2015 – Annnddd, that’s a wrap.

Phew. I’m never one to get too carried away, but God Damn,  I am glad that my 2015 racing season is finally over.  Don’t get me wrong, it has been GREAT on just about all important fronts, but during the last couple of training blocks I have to admit that I have been going through the motions just ever so slightly – it has been a helluva long season, and my mind and are begging for a rest.

To add some balance to those blocks of peak training during the season where are pedal-to-the-metal and asking so much of ourselves, it is absolutely necessary to back off at other times of the year. Every successful athlete who has endured a long career knows the truth of this. So over the next few weeks I will purposely allow myself – indeed force myself – to detrain… doing very little in the way of any structured training. Yes, I will lose fitness, but far more importantly, I will be shedding the long term fatigue that has accumulated in my body over the last 10 months, ready to start the cycle from a new base, slightly higher than I did last year. It is retention of a little fitness together with the complete shedding of all accumulated fatigue that allows us to become a better and stronger athlete from one cycle to the next, year after year.  And I will retreat mentally, also – the body cannot truly be ready until the mind is ready to go again.

So in the next month or two I’m looking forward to indulging in some of my other much neglected hobbies – fine wines, video games, and poker, to name a few!

Although the navigation around this blog isn’t what I want it to be (something I need to improve), if you haven’t done so yet, I encourage you to read all my race-reports from this year over on my “Racing” page, where I have linked to all my race reports by date order.  I don’t always publish every blog post to Facebook, so there could well be something that you missed.. in fact, if you are not my FB friend then I have no idea how you found your way here and are reading this!

I can genuinely say that I have enjoyed every single race this year, and would have a hard time picking out any of them as a best performance. However if push comes to shove, I guess the ones that will stay in my mind the longest will be those that represented the greatest struggles at the time, and for me, those were:

• Thames Meander Marathon – my 2nd ever marathon & current PR of 3:38
• Le Mans – A 24hr solo is a huge undertaking, but all the training & preparation paid off
• London Ultra Duathlon – Just a great event, very tough, but hugely fun and rewarding
• 9BAR 9×9 – Still buzzing from thought that I RAN 50+ miles!

I haven’t really written much about skating or LCHF nutrition lately. Le-Mans aside, I have done more running than skating this year because… well, just because I wanted to push the boundaries a bit further back in that area, and there are just so many more run races that you can sign up for, instead of the paltry number of inline races that we have.  

The Endurance Skating Project Year 2 concludes with me as a fitter, faster, healthier all-round athlete. Day to day life and work goes on in the background; there is still SO much to work to become a better, faster, and more accomplished athlete, and I am never one to rest on laurels, but for now I will enjoy a little down-time while plotting my next adventures…