In a perfect world, my Ironman training journey would have involved:

• Building a base level of training
• Working on strength and power 💪
• Adaptation – hard days, easy days, recovery days
• Increasing volume and endurance🏃‍♀️🚴
• Peak period of training – high volume/most hours per week ⏰
• The long awaited taper – woohoo
• Race day

Instead my experience was more the following:

• Build a base
• Get Covid 🤒
• Feel awful 😱🤢
• Take ages to recover 🛏️
• Start to feel better and do self styled training camp in Mallorca (with hubs) ☀️
• Start to feel fatigued but manage to push on 😴
• Feel more fatigued, performance goes backwards, sleep a lot 🛏️
• Lose motivation, general apathy 🥱
• Take a rest from training for 4-5 days, go out and enjoy life 🍹
• Feeling good……ooh….this only just started today so scared to feel too hopeful. But maybe I’m back? I’m still in the peak period so hoping to get back to some good training before taper. 🤞

It just goes to show things don’t always go the way you plan. None the less I am feeling better and hoping to get back to training. I have 7 weeks till the event so its still possible to get 3 solid weeks of training in.

I will start at the end of this week with an Olympic triathlon. That’s 1500m of swimming, 40km bike ride and a 10k run. I will not be racing it but intend to use it as practice. Transitions are tricky so its good to practice the whole shimmying out of a wetsuit without falling over…..followed by a bike route without stopping and chucking on trainers quickly for the run.

In other news (although related) I have managed to do some open water swimming including a practice race; I’ve continued to ride my bike, despite a runner knocking me off said bike the other week (yes it was that way around) and I’ve practiced drinking on the bike by riding around and around the estate like a 5 year old with a new bike. 🤣