3.30am is the new 4.15am!

The last week has been the hardest week of training that has appeared so far in my build up to Kona. Tipping the scales at just over the 25 hour mark it has not only been big in terms of volume but also intensity. My physical limits were pushed from the get go having finished the previous week of solid training with the concrete monster Waitakere run on Sunday I had to fire my running legs back into action at 4.30am the next morning – a pure battle of will power!

My cycling power output ranges have increased this week and my run interval target times have also been tightened up which have made my key bike and run sessions much harder. I hit a bit of a low mid week with a cold but continued to be able to get through the sessions thanks to the equivalent of pharmacy worth of drugs and cold relief potions!

I have managed to somehow fit 3 sessions into a day around my working week which has seen my alarm clock sound out for the first time well before the stroke of 4am – previously unseen territory but I have a feeling that it will soon become much more familiar over the next 6 weeks as I continue to juggle work around my training schedule between now and my departure for Kona.

I am now on a weekly weigh in schedule with my nutritionist to ensure that I don’t lose any muscle mass over the next 11 weeks as my training volume increases further. I am now lighter and leaner than I have ever raced at before having lost a total of 6kgs since April. The goal between now and Kona is to gain muscle mass and keep my body fat percentage sitting between 10-11%. The last 3 weeks have seen a slight drop in my muscle mass setting the alarm bells ringing that my fuel system has elected to burn muscle for energy rather than fat. This is the body’s natural response to hold onto fat if it feels under the threat of starvation. To correct this imbalance my nutritionist increased my calories to well over 4000 per day and gave me a target daily protein consumption of 150grams. Unfortunately this didn’t mean I could go out and consume the equivalent of my body weight in carrot cake….I still need to stick to a strict high protein, low fat and minimal carbohydrate diet ratio. Yesterday at my weigh in I had managed to lose 700grams of fat but gain 500grams of muscle mass in a week so I have managed to successfully kick my body out of a muscle eating state and gain some more muscle mass which will help with strength and injury prevention. The 700gram fat loss equated to a deficit of 800 calories daily last week, hard to believe when I’ve spent almost every waking hour of the day consuming some kind of high protein food!

Next week is my easy week of training, I roughly get one of these about every 5-6 weeks so I am really looking forward to more sleep and having a few more hours in the day to catch up with friends and life!