Oh lord, this heat is just too much. Six consecutive days of 38+ degrees celsius days with nights only relenting to the mid 20's has made training extremely difficult. Not just because it's hard to keep up with the fluids whilst your training but also because it makes for extreme fatigue as you don't sleep well at night - even with the A/C on at night you still wake up feeling physically spent.
Training although tough has still continued - just at earlier hours to try and beat the impending heat. Yesterday morning I took off for a ride with Sarah and before too long we had those nice beads of sweat on the top lip. She was testing out her new Cannondale Slice - that bike is awesome. It looks so aerodynamic and light - and NO I wasn't getting any ideas about a new purchase although it did fleetingly cross my mind for a brief second or two. How could I betray my gorgeous CAAD9 5 - never!
We ended up riding 59.95km in 2hrs and 20mins - not bad for a morning's work and I then followed it up with a nice easy 1km swim. Just felt like I needed to ease up the ITB - which I have still be religiously stretching and rolling it out. I have also been incorporating a bit of rubber ball therapy on my glutes - sitting and rolling on a ball till the tension releases is what can I say
"excruciating" but I must admit afterwards it feels great.
This morning was another bike ride due to the fact that my Sunday ride was not going to happen because I have the Cole Classic 2km Ocean Swim. I ended up riding about 87km in just over 3hrs (actual ride time), but actually spent longer out on the road because the group I was riding with got 4 flats. There is alot of debris from truck tyres on the road so I guess its unavoidable really. During this ride I drank so much and still managed to lose 1kg in sweat - by the time I got back to my car at 1050am it was already 35 degrees celsius - almost felt like you were standing in front of an oven with it's door open.
I had such a great ride this morning - as usual alot of chatting happens but I definitely was riding at a faster pace - it's always challenging when guys ride up the front - they are just naturally faster and stronger. So really good to see that I could atleast keep up. There were 3 of us girls and we all did good. All the guys were absolute gentlemen as always - we have the best guys in our club.
Then this afternoon it was back in the pool for a TopNotch Swim Session. That pool was so hot - I think Chris said it was 32 degrees celsius - blah. But a great session was had nonetheless, although it would have been better if I didn't cramp. Everytime I pushed off the wall both calves would tighten up and my toes would go all whacked out - so I spent the last 2 100's using the pullbouy to rest them.
So tomorrow is my first Open Water swim. I am nervous, excited, scared - a whole mixture of emotions but know that this is what I want to do, so I will tackle it the way I have most things - head on. My wave goes off at 11:15am and am hoping that the Ocean is not too choppy. So fingers crossed.
