A frustrating (and cold) week

I was really looking foward to starting Ian's plan for February, but the week didn't go entirely as planned.  My first run session was on a cold morning at 5.15 am and I just couldn't elevate my pulse into the required zone.   Worst of all though was the long bike session planned for the Saturday.  It was meant to be a steady flat ride for 4 hours but at 1 h 50 I suddenly started to get so cold that I couldn't hang on to the handle bars.  I stuck with it for another 20 minutes until I found a store where I could stop, get warm and eat some food, but immediately I set off again I was in trouble.  It took me 15 mins to do the next mile and I eventually made it to a pub on the East Lancs road, where I climbed off.  I used to be in a mountain rescue team, and have done a fair bit of winter climbing so I can recognise the difference between cold and the onset of hypothermia and this felt like the latter.  (One of the symptoms to look for is when you are so cold you have stopped shivering).  For the first time in my cycling career I had to phone someone to pick me up and over the next 30 mins as I slowly warmed up I experienced uncontrollable shivering and feelings of nausea.  And this was all down to a combination of not fuelling myself properly, not enough warm gear and going on an unfamiliar route where I didn't know where the cafe stops were.  Once I got home I binned any hope of doing my run session and spent the rest of the day in bed, just making sure my core got properly warm again.  On the plus side it's taught me a lot, and it's definitely not something I want to experience again. 

Other sessions went quite well this week.  I did my first 'Brick'  (75 mins bike, 30 mins run) and it was nice to do this, if only for adding a bit of variety to my training.  I'm not sure how important these sessions will be to doing a Deca.  They are key sessions to do in shorter distance triathlons, and you do still need to be fit to do the run section after all that biking, so it was good to get such a session into the programme.  Also the 90 min easy trail run on Sunday was just that - easy, and I took that as a sign that my base fitness is improving.  Finally, I did 11.2 k of swimming this week, with one session of 4.2k and although this is all very slow, I do seem to be developing the ability to swim longer at a sustainable, steady pace.  Maybe this Deca thing is actually possible! 

Off to have my first session with a sports nutritionist tomorrow.  Should be interesting.