Lazy or Normal?

Busted having another afternoon nap in
the Chair of Recovery

It's been a funny few weeks. The training weekend in Exmoor a few weeks ago was tough going but, whilst we trained very hard, we also rested hard too.

A seriously comfortable, oversized armchair became "the chair of recovery" and I subscribed to daily post-training power naps where I'd usually be sneaking to the gym for an extra strength session.

A lovely, long weekend away in a very sunny Dartmoor followed and was a welcome break from the usual routine. Whilst it was an active holiday with a spot of cycling and a lot of walking up hills, I felt enormously relaxed and physically recharged.

Willy's Ice Cream by Cox Tor. If we weren't grown-ups
we might just have been very amused by that..

I've been really trying to embrace this rest and recovery stuff but something strange has happened. For the first time ever since "going healthy" I appear to have gone from one extreme to another and instead of putting an appropriate amount of rest into the training plan, I've just become a bit, well, lazy. I've been missing sessions all over the place in favour of "having some recovery time". It might be that I am actually doing a normal amount but I can't tell because I've been over-training for so long that I think I've lost touch with reality a little bit. Then again it might be that I've just lost a bit of motivation and need to give myself a kick up the backside; it's probably not a coincidence that these sudden urges to rest seem to regularly occur before swimming sessions.

All this extra downtime is clearly doing me some good though. I hit my goal of running a sub-23 minute 5k on Saturday, a goal I had previously wanted to achieve by June. Then at the Joker Sportive on Sunday I had an absolutely cracking (if not downright exhausting) ride that filled me with confidence for upcoming Wimbleball.

Some things however, have not changed. I was given a swift slap on the wrist by the man at the feed station on the sportive as after scoffing down a load of sweets, fig rolls and bananas I spied a freshly opened box of chocolate muffins and went in for the kill.

"I'm cutting those into quarters!", he told me. "Who on earth wants to eat just a quarter of a chocolate muffin?!", I responded. He really couldn't tell if I was joking or not (obviously, I was not), but I didn't want to cause a scene so I grabbed another handful of sweets and went on my way. Suffice to say, when I got back to that feed station the second time around, I made sure I got my four quarters.

Herein lies the problem: I am still eating the amount of food for somebody that's putting in a lot more exercising hours and unfortunately those calories won't get burnt whilst I'm having a nice lay down and "recovering". A few pounds have started to sneak on, so a diet readjustment needs to take place before I start to get porky if I am going to continue with this more sensible training regime.

To kick off April, and as it's now just four weeks until my first triathlon of the season, I've laid down a weight-loss challenge with a friend. The month shall be dedicated to getting lean and my side of the goal is to get to somewhere under 50kgs by race day. Bring it on!