Each week I try to review and reflect on my previous week on the bike. This allows me to see how my fitness and ability is progressing on a wider timescale than day to day. For previous weekly reviews please click here.
A decent mix of indoors and outdoors this week, albeit with some super lacklustre efforts on my part. I’m glad to have put in the Thursday SST session, because aside from that and Tuesday’s ride, I’m really struggling to find good things to keep spirits high this week. That may or may not be due to happenings on and off the bike.
Here are this week’s rides:
- Tuesday – Err, Have I Been Here Before? (Outdoors)
- Wednesday – Carpet Right (Indoors / Zwift)
- Thursday – Hell in the Pix-cell (Indoors / Zwift)
- Saturday – Lube, Pump, Glide (Outdoors)
- Sunday – Dead Rat Send Off (Outdoors)
Things started alright this week. Tuesday’s ride out was a decent effort along some roads old and new, though I found myself on gravel tracks / badly maintained farm roads which kinda killed it a bit in the middle. Even so, I was in high spirits and good weather so enjoy the ride well enough.
Wednesday though, I was late on the bike and not exactly in a great mood to be putting in a shift. I’d planned to do an SST session on Zwift but jacked that in for an easier ride. Recovery – mental and physical, maybe it was the start of the mindset I kept for most of the rest of the week.
Thursday’s where things got a bit weird. It was my last day at work – contract came to an end with nothing new lined up. Bit of a bummer. I hate going out of contract as it means interviews, uncertainty, doubt, and all that BS that really messes up my mind. Every time it happens it makes me want to take control of my own destiny and never have to interview for anyone, ever again.
I think I went into Thursday’s SST session with something to prove to myself. And whilst I got through it physically better than last time, I think it was that mental beating myself up that set me up negatively for the rest of the week… from an exercise point of view. Well, maybe…
See, Friday was my sister in law’s wedding.
So I had a very busy day with travel, stress, kids, more stress, relaxing, eating, drinking, more drinking, more stress, then dancing, drinking, and whilst it wasn’t a late night, the hotel room was too hot. Combine that with alcohol and I got a terrible night’s sleep.
I gave myself a pass on Saturday, do an easy ride. Anything’s better than nothing. I actually didn’t feel that bad on that ride and loved being out in the sun. But still, every spare thought was OK, what now? And I don’t mean where to turn or what road to ride. I mean, what next? What work? What do I need to read / do / prep for my next work role? Gah.
And that continued to today – Sunday. I’ve had another beer. I’ve done another ride. Err, not in that order.
I was going to leave this to tomorrow but I felt like writing it today. See if when I started penning words, my thoughts clarified. Maybe they have… maybe not.
I look at that weight chart above, the training status graph below and I’m … disappointed?
I don’t get the weight gain. I’ve not changed. Is it a lagging indicator? I never really saw an uptick in weight gain during my crash period. That shocked me as I definitely over ate. Now I’m riding again, no dietary change, and I’m at 69kg? What?
Productivity though?
This one I do better understand. I’d been pushing hard and now have taken two easy rides in a row. That’s the very low end of my range, so no wonder Garmin’s automatons have decided I’m being lazy. Fair play.
I have an unusual week ahead. I may or may not actively blog. I guess we shall see.
The only plans for the week ahead actually are to do 1 hours exercise 5x in the week. Anything more than that and I’ll be… well, amazed.
So yeah, not a great week. But I can and will do better.
Here’s to a less mentally exhausting week ahead. Fingers crossed.