Just have to write about todays training. Today was on paper my toughest bike session before IM Wisconsin and probably ever. It did not fail to disappoint. I wanted to be well rested so didn’t set my alarm and just slept. Woke after 9.5 hours just before 7 o’clock.

Not wanting to bomb like I did on my last big bike session I made sure I got my breakie. Couple of pork loins and 3 fried eggs washed down with a peach smoothie all whilst watching the Olympics. Great to see Rebecca Adlington storm the 800m freestyle. Inspiring.

Of course I got engrossed in all the sport on TV and started to run the risk of the day just drifting away. Hurrah ! I didn’t . At 9am out I got on the bike. I felt super strong and was looking forward to it. After 30 minutes I didn’t feel super strong and wasn’t looking forward to it. After 1 hour I started on the first of my 8 15 minutes at above IM effort, for me this really is push as hard as I think I can maintain for 15 minutes.

I felt great on the first one but during the rest period felt I couldn’t do the lot. Just decided not to think about the total just do the next one. I totally got into, got flow and lost time. Was going well, good leg ache throughout each piece and dropping over the bars at the end. I was running out of water so managed to devise a route so that the 8 finished at Bretts where I got my bottles filled, had a peach, scotch egg and two tomatoes and got 3 cooked sausages to put in my Bento box – something to look forward to at the end.

Now for the second bit. Yes there was more. 2.5 hours at IM effort. Could have done with a Power Meter as I kicked off at a similar pace to the 15 minute efforts. Of course, I eased off eventually but managed to keep focussed. It was going great till 2.10 into it. Then I really started to suffer. I would find without any concious thought my pace would massively drop off then seconds later I switch on and get back into it. After 10 minutes of this I started seeing stars ! I did think how weird it was I could actually see this white spots in my peripheral vision. Soon after this I started to feel dizzy. Kept thinking I should stop but caught myself and said don’t be stupid … you’ve worked hard for hours to get to this point and these last minutes are where I get payback for all that effort. The sausages tasted good.

It took 5hr05 to complete the session and in that time I covered 100 miles ! I got back with a 7h20 ride time and 134 miles on the clock. Very pleased – not only got the work done but combined with an over distance ride.

On top of that back in time to put my roast pork on and get out for my Brick before the Olympic highlights were on. Luckily I checked first and found they were about to start. So my Brick was rather broken having a 45 minute Olympic break before heading out for a fast 20 minute run.

Looking forward to tomorrow now – heading out with Jo. She’s got a bike session to do. I’m gonna ride the loop the other way doing my own thing. Plan is to do mainly steady riding but do about an hours pyramid in there somewhere. Hoping for a longer run after.