So, I am at the end of my first week. It did not go to plan at all, as I had expected. I’ve only completed 3 out of 9 sessions from my training plan…

I stupidly thought that starting the training plan on the 28th of December, just a couple of days before New Year’s Eve, would be fine. It was not. My race is on the 7th of August next year, and I chose a 32-week training plan, which put my start date on the 28th of December. I was lucky enough to spend the New Year celebrations with close family. We had a small party, a lot of alcohol was consumed, and I had a sore head for the next couple of days. As I’ve gotten older, the hangovers have become considerably worse — one of the reasons I don’t drink as much as I used to. This is my excuse for missing so much of the first week’s training.

The first week of the plan is a fitness test week. You are supposed to complete a fitness test for the swim, bike and run. The threshold values from the tests are then used to set training zones for the next 6 weeks until you complete another fitness test week. Monday was a swim test followed by strength and conditioning. I am currently working in Northern Ireland, and due to Covid, the pools are shut. So, I just did the strength and conditioning and left the swim. Hopefully I could come up with a plan for that later on.

Tuesday came and it was time for my bike FTP test. I had let myself go over the Christmas period and, still feeling a bit worse for wear due to all the beer and bad food, I attempted the test. The test consisted of a warm-up followed by a 20-minute, all-out threshold effort. I did this on the turbo trainer, which gives power output data.  I did okay, but it was hard — I very nearly threw up. A shock to the system to say the least. My results came in: I achieved 246 watts threshold power and a 166 bpm heart rate threshold. Not really knowing if this was good or bad, I put the numbers into the TrainingPeaks app.

The rest of the week was a bit of a haze. Due to work, I was sent back to England and was able to spend the New Year with close family. This was great for the party, not so great for the training. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were a write-off. Still feeling pretty rough on the Saturday, I managed to get to a pool before lockdown hit England. I did the fitness test, which consisted of a warm-up, then a 400-meter best effort followed 5 minutes later by a 200-meter best effort. You then put these times into a calculator on MyProCoach and it gives you your threshold swim pace. I pulled out a 6 minutes 59 seconds 400-meter time and a 3 minutes 18 seconds 200-meter time. I know what I’m capable of in the water, and I was fairly disappointed with these results. The New Year celebrations had hit a little too hard.

The last test was the run fitness test. I had just completed training for a marathon at the beginning of December, and I had also used MyProCoach for that as well. So, I already had a good idea of what my threshold was. This was all I needed to convince myself to rest, get over the hangovers, and skip the run fitness test. I just used my previous run pace threshold of 6 minutes 58 seconds and a threshold heart rate of 176 bpm.

That is the week completed. 3 out of 9 sessions. Drinking and training do not mix.