Celtman, Coffee, Cake and a Collie

It's 2am, and I'm vaguely awake... struggling to get back to sleep.  I've woken to find that my hair and my pillow are soaked in sweat.  It's not hot, but I'm tossing & turning, trying to get comfy, trying to ignore the damp pillow... It feels like the middle of July... but it's February.  Yuk. I'm standing on the poolside, speaking to a young lifeguard about something or other, and I suddenly become aware that I'm bleeding... far more heavily than normal.  I make my excuses and make it to my locker and the ladies toilet in time to catch the blood before it makes it out of my swimsuit and down my leg.  My periods used to happen like clockwork, predictable and manageable. But not any more.  It's day 3 of a 7-day stint off work, and I should be training.  But I feel flat, low, a bit depressed if I'm honest. I feel tearful for no reason at all.  Is it the short days?  Or am I fatigued?  I make myself get out on my bike in the wind, and ...

I've just failed a bike session... I did everything I could to try and get it done despite waking up feeling tired after a full-on couple of weeks.  But nope... no, no, no.  Not happening. Not today.  Sometimes, the body just says No.  It happens less and less now, as I gain fitness and resilience, but sometimes you just have to take a rest day.  So, to try and avoid beating myself up for not completing it, it seemed like a good time to look back over progress in the last few weeks and months.  A warning: this is a looooong geeky post!  The last couple of months have seen me gradually regaining progress lost while I was ill in November, and going beyond where I was in terms of strength.  It's been hard-won, and setbacks like that can make regaining the lost ground feel really tough.  I've got there though, and have had some really nice wins recently.   I think this has mostly come through old-fashioned consistency.  Simply showing u...