The Lost Weekend: Panic Sets In!

This blog has been quite positive so far, and I imagine (if anyone reads it!?) people are thinking "ah he's finding this easy; he's not struggling at all". Well the weekend just gone changed all that.

With a plan of around 10 hours training planned for Saturday and Sunday... I managed 3 hours.

If I had written this blog on Saturday afternoon after my 5 hour bike was reduced to 2 hours, I would have been full of doom and despair, thoughts of "I can't complete this!" and "I'm nowhere near ready" were racing through my head, and the panic of how close the race was became very real.

After some confidence building words from friends and family, I realised that one bike ride would not really make that much difference, and I started to try and find the reasoning behind it all.

After quite a bit of thought I'm still not sure what caused it, I was very lethargic and tired with no endurance at all, the speed was fine but couldn't keep it up. I imagine it was fatigue or over training?

I am not dwelling on it now though, it had to happen at some point, and I'm glad it happened now, rather than in 3/4 weeks time when I will be reaching the peak weeks of training that maybe even more damaging for my confidence.

As I enter a new week I am happy I ditched the weekends training and rested up, I feel ready to go again tomorrow and have put the 'lost weekend' behind me.

Maybe one positive out the weekend, the 2 hours I spent on the bike on Saturday (that should have been over 5 hours, but forget that bit) were good, getting comfortable on my TT bike on the bars and even in some tough winds.

Time to refocus, look forward and forget about the week gone by, one lost week in 30 will not ruin a race and I'm still confident of my abilities and goals.

No real lesson learnt from it all though, maybe a limitation learnt??

As an ending I have to say thanks to all the people who gave me those positive (balanced) views when I was panicking. You have helped throughout this training; the balanced and outside view has helped a lot and won't be forgotten

Promise to bring more positivity next week.