Good morning, Pardo

Six from six so far. Do this one right and it's a clean sheet. Proof that the process is working. Believe it.

Ted, Sunday evening

Good morning, Pardo.

Ted, on it for once, using the name he only bothers with when things are going well. Six days into Block 2's best week by a distance, and I'd take it. A proper accolade. Then Monday's review landed and the "Pardo" evaporated inside four lines. Run missed. Strength missed. Cold, formal, straight back to "Alistdair" for the telling off. More on that later, because it's a better story than it sounds.

First, the week itself. Genuinely one of the better ones.

It started with the wife away overnight and the garage gym coming into its own. Daughter on the iPad, Bernard watching curiously from somewhere he had no business being, rain pouring furiously outside. Goblet squats, DB bench, Bulgarian split squats, a 1000m row, the lot, done and dusted at a reasonable hour for once, not the usual post-9pm scramble. Small miracle.

Tuesday: intervals on the trail at lunch, 5 x 800m. Four of the five reps sat right where they should, 4:33, 4:28, 4:19, 4:20. The fifth faded to 4:58, which is apparently what a fair session looks like rather than a broken one. I'll take Ted's word for it.

Wednesday was meant to be an easy run plus strength. What actually happened was the first proper swim in six months. Bobbing about in the sea in Majorca doesn't count. The last real one was the swimathon in March, for St Luke's. Water got trapped in my ear that time, so I'd bought plugs for this one. Didn't help. Ended up doubling the planned distance anyway: 1000m in 24:54, a 500m split around 12:19, mostly breaststroke. Good swim, right up until I went for a final dive and sprint and cramped my calf going in. Limped back, had to dive under to retrieve the plugs, breaststroked the rest of the way to the side. This detail matters later.

Thursday, back in the garage for Strength B, post-9pm again, so much for the new leaf: RDLs, step-ups, shoulder press, single-leg calf raises, dead bugs, a farmer carry to finish. Forty-eight minutes, done properly.

Friday, a tempo run at lunchtime. 3 x 8 minutes, going for it: 5:23, 5:21, then 4:56 as the effort eased on the third. Heart rate sat in the tempo zone throughout, up to 169 on the first block.

Saturday, the bike, in hammering rain. Fourteen kilometres, forty-three minutes, easy aerobic, average heart rate 108, comfortably under the ceiling. Flat out along the river, away from the traffic. Cutting in from the Red Lion onto the Weaver, there were police. Flagged me down for a word, delivered in the same breezy, unhurried tone you'd get directions to the nearest petrol station in. Nothing to worry about, they said. Just looking for someone. A woman, last seen nearby, blood on her shirt. If I saw her, dial 999. Nothing to worry about, and also here's an emergency number, just in case. Pick one, officer.

That puts an edge on a ride. Further up there were more of them, working the towpath in the rain, and that time I didn't stop, just shouted that no, I hadn't seen anyone, and kept going. Hope she was alright. Strange thing to carry for the rest of a ride, that kind of not knowing.

Home, soaked through, and the shoe dryer got dragged out for the first time in months.

Sunday, the long run. Ted still being nice about it: fifty to sixty minutes, heart rate under 143, steady, don't get clever. It was a good one. Another loop along the river, back past the Whitegate Way, out to the now infamous broken bridge. No dog. Why didn't I have the dog? No idea. Mistake, in hindsight.

9K in. The plan was never a full 10K, but 9K felt so close after weeks of deload and holding back that the temptation was obviously there. Costa was a kilometre out and I was already past fifty minutes. Job done. But 10K is 10K, and I wanted the number. In the end: 8.9km, fifty-four minutes, average heart rate 139, every lap between 5:48 and 6:25 a kilometre, comfortably under the ceiling the whole way. Ted's own note afterward: duration and heart rate discipline both on target. High praise, for Ted.

Could I resist the Fanta.

Better still, the stamp card was full. Free Frappe. The 10K can wait.

Sunday evening, Ted's dashboard was doing its own hype: six from six so far. Do this one right and it's a clean sheet. Proof that the process is working. Believe it. Bold talk for a robot.

Monday morning: good morning, Pardo. Still riding it.

Monday's actual review: back to Alistdair, and an amber square on Wednesday. Turns out the swim, moved into the run-plus-strength slot by my own calendar edit, counted as the cross-training but not as the run or the Strength C that were meant to sit alongside it. Ted's own words: the calendar designated Wednesday as the swim slot, so the swim was planned work done, but the run and strength genuinely weren't completed, and that's noted plainly.

Fair, technically. Wtf Ted, emotionally. "Six from six" was only ever six of seven, with Sunday's long run still outstanding when Ted said it. Add that one in, done well, and the week should have been a clean seven from seven. Instead, Monday's recount knocked Wednesday back to amber: six from seven, not the clean sheet promised. Another bug to fix. Or possibly not a bug at all, which might be worse.

One more number for the ledger, since apparently that's the theme of this post.

Still top of the office leaderboard for another month.