Giving up coffee

It is now Monday, my third day without coffee, I am at work and I feel less than average. If I did not have a budget finalisation meeting this morning I would probably have stayed in bed.

The weather has been very warm and sunny, the first of the summer weather arrived for the weekend. I did run on Friday, ride on Saturday and run on Sunday, I am guessing part of the issue is dehydration, though I did drink a reasonable amount over the weekend. I am also wondering if there was a small element of heat stroke. Though it is hardly hot at the moment it has been hotter than normal and I wonder if my body needs to adjust.

• I am extremely tired after 3 lousy sleeps with Friday and Saturday nights being particularly bad, I am not sure if it is the caffeine withdrawals or just my normal cycle of bad sleep, though I feel worse than normal.
• Yesterday I had a really bad headache in the afternoon and early evening, I really do not like taking pain killers but if it kicks in again today I will have to pop some Nurofen or I will not survive the day at work.
• Most of yesterday I had a mildly upset stomach and it is not 100% right today, not sure what that is related to, caffeine or something I ate ?
• I have long suffered from pain in my lower back, a couple of visits to a osteopath a few years back resolved the issues and rarely suffer anymore, and can usually stretch it out. The pain has come back again, though I have not really started to stretch properly again. I will get onto that tonight.
• I have had a stiff/sore neck for about a week, not terrible pain, more frustrating and niggling.
• My legs hurt….. I very badly broke the “do not exceed the previous weeks exercise by more than 10% rule” so it is my own fault. I was planning on introducing some sprint reps into my training after tai chi tonight, but I will wait until next week.

It was my wifes turn to do softball this week so I went riding on Saturday morning with Miles, I took the single speed up to Woodhill forest. If the dry weather remains much longer then Woodhill is going to be un-rideable soon, but Riverhead will be fantastic ! We had another slow ride, kept the pace down on the flat and climbs to as close to easy chatting pace as possible. I am really enjoying these slow chatty non-stop rides. Rode up Powerball, where we stopped so I could adjust my chain, then hit Big Mumma, and the back trail to enchanted forest, where we had to walk one section of this trail, though it has been un-rideable for years, I must talk to the bike parks people about making a bypass to that section… We then rode Haggis and Northern Exposure and stopped before riding no brakes. Stopped again at the top of no brakes and then did Iron Horse, I kept the seat right up and didn’t do any of the jumps this time round. We had another small break before the steep climb up to the fun back section of Conifer Loop that links back into Haggis, followed up with Tree Huggas, Link, Cookie and finally Raceface down, back to the car. Though we kept a fairly sedate pace we did cover a fair bit of ground and I was quite tired when I got home.
On Saturday night we celebrated Guy Fawkes with friends, though I was quite tired and I am guessing the caffeine withdrawals were starting to kick in. I still slept badly though.

As usual I had planned to get up early on Sunday morning and go for a run before my wife went to work and as usual I stayed in bed till 10.00 reading a novel. Once I had all the shopping completed I did get out for a mid afternoon run along Exhibition drive. I took it very slow as my legs were extremely tight and almost painful. I ran for an hour and half at a very slow pace, running from Titirangi, 2 laps of Exe and back again. One of the sections took me 21 minutes, I can do that lap in 16 minutes if I apply myself, I was running that slowly. I did keep my heart rate under 150 though which was the goal.

I am definitely not ready to do any distance running at this stage, 15kms in an hour and a half and I was pretty wrecked, not a good sign.

Had a BBQ at our place, my head was so sore and one of the guests tuend up an hour early so I was very unprepared and had not done all the house work I wanted to do. It was an Ok night, but I was not really up to it.