One of the questions sent my way during my “Living the Games” series about life in London during the Olympics was: “What about *your* training?”
Yes, I know. My training. I was lucky in that I had structured my season so that my August race would be a race I was doing for experience – with no pressure or expectations. But that said, I still needed to train. I have a goal race in September, my running needs work, I need to regain the fitness lost during my rib fractures, and, without training, I experience a physical decline from my nerve disease.
My training. It has not quite met up to my expectations before the games. I had hoped to be able to get in at least three sessions a week during the Games period, including shifting my Saturday morning swims to Friday evenings, making sure to ride my turbo trainer, and doing at least one run a week. Well, as they say about the best laid plans…
Here is what really happened…
Period of time: 21 July to 12 August (23 days)
(note: this period of time starts with road course training for gamesmakers, and ends on the last day of the games)
Training swims: 2
Training rides: 3
Training runs: 2
Bootcamps attended: 1
Not stellar. Far short of my expectations.
But wait. I was *active* during the Games. When you look at my Dailymile log from the period of time, you see a lot of blue lines. Meaning time and miles.
Miles from cycle commuting: 33
You see, at my office we went into contingency planning for the period of the games. All key workers were issued with laptops and many people moved to our disaster recovery site – unless you lived close to the office. Like me. For those living close to the office we were to find alternative means of commuting – running, walking, or cycling. I chose to cycle. For the first weeks anyway. It turns out that the chaos on the London transportation system that we all feared didn’t really happen. So I reverted to normal commuting patterns last week.
Also, let’s not forget that volunteering was also “active” time. I started using a Nike Fuelband just before the Games, so have some screen shots of my activity levels from that period of time. I have set my target fuel to “active” (I don’t adjust for rest days) and as you can see the only time I am not hitting targets is either: a) when the fuelband runs out of battery or b) during my rest days.
According to my fuel band, here are some stats for you…
Week 1 Total Steps: 96,361
Week 1 Total Miles: 39.5
Week 2 Total Steps: 86,998
Week 2 Total Miles: 35.7
Week 3 Total Steps: 111,528
Week 3 Total Miles: 45.8
Total Miles: 121
Total Steps: 294,887
No wonder my legs feel smashed! I may not have been training, but my legs are just dead. I have joked around with DH saying that I need a recovery week from the Olympics to get my legs back to normal again in time for Rev3 Maine. I am not joking. That by far was the hardest part of volunteering for me – the fatigue and heaviness in my legs. As someone with a neuromuscular disorder I am already prone to fatigue and muscle issues anyway. But for the past three weeks I have been plagued by tight muscles, nighttime cramping, and the familiar muscle twitches that accompany high use of muscles.
So no, I haven’t been training much. Much less than I anticipated. But my body has been working hard. This week marks a shift back to a more normal “body use” profile for me – structured training, as opposed to lots of walking and standing. I look forward to feeling some life come back into my legs, and also to getting some rest to shake the accummulated fatigue from the past three weeks.
Next stop: Rev 3 Maine middle distance aquabike (for the experience, not for a time!)