Week 6 — When the Body said no but the Mojo said go.

Week 6 started brilliantly.

And then it went completely sideways.

Tuesday was one of those quietly reassuring runs. Nine miles, easy, nothing forced, but probably the fittest I’ve felt so far in this block. For the first time in a while I finished thinking, I could’ve done more there. Normally Tuesday is where I slot a session in, but this week I went longer and easier. It felt controlled, comfortable, and promising.

Which was fortunate… because the rest of the week unravelled quickly.

On Wednesday I made the classic mistake of briefly believing I was 25 again, not almost 45. A few hours of pickleball, handball and general enthusiasm at work with the college kids, into half an hour on the bike, then a gym session with the wife, then football training. By the end of it I had a dead leg and knees that felt like they’d been introduced to two sledgehammers.

That decision echoed for the next few days.

The legs were not happy. Properly stiff. The kind of stiffness that makes you walk down stairs sideways. Thursday I managed a short 30-minute spin just to keep things moving, but running wasn’t happening. I didn’t run again until Saturday, and even then every step felt more painful than it should have.

Layer in the usual life admin, kids off school unwell, schedule reshuffling, travel to the mainland for the weekend and suddenly the week looked very different to how it started. We were in brighton for the weekend, The weather did its best to make things even less appealing, but I managed to sneak in the third run of the week. It wasn’t the longer endurance session I’d planned. Instead, it was about an hour, mostly very easy, just about salvaging the structure.

And that’s really what Week 6 became about , not letting the wheels fall completely off.

It’s easy to look at weeks like this and see disruption. But there’s another angle. The training mojo was there. The desire to train, to push, to do the work, that hasn’t been the problem. In fact, that’s the biggest shift compared to a few months ago. Previously, the body was capable but the drive wasn’t. This week flipped that dynamic. The mind was ready. The legs weren’t cooperating.

If I’m honest, that’s probably the better way round.

You can’t fake motivation for long. If the desire to train isn’t there, consistency collapses quickly. If the body needs managing for a few days, that’s just intelligent adjustment.

Week 6 didn’t build much fitness. It didn’t extend the long run. It didn’t stack quality. But it also didn’t collapse completely. Three runs still happened. The bike still barely ticked over. The structure, even if slightly dented, remained intact.

Sometimes the win isn’t in progression.
It’s in not letting things slide as far as they might have.

Looking back, maybe that enforced slowdown was useful. It’s a reminder that durability is still rebuilding. That this project isn’t just about aerobic numbers, it’s about respecting recovery, respecting age, and not pretending the body responds the same way it did twenty years ago.

Rolling into Week 7, the goal is simple: restore rhythm. No compensating for missed volume. Just get back to sensible stacking.

The mojo is there.
Now the body just needs to catch up and act my age.

Si