Tired legs and PMA (positive mental attitude)

Well I hope that everyone enjoyed the gorgeous weather that enveloped the UK this week.

It's all back to normal now with slightly chillier temperatures and reason to wear more layers.

This week has taken a bit of a back step with training due to the high volume of training that I completed last week for my crash week. I have completed around 2 swims, 3 bikes and only 2 runs, but this has totalled 8 hours of training with a hard week back at work.

My legs today were ready to give up on me and I felt utterly awful this morning on our long hilly ride of 50km. Will was great but I began the ride in a foul mood, and not even the sun shining could cheer me up. I went mountain biking yesterday at Cannock Chase with Les (Chester Tri friend) and it really beasted me more than I could imagine. My legs not only had all of last week's riding in them, but yesterday's tough session and today they just didn't want to work. I thought on every single hill that I was going to topple over and stop. It was pretty miserable to say the least, but after discussion with Will and consideration, I have to remember that I did well and truly beast myself last week and it is always the recovery week which makes you feel worse!

Other than that this week has been one of feeling pretty tired, however I do have to reflect that when you are tired from a hard week of training, you will be at your fittest which is a bit strange. Only from those really hard sessions will you improve and I think that today was not only hard physically, but almost torture in my mindset. I cannot stress the importance of a positive frame of mind and confidence, as today was tough for me and I have to admit that I did have a bit of a whinge and I was truly in a whole WORLD of PAIN!

Hopefully I can take a lot from today's session and feel pleased that I still managed to ride a very very hilly (up and down and up and down and barely any flat) route and kept going even when I wanted to get off.

I think I needed an extremely healthy dose of PMA and also to reward those efforts such as today's was in order.

Also forgot to say... I have got a place on the Level 1 Triathlon Coaching Course in April. I have had to forgo the Rutland CiCLE event on the 28/29th April, but I think you will agree that a coaching qualification will be a great alternative!

As promised I will upload my interview with Mary Hardwick from Inspire2tri for my next post.

I hope that you all have a great block of training.... the race season is nearly upon us!

(for me it's the 22nd April and literally 3 weeks away! I can't wait)

Happy Training!

Kerry