Here we are 5 weeks out! I’ve had an okay week recently, not doing quite as much as I was hoping for because of terrible weather. Went for a long-ish ride yesterday and aimed at 4.5 to 5 hours, but in heavy wind and rain I called it a day after 3:45. No point in grinding myself down, risking illness or an accident. You see, the one thing I excel at is finding an excuse to train a little less than what I’m supposed to do. I’m also quite unsure about my riding, geoing through my data last night I feel like I’ve hit a pretty flat plateau. Sure, I wasn’t able to lift my weekly bTSS and my FTP remains unchanged, and this also shows itself in my outdoor performance. Thank god I’ve got a pretty decent w/CdA and w/kg because my raw watts are poor. It seems that since I’ve moved to my peak phase training prgress came to a halt. Of course, being able to dish out a solo 100k ride without batting an eyelid is alright, but over my past 5 outdoor rides my NP/hr hasn’t changed at all eventhough I tried pushing a bit here and there. Next big ride will be Roth next Sunday, where I’ll stand in for an injured rider to complete a full distance relay. For me that’s my main test ride and I’ll cut my recovery week short for it and see how things go.

My run though is coming along nicely. Did a 30k on Friday and it went as smoothly as 30k’s go. I chose a 10k loop from my house so that I could stop for a gel and some water each loop, which worked well. Finally, I feel like I can do the marathon come raceday. I’ll probably walk the walk aid stations to make sure I get enough water and food down, but Friday was a 5:41 pace and it felt reasonably comfortable.

My swim sucked last week. Coming off the race three weeks ago I was on top of my game and then allowed myself some slack, but I really really need to up my volume over the final weeks. I haven’t done a session >3k and my weekly volume hasn’t exceeded 7k once. This week will be good for swimming, I’ll be in Bucharest for 2.5 days and my assistant found a hotel with pool, so I can swim a lot while traveling.