BLOG – Week 7

While week 6 was quite eventless, despite having the highest training volume since flu, in case of training hours, training mileage and elevation gain too, week 7 became very hectic.
I “engaged” with a friend to prepare the floor tiling of two different appartements. The thing is that when I work alone in any kind of jobs, if I got tired, I would just go home immediately, eat, nap and hydrate. Then when awaken, I would mobilize, maybe do some yoga and strength and conditioning and possibly slip in a workout. This way I am able to work way more than 8 hours daily and also 7 days a week. Of course my days do not start at 8 am, but often at 5am and won’t finnish til 22h00.
In this present case that was not possible, nor to be tired and say that I need to take a break. We intensely worked 8am to 16h00 for three days. I had to very much minimize training, in order to be very present and useful in work. Actually, I would say it was an endurance based strength and conditioning 3 days for me. I should have put on my HR monitor for the day, as I moved tons of stuff. Not “tons of” like the expression, but tons, like thousands of kilograms. Already the 100 x 100cm floor tiles, that came in a 32kg package. We had to bring them up to the 4th floor. Then breaking down the screed and carry down the rubble to the garage. All with slow and careful movements to not to damage anything nor inside nor in the public hallways. Tile laying is easy, it takes 10% of the job. Preparation is hard and very difficult. I am not sure how my friend is doing it lifelong. I mean, of course, he is not training 15hour weeks besides, nor working 80 hours. He would break down very seriously. Demanding job it is.

In the meantime, my wife got sick and my daughter started a little cough. She had a bib number for giant local event. In addition to the size of the event, it got sold out quickly too. Happy for them, as it is a friend who is organising it and had to cancel it last minute in 2021.
I could change her name on the bib to mine so the registration did not get lost. I was luckily had a taper in case of training this week 😀 However, the objective of taper is not to reduce training. That is the procedure only, in order to increase freshness and to achieve a high supercompensation. After that 6th week, I was actually having some residual fatigue, then during the tile laying I did not recover either. Before each tile laying day actually, I did 2hours of extra work from 5am to 7am in a local oil-plant, where I also do time to time some physical work with heavy oil barrels. So for 3 days I had no sleep, lot of physical work, little mobility and strength, only 1 running session. Then for the next 2 days I was doubling up on everything. I did short run sessions with injected speed, loads of yoga and mobility and napped hard, slept strong. Saturday, I was working a couple of hours on my motorbike in the morning, before the 2pm running race in the heat.

I already completed this event multiple times. My record was around 2:12 if I remember well. I finished 2:13 something this time, despite I had the flu, I am only in 7th week of training from zero to hero. Over 20°C for the hottest day of the year. 22.8km. D+1000m. No cramps bizarrely. I had a RedBull and a gel 20min beforehand. Then 5 gels and 2dl water during. 2 black Maurtens to start out. Then 3 fast acting fruit juice and agave syrup based organic, local gels. Punch Power speed tonic. Always took them in advance of hard sections, so when I hit around 30% of those, the sugar started trickling in. I find that the Maurten needs around 15 minutes to start working on empty stomach and the liquid speedier more sugary gels need around 7 to 10minutes. The Maurten however wears off very gradually and do not put you in a sugar low. The others if wore off during a hard effort, might send you down the hypo-slope.

I have a tactic for big big climbs of over 45minutes. Like during short ultra events and mountain marathons where we might climb for 2000m straight. Taking a little very speedy gel for every 7 to 15 minutes during the climb, then around 10minutes before the arrival, take a maurten, maybe a High5-Slow Release or an even slower gel like a Ucan.

Anyways. I got 17th place. That is not so bad at all looking at the current circumstances.

Finished week 7 with only 10hours of training. 58km and 1101m of gain. Despite this, I would need a big recovery.