedule planned out for training but it definitely didn't pan out that way this week.

MONDAY
Activity: Open Water Swim | Distance: 1 mile | Time: 42:31 | Pace: 2:23 min/100yd
Activity: Swim Lesson | Distance: 700m | Time: 27:22 | Pace: 2:19 min/100m

Not something I would usually do given that I have swim lessons on a Monday eve and it was a last minute decision to decide to go to the lake for a swim. I was a little tired, my legs had been sore all day from the race the previous day and I just generally felt a little naff during the swim. I did feel tonnes better afterwards though, my legs definitely weren't as sore.
I was a little worried about not having the energy to do my lesson later on in the evening but it was actually really good, I felt more energised than I was in the lake and managed to keep up as much as usual. We did a few front crawl drills and then did continuous front crawl for the last half of the lesson. Overall not bad.

WEDNESDAY
Activity: Pool Swim | Distance: 1800m - Time: 47:21 - Pace: 2:37 min/100m

There isn't much to say about Wednesdays swim. it was quite busy, there were a lot of ladies there who were swimming faster than me so I stopped to wait at the wall a fair bit, slowing my swim down. I still wasn't feeling all too great, I was feeling quite fatigued in the evening but still happy to have managed a mile swim.

THURSDAY
Activity: Run | Distance: 3 miles | Time: 32:39 | Pace: 10:47 min/mi

Run wasn't bad.. I was feeling drained all week since the race but needed to get out and do something! could have done with being more hydrated pre-run, I need to get up a little earlier and make sure I've had some water. Did 3 steady miles and got back to the house just before the downpour and the storms, I hadn't even noticed the clouds come over.

FRIDAY
Activity: Cycle | Distance:  7.95 miles | Time: 27.42 | Pace: 17.2 mph
Activity: Run | Distance: 5k | Time: 31:29 | Pace: 9:51 min/mi

Phillip headed out with me for a brick session - the idea was that we would pick a fairly straight forward fast route and go hard out to see how far if would take me to do with the intention of building up and getting quicker.
We did an 8 mile circuit (a little under for me, but over for Phillip annoyingly) and managed to average 17.2 mph without feeling too horrendous afterwards. We put the bikes away within a couple of minutes and headed out on the run. My legs felt pretty awful but I tried to keep the turnover on my legs quite high, which seemed to work out well. Surprisingly, I ran the 5k quicker than I do most of my 3 mile runs, even on jelly bike legs.. Ended up with 9:51 min/mi pace which I'm really happy with.

I'm gonna use this as a baseline to see whether I can get the time down over my weeks of training.

SATURDAY
Activity: Open Water Swim | Distance: 1.47 miles | Time: 53:22 | Pace: 2:04 min/100yd

We set off a little earlier for the swim in the morning. The air temp was actually colder than the lake temp - so thank goodness for my Dryrobe when I got out of the water.
The actual swim wasn't too bad apart from a few people that don't appear to sight properly and are zig zagging and swimming into you. I tried to make more of a conscious effort to think about my pull in the water, my pace was one of my fastest and it's also the furthest distance I've travelled in open water too.

No parkrun for us, another local parkrun was cancelled and we anticipated it to be a lot busier this week. Cambridge parkrun is really busy anyway and it's sometimes difficult to manoeuvre on a narrow course, so we didn't do the run - turns out, there were less runners than last week, so it probably would have been OK, darn it!

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So, as you can tell, swimming is a firm favourite of mine, but I really need to pick up the running and cycling. I hadn't intentionally planned on doing 4 swims and just 1 cycle this week but I had a momentary lapse of motivation.

I want to start including 1 interval/hill run session per week and 1 session on the turbo trainer for cycling. I've had a look at the route for the Woburn Abbey Triathlon and it's very undulating.. and with the fens being fairly flat, I know I'm gonna struggle if I don't get any hill training in and the interval work will help with my speed.

However, I know how bad I am at getting motivated to doing any sort of session that pushes me out of my comfort zone so this is going to take some major motivation!

I also want to get in a non-wetsuit swim this week if possible. There have been a few events lately where wetsuits weren't allowed due to the temperature of the water. I've never swam in open water before(not counting leisurely snorkeling in the sea), so I want to see what it's like and how I fair compared to a usual wetsuit swim.. I'd rather get the nerves of a non-wetsuit swim out of the way instead of being surprised by it at some point!

Question: Do you ever feel fatigued and lacking in energy post race?