I have a programme

Finally, I have a programme from my coach, coachJez.  It feels funny calling him a coach because he feels more like just a trainer to me.  We've been working together for 6 months on my swimming with a little bit of gym work here and there so I don't feel coached, only trained.

Anyhoo.  Over the winter he was talking about 'next year' this and 'next year' that and when January came and no programme was forthcoming, I started to get worried.  I have some pretty big goals this year and I do not want to screw this up.  So I pushed and I finally got a programme.

At the moment, it's 21 sessions to fit in over a month and I'll get the next set after that's done and the results assessed (no idea how that will happen as there's really only one measurement point and that's a 1500m swimming time trial).  Thing is, I've already been doing a higher training volume of 10-11 hours a week and this, even with fitting in 7 sessions in 1 week, only sums up to 7 hours with almost no running to speak of - one 30 minute hill reps session!  I'd been doing days with 2 sessions in a day, e.g. one gym or swim then a run in the evening, or a gym or bike then a swim in the evening.  Now, it's one session per day and the Training Peaks widgets agree that my fitness is dropping off!

See the blue line above, it usually drops off a bit during the week and picks up at the longer sessions at the weekend, but the last 7 days has been a downwards trickle with almost no pickup at the weekend.  So, I'm going to supplement next week's training schedule:-

Barbican running track

...with a long, slow run during the week at some point.  I also have a bit of a problem with doing mid-week multi-brick sessions - see Thursday for: bike 15 minutes, run 2k, repeat 4 times - in that I can't use a treadmill, so I can't do it in the gym so I can't do it other than at the weekend and even then it's a bit sucky.  If it were a shorter session, I could do it at the Barbican Virgin Active as it has a running track.  So, I talked to coachJez about that and he had forgotten about my inability to use treadmills and said he took it on board for the next section of the programme.  In the mean time, what I may do is try that 90 minute brick session at Barbican after work; but it depends on work as to whether that will happen or not.

We'll see.  And so next week probably looks like this:-