Weekly Wrap. Week 6.

Past few weeks are proggressively giving me harder times. At one point, I thought that I will not be able to share you with the results of week 6 and my streak of consistant blogpost-a-week would be broken. But I decided not to give up and at least come back with a quick note here. That is why this week’s update will be rather short. I have been torn apart with different commitments, with a rising backlog of tasks at work, battling the need to rest and chill a bit here and there. During this juggling, I still managed to complete the planned training sessions, however overall result ended up with me getting short-term illness on Sunday evening.

In general training week did not seem to be difficult on paper, but accumulative tiredness started to show up in the background and even simple sessions were becoming difficult to execute and I was getting tired of the session even before it started. On top of that extremely difficult weekend was glowing as the north start – a swim speed test, a 2 hour running session and almost 3 hours on the bike. Even writing “3 hours on the bike” feels tedious, nevermind the session itself. With all that in mind, we had planned a trip to Dovile’s parents, who live in another city, on Saturday – that meant travelling and some changes to the usual momentum of weekend trainings. With the support of my wife on Saturday, I managed to do the run session early in the morning, come back to an amazing energy-fulfilling breakfast and be ready to travel. On Sunday, when we got back home – an evening to myself, my trainer, fan and some videos to make the 3 hour ride indoors easy.

Black Nails & Expectations

You remember my journey into household-fixer the previous weekend? Where I spent about 7-8 hours trying to sand our bedroom floor. So that activity came back biting me. It did something that 5 marathons up to date and thousands of kilometers were not able to – it gave me black toe nails. Which means that they will have to come off. Not the most pleasant thing to experience, nor to read, so apologies. With that in mind, I felt quite irritated that I had this, what is supposed to be a “runners problem with inconvenient shoes”, happen to me, when I was doing something completely unrelated.

Nevertheless, I kept doing my sessions as per my plan with nails hurting from 0 to 8 in scale of 0-10. Especially unpleasant was the swim test, which I was already dreading to do, but with my toe nails wrecked beyond repair – it was set to be very unplesant. Luckily only first few minutes were keeping me at discomfort, later on it evened out and I was swimming OK. I would not go as far as calling it my best swim, but considering the feeling before – where I thought my toe nails might come off any time – I was happy with how it went.

Where I was introduced to some new levels of discomfort and pain, was my Saturday’s run. I had high hopes for the run, 2 hours run meant that I would be setting new distance records for this year and in general getting some mind clarvoyance. Morning itself started with me noticing that roads are very slippery and I had to switch from my normal running shoes to trail ones. And the trail shoes are generally very heavy, not elastic and sturdy. Being pretty much afraid to put more pressure on my toes, than I already have done (in before Saturday, I run 14 kilometeres pace run and 50 minutes endurance run. Both runs felt peculiar on my toes, if I were honest and I would rather have not run) – I decide to not run on the road and go for the trails around our area. With the “small snow storm” happening – it might not have been the best idea. I struggled to keep up my required pace, in general it was very difficult to push myself of snow-covered road and even if you did not have snow – it was ice instead. On top of that, the uneveness of road covered by snow, meant that my feet were bending more than on the road. That directly translated into my already painful toe nails receiving even more pain. At one point in time, I had to stop and yell a bit – good thing there are no people around the woods and trails, I run – because it felt as if something broke down in the nail and I had a small, but very sharp spike in pain on one of the nails.

Battling through 2 hours  of discomfort and thoughts that I am not able to do a session, like I should have done, I was nervous, I was anxious, disappointed and angry at myself. From time to time I struggled with pain, I had to stop and calm myself down, then start running again. I covered much less than I expected or predicted. I covered the same distance that I do during 1 hour 45 minutes runs – 21,6 kilometers. At first I was disappointed by the end result. Once I got closer to home, I came to peace with the difficulties and unfulfilled desires and my wife’s support was stellar – she pointed out that with the weather in mind and my both toe nails at their state, some people would not run at all. While I still managed to go with it and finish a gruesome session. With that epiphany – I came to happiness and sense of small achievement, which at first definitely did not look like one.

Ill-Sprinting

On Sunday, after the training session on the bike, I felt very poorly and by every minute it became worse and worse. To a point, where I had to put down the bottle of alcohol-free Erdinger, which I planned to treat myself after difficult weekend and lay down in bed. Turns out that some virus got to me and I had to spend the next two and a half days in bed with temperature varrying from 37.5 to 37.1. Luckily, it seems to have finished as fast as it started and today, on Wednesday mid-day I am feeling rather well.

I had to make some sacrifices and skip two training sessions, because of which I am still restless, however in the long run – the decision to skip sessions, even though the illness seemed like to be gone was a smart idea I hope and it did not have much impact on my overall fitness.

Random

Song of the week: Muse – Blackholes & Revelations
Reading: Stephen Hawking – A Brief History of Time
Game: Assassin’s Creed: Origins (PS4) / Starcraft 2 (PC)
Average Weight: About 77.6 kg

Few more weeks to go before our vacations to my favourite place in Europe – Canary Islands. There we will spend one week in great weather and afterwards, my first ever specialized training camp in Lanzarote with my coach awaits. I am very excited. Of course, I will be excited to share my experiences throug the blog as well.

❤