Wed: 35 min/37:31 (bike)
Thur: 40 min/41:18 (bike)

As I've said before, no running this week, just bike work.

The rides yesterday and today have gone really well. The problem has been the usual one of my pushing myself too hard - yesterday I ended up doing informal intervals with faster and slower bits, increased resistance and spinning down. It left me feeling pretty throughly exercised.

Today was less strenuous, although I realised about twenty minutes in that I was actually puhing at only slightly less than the fast interval pace I did on Tuesday and that I had pretty much run out of steam less than half way through! A bit of a radical slowdown and I was comfortably able to finish the session.

Interestingly, when I was talking to my doctor about my knee last week and suggested that I might do bike work instead of running he said that it might be hard to keep the heart rate high enough on the bike to make the training worthwhile. Er... this is not the cycling that I recognise. I tend to push hard on the bike (whether it's on the trainer or the road), and getting my heart rate up is not a problem. Indeed, one of the things I really like about running is its self-limiting nature - if you're pushing too hard, you have to slow down because you always have to maintain a certain basic level of strength to remain upright, which you don't need to do on the bike.

Anyway, the good news is that my leg is feeling much, much better today. The deep massage which I had on Tuesday evening has made an enormous difference to the discomfort in my leg, and although my knee still feels a little odd (and disturbingly weak) I can see that the 12 mile run on Saturday is at least achievable, if not exactly easy!

We shall see how I am after the run...

Posted by Dunx at June 5, 2003 01:21 PM