The arm pads in my photo are covered with a combination of sweat and water that I had poured on my head .. it was mostly sweat.

Tonight I had a big gear workout on my bike.  These sessions are demanding, but also fantastic for building bike endurance strength.  I had a really good workout this evening, which was a complete surprise.

Before starting another day, where I would be ‘working from home’, I needed to complete a 30 minute, recovery pace run.  These recovery pace runs, are as easy as they come; I just needed to run for the allotted time.  These runs are done at the easiest pace possible.  Except this morning, even the easiest pace possible, didn’t feel that great.

On that short run, it was cold and my legs were completely ‘dead’.  Even my feet were sore; the run was terrible.  It was not a good start to the day, and as the day progressed, I just felt really tired.  This is not a good feeling, when you know you have a hard bike session in the evening.

I have been training for triathlon long enough however, to recognize that being tired, shouldn’t always mean missing a workout.  The first 15 minutes of tonight’s workout, was an easy warm up.  I decided to get on my bike and judge whether to do the whole workout, based on how I felt at the end of the warm up.

I did the warm up and felt OK to proceed.  I wasn’t feeling super strong, but good enough, to give the big gear intervals a go.  The first of my five, four minute, intervals went well, so I just kept going.  Interval two was OK too; I was still hitting the power I wanted to. Intervals three and four came and went and I was hanging in there.

The last interval is always the killer.  If you don’t ‘have it’, it typically shows up late in the workout, and you often don’t have enough strength remaining, to get that last interval done.  Tonight however, I found the strength, to not only complete that last interval, but finish it at high power.

It’s no often that you enter a workout feeling tired and get a great result.  More often than not, you can just complete the workout and that in itself, is a big win.

 Occasionally however, you start a workout tired, and end it feeling strong.  That was me tonight…. sometimes you surprise yourself.