Training Log Archive: kido

Long adventure with Kyhil. We decided to go and ride some of the course from the Tour de France from 2014 - specifically the climb up Holme Moss. We set out North from Sheffield towards Penistone, then turned towards Holmefirth. The first 35km was amazingly flat (relatively) - I'd forgotten what it was like!

The Holme Moss climb was 4.9km at 7% average - but considering the first 2km had a lot of flat and downhill, the last 3 were pretty tough! Good views from the top. We then bombed down into the valley on the other side and turned left up the A628, another longish climb but we had an amazing tail wind so it wasn't too tough.

I thought then we were done with the climbing - but apparently not! We turned back into the Peaks at Midhopestones and climbed up to Wigtwizzle (hehe) which was steep and long, and I was bonking a little bit. The ride was topped off with a crawl up Rivelin Bank - I thought I would die.

Wore my HR monitor for the first time in a long time during a ride - interesting to see the values. Even when I feel like I'm really suffering it doesn't get anywhere near my running HR.

In the 33m pool. Much better.

5 x Hill Reps. Feeling OK. Lacking in energy a little bit.

Jog down recoveries and warm down.

This didn't go great. Woke up having had a pretty rough night of sleep with a lot of soreness in my back, calves, ankles and heel. Decided to go out anyway but was really slow and suffering. It was quite windy as we got up to the top of Rails.

Coming down the A57 it then became pretty grim, stinging rain and strong winds. We turned left at Ladybower and got halfway to Bamford when my chain snapped in half. I have the tools to fix almost any other form of mechanical - but not this one.

Tried (not for very long) to hitchhike - but it was pretty cold and raining still so I tried to call for a taxi (they don't go out as far as the peaks) then put up SOS messages in a few places. I was supposed to be at work at 11 but it was quickly seeming unlikely.

Walked the bike back to Ladybower Inn and sat inside to consider options. Either wait for the next bus (an hour and half away) and plead with the driver to let my bike on, or ditch my bike at the inn and pick it up at a later date. Then someone suggested going to Bamford station and getting a train which would have been smart if we'd thought of it first - so that was the next plan.

But - we got saved! An absolutely lovely family from SYO who have given me lifts to events before gave up an hour of their day to drive out to rescue us. Amazing - don't even know where to start in thanking them.

Got to work at 12.30 which was pretty good all things considered!

Decided to have the evening off. Pain in my ankles and heel kept me awake last night so I think it's best to give them a bit of a rest. Will try to motivate myself to do some serious stretching and rolling.

Jog to / from Attercliffe for sprint-o training. Stopped and walked towards the end because the session was going way too long! Accidentally went home the long way as well...

Sprintervals around Attercliffe / Don Valley. Good tricky little area in places. Bit dodgy as well but I got it all done in daylight thanks to the change to Summer Time. Tried to do these at a higher pace (not race pace) to make the nav more challenging - think I went pretty well apart from on the second interval where I failed to read an impassible wall and had to go a fair way around. Went a bit longer than I'd expected and I cut the last interval out.

Session was OK today - but as the Sheffield Hallam Uni swimming club has cancelled its sessions for the rest of the semester, 7 of them decided to get in my lane about halfway through my session. So it was a very disruptive session!

4 x 800 / 300 then 5 x 200 / 200. Slowed down dramatically after the first 800, so I guess I went too hard at the start. I wasn't really hitting the times I might have liked, but I was able to really push myself so I'm happy enough with it.

Didn't have many girls to run with tonight! There was one girl who I was getting closer to at the end of the 800s and we ran the 200s together, so that was nice.

I didn't get the dizzys tonight (well maybe very low-intensity dizzys, and they didn't come on until the very end) which was nice! I don't really know what I did differently though haha.

Shop run. Tonight we went along the canal and back along the Don. First night of training after the clocks went forwards, so it was nice and light for the whole run. Good weather as well.

It was a bit of a struggle to balance tonight - I had two people in my group (other than Kyhil). One of them can run 10km in 43 minutes. The other ran 21km yesterday in 2 hours 55 minutes - and recently lost 85kg (that's not a typo). But he refused to run at his own pace so was just knackered at the end from trying to keep up!

This was one of the best runs I've ever done! Kyhil is up to his 18km training run week in preparation for the Sheffield Half, so he kept me company for most of the run. We caught the bus out to Ladybower Inn again, but instead of running around the reservoir on the bottom track, we climbed some hills and ran along the tops, with some stunning views and good fun single tracks. There were some really tough climbs, notably the first 3-4km and another extremely steep 1km climb at the 14km mark.

After Kyhil had finished his run back at the inn, I kept running down the south arm of the reservoir, and then I started up the climb to Win Hill. I only got halfway up before I decided I'd had enough running for the day (I had a gel but quite foolishly didn't carry any water).

The weather was amazing again, completely clear blue skies, warm and no wind. I undid some of my hard work running by having a pie at the pub after - was so nice to sit in the sun!