It's been quiet since Tallinn, and there's a real reason for that. No training camp footage this time, no fancy stuff - just an honest catch-up on the actual life side of this, which doesn't get shown nearly as often as the racing does.
Getting ill, twice
There weren't really any post-Ironman blues this time - I came back on a genuine high. But I probably went back into training a bit too quickly, and between that and everything else going on, I picked up two separate infections inside three weeks: a throat infection that had me feverish and training on and off for a week, then something else not long after that just ran me down again.
Everything changing at once
And there was a lot else going on. I left my job for an extended break and I'm not currently working, just a few projects of my own for now. Sorted the house out, and the big one: I've properly moved to the Netherlands with Chiara - new country, new routine, new everywhere, figuring out pools and gyms and training venues from scratch, in a language that isn't my first one, heading straight into autumn and winter.
Your home environment is so much more tied to consistent training than people realise until they're actually in it - and a new country is a different order of disruption to just a longer commute. So we put the structure on hold rather than force it through a six-week window of pure stress. We'd planned a marathon in there too, but that got pulled for the same reason - there'll be other marathons.
The unexpected upside
Here's the part I didn't expect: the new setup is actually easier to train in. The gym's five minutes' walk instead of a thirty-minute drive. The pool's twenty minutes on foot instead of thirty in the car. We've got an indoor training room with a bike each, so there's almost no barrier to just getting on it for an hour whenever I've got one spare. Swimming's always the first thing to drop when life gets busy - it's never really 45 minutes, it's the drive there, the shower, the drive back - and removing that friction has made a genuine difference to how much I'm actually doing.
The winter plan
Three weeks back into real consistency now. Swim's back in properly, some double bike-and-run days taking advantage of having more flexible time, a bit of threshold work sprinkled in without overcooking anything. Running comes back fastest for me - a few weeks and I'm usually back to where I left off. The gym's shifting too: all the unglamorous foundational work is done, so now it's genuinely loading weight to build real resilience through winter, alongside raising my VO2 max ceiling, which is still the thing that drags everything else up with it.
There's a new, more advanced core temperature sensor coming into play for heat training - proper structured protocols this time rather than just a hot room with the fan off, which is what we were working with before Tallinn. A biking weekend in the Yorkshire Dales is pencilled in for later this month if travel lines up, then it's head down into Christmas and a proper heat and volume block in January and February.
The target
Ironman South Africa, Andy's home race, at the end of April - about five months out from where we're standing now. Not about qualifying off this one; it's the next data point, the next test of what a full winter of real structure and consistency actually builds. I'm genuinely excited to see how much I can absorb over the next few months, and to just be back in rhythm and healthy going into it.
