Week 8 of 26

Had a pretty big week and I'm glad that finished it standing on my two feet. Monday was Victoria Day public holiday. This is a different date from the Queen's birthday in Perth, which is again different from the other parts of Australia. I found this rather amusing actually, given that they relate to the same queen... but anyway, I digress.

Coach Sheri had her Megaday planned in Port Stanley. One of my training mates, Matt was kind enough to pick me up early so we did about 40 minutes ride before we met up with the group. It was a nice ride through some hills to Port Burwell. We had a pretty strong headwind on the return lap. Kudos to Sheri's husband, Bruce for sticking with us for most of the ride. Pretty impressive for someone who rarely rides and keeping up with 2 other guys about 20 years younger, both who are training for Ironman! We clocked close to 125km that day. Matt and I did a 6km run after, with the tailwind and downhill slope on the return lap, it as a negative split by a huge margin - even clocked 3:44 pace for the last descending bit!

Tuesday was a rest day, which was much needed. Wednesday I had a workshop at Western campus which ended early. So I was able to squeeze in both a run and a swim - the good thing about bringing all your gear with you. Did a 75 minute run - two laps of the campus to downtown route and it was pretty humid. The swim after was refreshing - 400m swim, 400m pull buoy, 6 x 50m, 5 x 100m, 4 x 200m, 5 x 100m, 6 x 50m. With those two sessions in the bag, I slept in the next day and did not have to worry about a morning swim session :)

Thursday was the usual 90km ride to Lakeside and back in the evening. It was pretty windy but mostly cross wind and it felt like the direction was a bit more favourable on the way back. Friday morning, I woke up early for some long swim sets and was pretty happy with the times - 400m warm up. 2000m swim (34:01). 1000m pull buoy/paddles (16:22). In the afternoon, I did an hour's run in Springbank. There were no intervals in the program but I felt good and just focused on quick leg turnover - gave a bit of kick to clock 14km.

Saturday was a nice ride with Peter, Greg and Clare. We rode from Lambeth to Port Stanley and return via Melbourne. The guys haven't been doing too many long rides and were kind enough to let me do most of the pulling, but I'm glad to do it. Keeps me honest for my Ironman preparation. Another close to 125km in the bag.

Sunday I woke up early to watch the live streaming of Thomas Cup badminton finals - Malaysia vs Japan. Both teams were underdogs with the Japanese ranked better on paper. The Malaysian team came agonizingly close to win back the cup after a drought of 22 years. They deserve a pat on the back. I hope now the national federation would ride on this momentum and bring Malaysia back to when it was a badminton powerhouse decades ago.

I did my long run just before 4pm. It was really sunny outside but not that humid. I had 1 hour 50 minutes on the program. Pretty surprised at how good my legs felt and I kept it mostly consistent throughout. Really glad to maintain a sub 4:30 per km average with just over 24.5km clocked.

Pretty happy with how my training has been progressing lately. Next week is looking a tad bit lighter, as there is no public holiday.

Week 8 of 26 statistics:

Swim - 6.8km (2 hours 1 minute)
Bike - 338.8km (12 hours 23 minutes)
Run - 61.4km (4 hours 31 minutes)

Total - 407.0km (17 hours 55 minutes)