It’s been a good period of training since the last entry. On Tuesday evening Jo and I did a LT Monitor session on the turbo. This was a 15 minute warm up followed by 1 hour at LT Power – the aim being to see whether or not this has increased. I’d been working on the basis of LT of 275 watts which is from a test I did in Switzerland in the summer. I decided to try pushing abit beyond this and found for the hour I kept the power between 285 and 290 watts which definitely is a sign of improvement. The fatigue really creeps up on you and made me wonder about the pain these guys going for the hour record must go through. Early on you have to persuade yourself not to go higher but after about 20 minutes the ache / pain starts and by 40 minutes it’s a mental battle to put up with it. You, of course, feel proud as punch when you complete it without wimping out.

Wednesday followed the usual drill – up early for a run – 40 minutes at pace in the middle of a 70 minute run. I had quite a cold didn’t make me feel ill but since I had some stuff I could better do from home I decided to work from home. Hugely productive day and feeling good about myself I headed out for my lunchtime run in beautiful weather. This combined with running to and from swimming meant I managed 25 miles running and 4.3k swimming. I was swimming strong which put me on a high.

This morning I woke at 4am and was massively motivated so headed out on the bike by 4.30am. So even though we had to finish early I still managed 49 miles in about 3 hours. At lunchtime I headed out for a run – legs felt heavy but loosened off after about 30 minutes. Ended up a nice chatty 9 miler.

Tonight I’m gonna pick up a Independent Fabrication XS bike to try out for the weekend. A nice carbon / ti baby. Problem is … if I love it it’s best part of four grand for frame and forks. It’ll be an investment I’m sure.