Fail early and learn from it. That’s the motto of last week.

I fell victim to one of the biggest hurdles in sport - ego. I kept getting better and my numbers kept improving so when it was time to ease of the throttle a little I was secretly still pushing. Instead of taking the easy long workouts at what they really are, easy, I kept chasing some imaginary goals which bit me hard.

But let’s start from the beginning.

My week started with a 30 minute strength workout which was then followed with speed workouts on the bike and run on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

All was fine. I kept pushing the hard intervals, recovered in between and kept at it till the end. I felt good. I felt strong and then came Thursday and the 3 hours and 20 minute bike ride.

I set everything up. Got my electrolytes, water, and gels and off I went (on the trainer). The workout prescribed my power output to be between 153 and 203 watts. So every sane person would ride at something around 180 and just let the blood flow through the body. But every once in a while my ego gets in the way and I kept pushing it close to 200 watts which doesn’t look like much of a difference but it seriously hampered my run the day after.

Instead of an easy 1 hour and 35 minute run, I had to quit after 50 minutes because it was so difficult to even hold a 6 min/km pace.

I then had to rest for two whole days afterwards to be able to train next week.

Lesson learned and hopefully never repeated.

Next week is a recovery week which fits perfectly with everything so I’ll get to clean up my head and recover my body for one more push in the base phase cycle.

As always, here are the numbers.