Kevin's Training Diary of 2024

I 'raced' the Scottish Aquathlon Championships at the weekend. Having been Champion for two years, this was on my list of season major races, but given my recent health I had absolutely no expectations going in. It was my first open water swim since Belgium, so almost a year. That showed approaching the first buoy as I got squeezed by other swimmers and had a panic attack and had to resort to breast stroke for a while. That then put me in amongst some less competent swimmers and I ended up having to go wide to avoid the traffic and swam extra distance in the process. Then on the run I just had to deal with my current condition and could only manage 21:44 for a run that was slightly short.  I was 3 minutes off the winning pace, disappointed, but not surprised about that.  I have skipped bits on the bike in order to try and reduce my fatigue going in to the Champs.  By the time of my next update I will hopefully have had some blood tests done and be on my way to finding out...

I am clearly medically impaired in some fashion. I spent 23 minutes trying to get an appointment. I then had to wait a week for that phone call because in-person appointments don't exist anymore. Then that appointment was less than 2 minutes on the phone, and has resulted in me going for the blood tests that I requested on the first call. Now, I have another month to wait to get those blood tests that should take a nurse about 5 minutes to administer. That isn't a political matter. It isn't about NHS funding. That is just pure incompetence by my local GP practice.  In the meantime my performance levels are getting worse almost by the session. I planned a set of 100m swim reps, starting on 2 mins this week. Normally I would do those in about 1:40-ish and 20 seconds recovery. Lately that has been out to 1:50-ish. This week the first one was 2:03, at a full gas effort, so I abandoned the session for a straight 1,250 swim and ended up doing outside 2:05/100m. And that wasn'...

I had the flu for a week and did nothing.  I then did most of my second week, but poorly as I am clearly still recovering.  I went to Turriff 10k and struggled to run 49:53. Then I went to Peterhead 3k and struggled to even run 12:31.  I am off to the doctor this week as this is now beyond the point that any combination of excuses for the weather / hip / course / shoes / flu recovery / training load / ... are explaining how bad I am performing at the minute. Actuals, (T arget) -  Swim 1.8  miles / 2,9 50 m. (4.5 miles). Bike 54.0 miles. (70.0 miles).   MTB 29.0 miles. (17.3 miles). Run 32.3  miles. (37.8  miles). 0 short core,   0   short light weights   and  0  stretching / rollering session.   25   mins of yoga.   Cumulative Actual, (Cumulative Target), [Cumulative Stretch] - S 68.7, (71.3 ),   [74.9] , B 973.5, (960.0) ,   [1008.0] ,     MTB 231.9, (232.8),   [252.0], R 523.6, (57...