Out for a MapRun

or MapWalk in my case. With the forecast looking decent for today, I decided yesterday night to have a go at the Ruspidge green course today. I did look at the blue course which I loaded up on the phone but decided the green would be better - except I forgot to load it. So today, after I started, I suddenly realised I hadn't loaded the green and still had the blue map loaded. I was following the green with my compass so that wasn't going to do me much good. Luckily, I didn't get far before I remembered and second lucky, I was in a good reception area, so I was able to abort, go back to the start, download the green map instead.

With that almost cockup avoided I headed out and slowly, very slowly and made my way around the course. It was muddy and slippery in places, rough in others but I just wanted a day out so I took my time and pootled along. It was nice to be out there.

Decent Week's Training

 Tonight was my fifth structured workout in a week. One was on the bike and one was a shorter one but overall it's been a good week's training. Tonight's was a good burn and to begin with I thought it would fatigue me but after the first couple of intervals things stabilised and I was good to the finish ('cause I eat's my spinach). Probably a rest day tomorrow or a bike session.

Hilarious Cockup

So I liked the look of the Zwift Tri-Academy workout number three. Billed as being Long Course Race Simulation, it was meant to be a fifty minute session, consisting of three sets of differing duration sections, starting short and fast and reducing the pace while increasing the duration without any break - until the end of the rep. Each set was meant to be an effort of ten minutes.

As it turned out the programmers of Zwift had programmed it in a factor of ten on the lean side. The ten minute effort became a sixty second not a lot of effort and the whole things was over in 5 minutes - including the warm up and cool down. Wasn't a total waste though as laughing is supposed to be good for you and I couldn't stop laughing for the entire session - yes, the full 5 minutes. It just tickled me - but then I am a bit weird... After that I restarted things for a ramped 2 miler as my heart was no longer in it. Hopefully they will sort out the mistake as I still fancy doing the session.

Good Workout Today

Zwift Academy workout number four. It was a bit of replication of workout number three but had two ladders rather than two, with sections starting a minute less duration but building to the same top pace. That meant more actual effort time overall and it was definitely slightly harder to keep with it but far from impossible, so I might go again with a bit higher effort percentage. Yesterday I ran an easier session of gentler intervals, Tomorrow? We'll see...

A Lighter Week

but finished with a couple of harder efforts. Yesterday I completed workout number 3 of the run academy. It was a session of decreasing duration with increasing pace from 6 minutes down to 1 minute. It was about right. The middle efforts were the toughest. Today I rode one of the academy group rides and despite setting off easy it all got a bit competitive on the climb first time round (two laps). From there the pace was definitely higher, with everyone seeming to want to break off the front. No one did until the climb section for the second time where it all broke apart. I got dropped early on but got a second wind and came back past most of those who'd got away. Good solid, above normal effort  workout in the end.