The past couple of weeks have been ticking over nicely. The first week we took a week off work spent it relaxing. We had a lovely day at Woolaton Hall on the Monday and Linda had an ice-cream while I had mineral water! We also received some exciting news about swimming pools starting to reopen on the 27^ThJuly. This is big news that I had been waiting for.

However, it wasn’t so straightforward finding an open pool – and one that would take on swimming lessons for new people. I am not sure if I have blogged this, but I cannot swim very well at all. At best, I can do a laboured breaststroke. I had booked lessons with my friend in the weeks before Covid-19. However her pool would not be able to open just yet. I spent the Saturday and Sunday calling around all of the gyms trying to find who had an open swimming pool. This left me with 2 options 1) go to Matlock and have lessons with the Tri-Club or 2) Sell a kidney and join David Lloyd.

I called David Lloyd’s and they were very open about me joining to use the pool and they said I could start lessons this week!  However it was quite expensive.  I figured it wasn’t every day you train for an Ironman so signed up with them.  The swim teacher is a guy called Chris, who Zoe knows – and Chris has agreed to help teach me to swim, with first lesson this Saturday,

Also had a meeting with Zoe to discuss plans and goals. As a result I have entered the Etwall Sprint Triathlon on the 13^th September which consists of an 400m Swim, 18KM bike and 5km run. I’m hoping this event goes ahead. I also am starting to increase my long run sessions by 5% each week until 18^th Octoberwhere I will hopefully run my Half Marathon. Here me and Zoe’s son smashing the Strength and Conditioning

So as I write this I am excited to the core; something really big (to me) has happened. I have entered my first 70.3 Ironman event. Me and Zoe started talking about doing a 70.3 event (half Ironman) as part of my conditioning towards the full Ironman and to give me some experience. We had our eye on booking the Staffordshire event as it was local, but they were nearly full from Covid rollover bookings from this year and it’d be a gamble if I got into the event when it went live. In the meantime I got an email for a completely new event ‘Ironman Venice 70.3’. My recent mood fluctuations resulted in me saying ‘fuck it!’ And with a quick message to Zoe and Linda we decided to book it. However getting into these events can be tricky and they sell out in hours. But I booked some time in my diary for the launch time and sat prepared to keep hitting refresh. Within 8 hits of refresh I was in! Excited doesn’t cover it!

I also used some of the time the past few weeks with my eldest. He is growing up so fast.

I’ve also had my toughest 3 weeks of training. Reaching a crescendo of weekend 1:52hr run and a 108km bike ride. The 3 weeks building up my training has given me a real focus and my weight has dropped even further with a 5 1/2 stone weight loss now. Mentally I was starting to feel a lot better.

This week is rest week and it appears that my focus has dipped again if I’m honest. On Sunday when I got back from my big bike ride I ate lots and had a couple of beers. Then during the week while I felt guilty for that I in turn ate ‘an extra bit of cheese here and an extra egg there’. Friday was a tough one, I went to the pub and had 4 craft cask ales of around 8% each and a couple bag of crisps. Woke up feeling pants. I hope this isn’t another mood wave!

This morning was Brick session. Which is basically a bike ride followed by a run with a sub 90 second changeover. I never have suffered with hangovers but I really didn’t feel good this morning. It wasn’t the beer – I just really did not want to train!! I lay in bed for about 2 hours before I dragged my ass out of bed. Then it took another hour before I left the house – I really wasn’t feeling the love for Brick. Linda persuaded me to go out and I rode really hard for 45 min. However I forgot to start my Garmin (grrrrr) and was paranoid about my phone falling out. I really need to come up with a solution to my phone storage. I lost a pump a few weeks ago that fell out my pocket. Ride completed; I quickly got my shoes swapped and did the regular short tour of our estate. Usually I feel a lot better having exercised but not today. But hey-ho! We don’t quit!! We dust ourselves off and race another day. Tuesday is back to high intensity training (I’m learning I thrive on the structure and focus). Here’s a picture of my fav sub 300kcal meal. Need this sort of focus right now 🙂

Sometimes with mental health you get a reminder that things can go bad quite quickly at any time, or well at least you can in my case.  A couple of weeks ago I started feeling bad again, getting stressed, confused, irritable and generally not feeling well.  My worse thing that I do is Ruminate over the same issue obsessively – even if I cannot solve the issue which begins a downward cycle.  I somehow – as I don’t know how, but I managed to continue my training.  However a small hiccup occurred with my meds affecting my training.  I have been training on time and Heartrate for my runs and cycles.  However last week I took my emergency meds again.

On Sunday I went out for a long ride (that was in my plan) and had great difficulty actually getting myself motivated to leave the house.  I woke up at 06:00 and planned to do an early ride, I got up then got back into bed until 09:30 – it finally took me until half 12 to drag my ass out of the door.  My runs were the same during the week, I had little interest in completing them.  While on my ride, which was to be 1hr 28m I was due to run at z2 heartrate.  Well I went out and immediately noticed my heartrate was low compared to my perceived exertion.  I did manage to hit z2 a few times, but had to bury myself to get there, which seemed really odd.  I thought I must be having monitor issues again and didn’t bother riding to my HR for the rest of the route.  It was only when I got home and I was talking to Zoe I realised my emergency meds my be having some effect.  I checked the small print you get with tablets and it said it will slow heartrate!  Blimey!

I also had a counselling session on the Thursday which helped a lot, the Friday I called the hospital and they gave me an appointment with one of the doctors there and made a follow on appointment with Dr Smith on the following Tuesday.  Talking to Dr Smith was good, I got a lot out of the session – I also have had a tweak to my daily meds and been advised to come off the Emergency Med.  However I am still waiting for the prescription to arrive for the new dosage of my tablets.

I took this selfie out on my run the other day – I thought it captured quite well my mood at the time. But today is a new day and I’m feeling a lot better I’m pleased to say.