The easy week. I have been looking forward to this week. Last week I was smashed. Lots of cycling and running, really great base work, but I really pushed the limits. To reach the heights we seek, we have to push the limits.

This week I’ve hardly trained at all by comparison. I took advantage of this being an easy week to have a “BCC” (bad freckle) removed from my back. I haven’t heard back from the pathologist, so it mustn’t have been a melanoma. This meant stitches and no swimming since Wednesday.

Up until Saturday, I had only done 1 x 1hr swim, a two hour bike and a few AB work sessions and stretching for the week. Sunday’s brick session added a six hr bike and a thirty minute run to the total.

My total training hours for the week was ten hours. The easy week has done it’s very important job in allowing me to recover from the heavy week. 

One of the big mistakes many athletes training for the Ironman make, is not having easy enough, “easy weeks” . I have mapped out my “Road to Kona” training plan. One of the first things I do is mark in the “easy weeks” and “the taper”. Then I build the other weeks up to them.

One year my Hawaii Ironman group trained very well. We did all the key sessions. The training volume appeared to be just right. The squad performed respectably, but not as well as I expected, based on previous years. No-one complained, they were all satisfied with their performances. They had done all they could.

I was concerned, they all appeared to lack “spark”.  I searched through our training diaries looking for an answer. All that I could find was the fact that I had not made the “easy weeks”, easy enough. I lightened the load, but not by enough.

It was too late to wind back the clock and do it again. But the lesson I’ve learned has saved a lot of other guys and girls wasting their training by not recovering well enough.

I see training for an Ironman as a very complex task. The be technically efficient at three totally different sports. To have the strength and the endurance to complete each leg of the race. Then to add them together and actually race the event rather than just completing it, the whole time absorbing enough nutrition and water to keep performing at a “racing level”.

To manage to train for an event like this while holding down a job and keeping a relationship healthy is hard enough, but then to arrive at the start line fit, fresh and healthy is another challenge altogether.

It’s a bit like juggling six balls at once.