Training Log Archive: rcro

Event: Summer Street Challenge
 

Street-O around Bishops Cleeve in 30+ degree heat. Legs tired out from a hard week and struggling with temperature so getting quite sluggish pulling away as it went on, and appreciably slowing down on uphill and against the wind.

Caught Ben at 4, then misread where control was on 6 so left 5 the wrong way then had to double back letting him get ahead. Effectively together the rest of the way but taking different routes on 8, 9, 11 ans 15 - but there being minimal difference in time. Aced the complicated bit and then found Tom C exiting 19 so knew I'd beaten him for a change.

Traffic pretty bad at start and end - which is the downside to parking at Tesco. Given I ran 100m less than the shortest possible route, note I could have saved a bit more on 1 by cutting through bottom of Lidl. I didn't like my route 3-4 but looking at it it's shortest valid route - north would be slightly shorter if running off the map. Mistake leaving 5 - so in total think sub-9k is possible.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1729555826

Feeling pretty tired so today should have been very easy and was pretty close to calling it a rest day given I could barely stay awake and walk coming home... but I just missed 2 KOMs on Monday and was on a mission to get them back.

Tried pretty hard, felt fast - and was fast, so have a big lead on the longer one with odd start and finish, and about 4% ahead on the "short" one.

Very easy rest of the loop to get to 5k - managed to stay on the "map" for the whole run.

KOM count now at a healthy 37.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1727637595

25th July was my sister's birthday and generally things go badly for me on that day - worst being 12 or 13 years ago where I was caught up in a hit and run incident then later the same day was the victim of what's best described as an "unprovoked attack" - which was pretty bad and stuck with months of dealing with a police force 200 miles from home and the joke that is the CPS... Still, touch wood, today has been mostly ok.

MDC run around the Neuadd Skyline. Made a bit longer by the main car park being shut and not enough space for everyone to park at the top.

Legs pretty tired but was going reasonably well - except on the steep bits. As it was such a long run not so much time spent regrouping and waiting which was nice.

Pretty good on the rocky section after Corn Du - some signs of improvement? But purposely slow going down at the end as tired out and trainers weren't so brilliant for that section, with lots of lots of sliding (similar trouble going up start of Cribyn).

Lift back to the car from Ben since I had beer from Waun Fach to give him

Briefly had yet another KOM - a silly one that nobody is ever going to try seriously, so possible to knock a good 10-15 mins off what I did...

https://www.strava.com/activities/1725450221

Surveying and mapping gone well this evening, so when saw Ben had been doing some long flat intervals thought it would be a good time to force myself out to do some sort of effort to match. Unfortunately not much flat around here to show how much slower I would be from poor fitness and illness but enough short hills that I could just about do an effort on before lungs give out.

Had an idea of getting back some of my KOMs, and thought best shot would be Llanthewy Rd as steepest - so did that first and hard. Very unpleasant and wheezing quite a lot - but 31s up on my previous best and 7s clear of the KOM.

That broke me enough that anything more would be a bonus - and despite that still within 4s of KOM on each of the three other efforts. So the others are all still gettable if I want them - even at current fitness.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1723111514

Currently on 33 KOMs showing - which is the most I've had at any one time for about 4 years.

HR was giving bollocks most of the time. Either that or I am super fit.

Recovery jog from home taking in a few bits I needed to look at to make sure I map appropriately. Much hotter than the last few days and with knackered legs was struggling a bit. Glad I didn’t try anything harder or longer in the end.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1720838556

5th time doing this and head not in race mode. Still got started and going ok on first phase of climb. From where turned off the main track (everyone in front went on too far, and nobody behind seemed to want to follow me the right way...) began really struggling on the climb. Cough has come back a bit - and from the Col was finding that my breathing wasn't very effective, once lungs half full was coughing. Along with struggling legs had to slow it down and take big breaths and coughs to the top.

Ben went past on the flat before the top so gave somebody to look at, and his hills pace meant I was able to put in a bit of effort to hold on to him to the top.

Good ankle tried to give out on the first steps down from the top but otherwise managed to keep going at *reasonable* pace on the "flat". The last bit to Martin was the hardest.

Made quite a bit of effort on the descent (and tweaked good ankle too at the start) but think I'm lacking the core strength to do it as well as I probably am confident enough to for this. Still losing a lot of places going down but despite not being 100% still made a lot of them back on the uphills - passing them as though they were standing still. Ben having his own troubles with lung capacity going down so only about 1 min ahead at the end - with us both thinking we should be in the 57s not 60/61s.

Despite us both being a bit disappointed with result - and well beaten by John Aggleton - appears we still won the team prize! Maybe should have stayed at the end...

Nice race and good to see the Ashtons out marshalling, and the lesser-spotted Austin sweeping as a break from running virtually :-)

https://www.strava.com/activities/1717892658

Appears Strava is having problems today - uploaded manually and that took a while, and very few other runs up at the moment.