The end of July

The second half of the week was a bit quieter so able to get do training.  Thursday was WRR night, running with group 4 - still not ready to try group 3.  A large group headed off to run round Delapre Lake so more trail then road for the speed sessions.  The emphasis was on a series of 1minute, 2minute and 1.5minute fast sessions that were modified to fit in with the path where it was often narrow and poor running surface.  It was a good evening session in good running weather.  Total session time of 1hour 9'11" covering 7.23miles with an average HR of 143bpm.
Friday was an easy run and swim day.  I didn't jump out of bed in the morning so I went for a run when I got home from work before swimming.  It was one of those slow runs with the emphasis on keeping the HR low.  I ran for 45'01" covering 4.16miles at a 10'46" per mile pace.  My average HR was 122bpm with 80% in Z1 so well on target.  I do not really enjoy these runs as they are so artificially slow, but good training. I went to the last club swim of the summer - no more swims now until September.  It was a quiet night ending up with my own lane.  I followed the training plan although I started a few minutes late.  I swam for 57'52" covering 1,900m.  The session was a 200m warm up, followed by 8x100m mostly 2'33" per 100m, followed by a 200m 5'15", 400m in 10'44", finishing with 4x50m and a 100m cool down.  I didn't swim as freely as I had hoped for, feeling tired at the end.  I was trying to focus on my stroke again as I want to get faster!
Saturday started a bit gloomy with some early morning drizzle with a promising forecast.  I took the risk and went out in the new HTC cycling top I received as a birthday present and left the wet weather gear ta home.  It was a good call.  No one wanted a long ride so the 2 hour target we set fitted in with my plans.  We headed off to Grendon and then came back via Horton, Hanslope and Stoke Bruene. It ended up slight more than 2 hours, finishing with 2hours 20'06" covering 37.09miles at 15.9mph with an average cadence of 84rpm.  I had tried to sort out my HR monitor, cleaning the strap and wearing it a lot tighter than I normally do to see if ti stopped the spikes on the data.  In the end it looks like it may have worked as my average HR was 129bpm with 42% in Z2 and 36% in Z3 and no spikes.  I will test it out on the run tomorrow.

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