That personal best came right after your worst week. Funny how that keeps happening.

Breakthroughs often arrive just after the stretch where everything felt wrong, and it is not a coincidence. Hard weeks are usually when the load was heaviest and the adaptation had not shown up yet, so what felt like decline was the cost being paid in advance. The result appears once the body or the mind finishes processing.

When you are in a bad patch, keep the record going rather than deciding it has all stopped working. Note the dates of the awful weeks alongside the results that follow. Over a season the pattern becomes visible enough to lean on.