It is incredible how nearly three weeks have passed since my last post. In my head there are literally thousands of entries waiting to be written. But an incredibly busy schedule led to me hitting pause on writing and publishing. Thankfully attending Write This Run yesterday, and having the opportunity to share my story as a part of the “Inspirational Stories” panel, left me feeling re-energised and ready to get posting again!
Consistency
Although I have not been so consistent with my blogging, I have been very consistent with my training. My coach Russ Cox and I are working to push my personal training envelope, to gradually increase my weekly training hours and overall endurance levels. Managing a higher training load while managing fatigue is one of the constant battles for people like me with Charcot Marie Tooth disease – rest and recovery and how much is too much are some of the regular topics over on the CMTAthletes Facebook Group, and I have written about fatigue in the past.
So how am I doing with regard to hitting higher training volumes?
April in Numbers
Total Training Time: 32 hours 24 minutes
Swim Time: 9 hours 47 minutes
Bike Time: 13 hours 8 minutes
Run Time: 4 hours 3 minutes
Yoga: 2 sessions (sadly not as often as I would have liked)
Bootcamp: 4 sessions
Rehab exercises: definitely not as often as they need to be…
This was by far my highest volume training month EVER. I went through a complete crash follow two weeks of very high volume training – my body felt so tired. Coupled with the fact that the high volume training also coincided with my sports massage therapist Michael being out of town, I still have work to do on the recovery aspect of taking on higher volume training. But the fact is that I AM managing it and I DID MANAGE those high volume weeks.
I went into the process with the mentality of just checking off each session and each day as it came – a “just do the work” frame of mind. Not giving myself any excuses to miss sessions. Changing things up to do my hardest workouts in the morning, and trying to do my best to eat well and sleep enough. I learned a lot – but most important was that I am definitely capable of doing much more than I had previously thought possible when it comes to my training.
Travel
The past two weeks have also involved a lot of travel for me. It is back to juggling workouts and time on airplanes, trying to fit things in but equally not feeling bad if a session has to go just because travel fatigue gets to be too much.
The last week of April I headed to Seoul for work. One of the great things about work travel is that when we have down time, we all try to make the best use of that time possible with siteseeing and nice meals out.
Our meetings finished early one afternoon, so we had a chance to head to the highest point in Seoul to see the city. The main river in Seoul is huge – just so much wider than the Thames or the Seine. North of the river is the historic and older part of the city – we stay in Gangnam or south of the river (yes, Gangnam style – the new modern part of the city). It was nice to see it from above, to better understand how the city has grown and evolved over time.
I absolutely adore Korean food, especially BBQ, so we headed out for our last meal at a casual BBQ restaurant. I love the way that “modern BBQ” has an extractor fan at each table, so that now when you go to a restaurant you don’t wind up leaving smelling of meat and charcoal.
So Korea was a Sunday to Wednesday trip, and then on Saturday after swimming we headed to Suffolk for the first May bank holiday weekend, and a bit of cycling. We were really lucky in that the weather cooperated, and we were able to get out for a few longer rides in the sunshine. And oh yeah, an ice cream stop too. Apparently ice cream stops are the key to cycling success in Lanzarote. Seeing as I want to complete the Tabayesco climb next year, I decided to add ice cream stops into my long ride training regime. No time like the present to start training for success!
And then last week was a quick trip to Chicago from Wednesday until Saturday. In Chicago I prioritised meeting up with friends and getting some food and drinks over a visit to the museums. I also decided to jump off the gluten free train for the duration of my trip, enjoying microbrewed beers with my twitter friend (our first time meeting in real life!) Eric on Wednesday evening, and then Chicago style pizza with one of my high school friends Darold. I also enjoyed ranch flavoured bread with Ilyse and Nurit – I’m still curious how that made it ranch flavoured… Anyway, pretty much every meal I had in Chicago involved wheat. I eat gluten free because of my husband, not for medical reasons, so it is always interesting to see how my body reacts when I add wheat back in. I had a bit of a grumbling stomach, but not much else. I still contend that wheat doesn’t really give the body much in terms of nutrition. But it is a part of some tasty foods, and was worth the diversion from my normal eating patterns for a bit of indulgence with friends while away for work!
Ah… pizza…
The Next Three Weeks
I have about three weeks in London before my next travels – our summer holidays home to Hawaii for my 25th high school reunion. I have a lot I would like to post about between now and June 1st – and I have a lot to do for work (and pleasure) between now and then too.
Do you know Depeche Mode? One of their old songs (yes – from just about my high school days!) “Get The Balance Right” seems an appropriate theme song for me and the coming weeks!