Found the sun - Sam
30 June 2008
It’s now Sunday evening and unlike last week when I was sitting in the lounge next to an open fire keeping warm this week we are on the patio on our deck chairs drinking our bedtime hot chocolate .The weather has been clear blue skies and beautiful sunshine for the past few days. The temperature has been over 30 degrees every day too, it’s been lovely.
I’m back into my next block of training which is hard but is going well. My coach Murray has flown over for two weeks just to make sure we understand each key session and give helpful coaching points. It’s great having him here but weird at the same time as I’ve been an athlete who you just give a training programme to with heart rate zones, time or wattages and I just do it. I then either email or text the feedback to my coach. It’s great having him here as he is adding valuable input, but weird because I feel a little more pressure on me to make sure I perform the key sessions well. I suppose that’s good as dealing with pressure is something we all have to do when racing. Up until this point my key sessions have gone well, so I think the coach is pleased but it’s still only his first week here
Murray arrived on the Wednesday, so Wednesday evening I cooked dinner and we had a team meeting. We celebrated with a bottle of red wine (I only had one glass) but Stephen was very excited as the wine only cost $2 (NZ) and was nice.
The team meeting went well and Murray showed me my new programme. It involved making a crucial decision and that was to not race The Hamburg World Cup which is in two weeks. It was decided by me, Stephen and Murray that another big block of solid training would be best for me. I’ve trained and based my whole year around The Olympics and if I race Hamburg I won’t make many improvements from now until The Olympics. So although I love to race and feel that I’m in good shape, it’s not best for the long term goal of winning the Olympic Gold and that’s what this year is all about.
The other exciting thing that happened this week was my new bike arrived. It was so exciting as Avanti have had them specially made for their Olympic riders. My bike looks so cool it has the NZ flag and Silver Fern on it along with a little Kiwi on the front! But the best thing is it has my name on it. I’m so proud of that as I always associated having your name on a bike as a professional and now I have mine on my bike. It’s so cool. I took it for its first ride today and it was a real nice ride. Light and responsive. Unfortunately the rider was not feeling as great as I had one of my hardest run sessions this morning. I knew it was going to be hard and hurt. It was also a key session and I’m the type of athlete who likes to perform well in key sessions.
So before a key session I go very quiet and focused and do not talk a lot. People who don’t know me would probably think this rude but it’s just I’ve flicked the switch and I’m focused on going hard. After I’ve done the session and I did it well, like today’s I’m happy and back to my chatty self.
You don’t want to know what I’m like if it goes badly!!!!!
It’s now 8pm and we’re on the deck watching the sun set over the Pyrenees. I’m doing my AltoLab breathing. It’s a portable altitude machine that imitates altitude training. I breathe through a tube which air is passed through silicon crystals so it takes out oxygen. I wear a pulse meter on my finger that tells me how low I am going in terms of per cent. I have been on it for ten days and at the moment I am down to 75%. I suppose really I am still training at 8pm. Altitude training works as there is less oxygen in the air so your body has to make more red blood cells. When you come down you obviously have more red blood cells to carry oxygen around. I have not gone up to altitude this year as I blew myself up two years ago as you have to be careful not to train too hard up there. Lots of research shows that sleeping high and training low is the best formula so by me using my AltoLab I have the best of both worlds. I do 12 days on and then 12 days off.
Anyway, I’m just about to finish altitude training now so I’m off to bed. I hope you had a good week and training is going well. It’s been a week of high’s and lows for me.
Sam.
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