Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.
The week started as always with a Monday morning swim. For once it went really well — no surprise, since I’d barely trained the day before.
Tuesday started very early with a 1.5-hour easy bike ride and ended very late with a 1.5-hour fast run. The 10s were back on the program — they start out fairly easy but get increasingly brutal as they go on. They did their job: the next day not much was working.
Wednesday’s session was the first in a very long time that I couldn’t complete as planned and actually had to cut short. Due to the weather I was on the cross bike, which meant an unfamiliar and more demanding position. The very humid conditions also took their toll. After 4 hours on the bike including 105 minutes at race-pace effort, I arrived home completely wrecked, then went out for a brick run. I had to stop that after an hour — absolutely nothing was moving forward. Completely sweated out and dehydrated, I didn’t want to risk any more.
Reasonably recovered, I started Thursday — my rest day — with an easy swim followed by a physio session. That worked absolute wonders; by Friday I was a completely different person.
Fully recovered with loose muscles, I headed out for the final 2.5-hour run. It felt great and was quite quick at an average of 4:42/km, with an average power delta of 127 — nice.
Saturday was another swim session before today’s Sunday brought the longest ride yet: 5 hours on the bike with 3x45min at race pace, followed by a 1-hour brick run. The legs weren’t great from the start — the last three weeks have been very hard and high-volume. I also fought cramps at times, though I managed to keep them in check. Still managed to hit the planned watt targets on the bike, though it was also quite demanding mentally.
I’ve well and truly earned the recovery week coming up…