Recovery and reflection

Marlow seems to have taken more out of me than I thought it would. The extra hilly 5km on the bike and the extra 4km run have taken their toll. Yesterday was a 30 minute recovery spin and a club swim in the evening. I have just finished an hour on the turbo, doing TrainerRoad's Ericsson. 4 x 8minute sweetspot intervals. Sweetspot gives a great training stimulus but doesn't hammer the body as much as Threshold work. Great for recovery.

Comparing previous year's results I finished 26 places higher than 2012, where I finished 49th. A great improvement. I think this says a lot about base training; the bulk of the training I did for the Outlaw Iron-distance tri was all in heart-rate Z2, low effort, endurance based training.

Here is the Marlow bike leg on TrainingPeaks viewer. Compare this against the bike leg from Althorp. Both have the same training stress score (TSS) though Marlow was 5km longer and almost ~80m more climb. It seems obvious now the reduced effort I put in on the bike leg at Marlow.

Just waiting on the pictures from Marlow now!