7 months and counting

Well we're at the end of March and I've only got one more month of misbehaving (yeah right) before I have to shape up and get myself into gear.

March has been an odd old month. It started with lots of short sessions and took me until yesterday (30th) to finally crack the 1hr/day average that is my minimum target for any month this year. It also took until last Monday (24th) for me to do any cycling, my first time in the saddle since dragging my pal out for his Birthday Tri on 17th Feb.

So, onto this last week and what has happened to rescue the month from its impending disaster.

After only managing 2hrs of running between the 17th and 22nd my recovery started last Sunday when I joined my Tri Club for an easy hour of swimming and then took one of my clubmates for an (equally easy) hour of running.
On Monday I got dragged out on my bike (it wasn't my idea) for 2h30m/42miles. A rare break in the weather meant that I could take my road bike to make things a bit easier, rather than smashing myself silly on my old hybrid bike.
Tuesday I managed 10.25miles of running at various paces in 1h12m. The first 4.25 miles I ran alone working my way to the Running Club and the last 6 miles was a group run with a hard effort of almost 2miles thrown in for good measure.
Wednesday I slipped back into lazy mode and scrapped all thoughts of training.
On Thursday I made good of the extra light we're now getting of an evening (even more now that the clocks have changed) and ran for 7miles along the River Thames before running another 7.5miles with some of the running club.
Friday was lazy, but I can always cover that with my weekly squad swim session which this week included a 400m/200m/100m/50m Timetrial set while wearing a tee shirt.
On Saturday we had a group gathering to recce the course for our very unofficial In Club Triathlon. It's a tough old beast and involves hills, hills, hills and more hills, so we thought it only fair to introduce some of the newer members to its pleasures before race day. I tacked on a bit extra and actually ended up putting in a 2h30m Duathlon.
Yesterday I dragged myself out for my 3rd bike ride of the week and followed it up with an hour in the gym after which I felt thoroughly trashed, then today I started with a 90min gym session, a 30min run, then later this afternoon I'm off to Exeter University to test my legs and lungs out on the bike for a VO2 max test (that should be fun - not!!!)

So that's it really. March is done and dusted, IMFl is 7 months away which sounds like ages until you realise that it's 5 months since I entered. Doesn't time fly - gulp!!!!

Until next time.

For your amusement

This re-surfaced today. It's a member of my club it T1. Shows how (not) to do it.

What did I say?

Ok, ignore the last post, I lied. I'm going to start biking am I???? Yeah right.

It's Easter weekend which means school holidays and chocolate. Shell (Sister) has come down to see us with her trio of little ones and that seems to have given me a big enough excuse to totally stop training. It's ground to a complete halt. All I've managed this week is 2 runs which is shockingly bad by any standards.

March is already looking to be a write off, so here's an advance wish that if nothing else my enthusiasm comes back in April. Grrrrrrrrr.

Must bike. Must bike. Must bike!!!!!

Well I promised myself that once Grizzly was over I'd start smashing some miles out on the bike. Have I? Ermmm, nope, I've done nothing! In fact I barely seem to be ticking over with anything at the moment. The swimming is going well which I actually think is down to the discovery of gym work rather than any increase in training. It's lucky that the gym is there infact or my monthly training totals would look a whole lot worse than they do. While it's good to see that after 15 or so years in Tri I'm finally managing to cope with the gym there's no getting away from the fact that it's swimming, cycling and running I need to train at and there is not enough of it going on.

March in truth has been a bit of a pain in the arse so far and I'm not expecting the rest of it to be much better. Amongst other things work is in the process of some major upheaval which will drag along until May and most likely screw up what bit of a training pattern I've got. This weeks normal training is already screwed because Good Friday throws a spanner in the works of my working week.

That's about it really. There's not much else to report. I've worked lots, run a few times, swam a few times and taken a few trips to the gym, welcome to my life. Dull isn't it? Sometimes that's just how I like it though.

GRIZZLY 2008 and some wonky photography

Wow that was tough! Not my best run at Seaton, not my most serious, definately my slowest, possibly my worst position, probably my toughest.

It started early as my alarm clock woke me up in order for me to get myself together and out to meet my chauffeur for the day (thanks Basher!).
We were soon in Seaton and mulling about, I'm not used to getting there early. With recent weather being damp to say the least I was wondering about my decision to wear road trainers for the race. It was to late now though so I got changed, put my bag in to be looked after and headed to the start.

Soon the gun went off and with a handful of gels and a handful of camera for some (hopefully) pretty pics we headed out onto the pebble beach. I was (as normal) perched neatly in the middle of the field to keep myself away from the lunatics at the front.
After a nice steady start and a cruise along the beach we started hitting the hills and my legs didn't feel good. Then we hit the off road hills (uphill and downhill) and immediately I knew the shoe decision was going to cost me a load of time. I'm known to launch myself down hills like a lunatic but today I was descending like a fairy, one false step would have me sliding around like Bambi on his frozen lake, it wasn't good and trying to climb muddy slippery hills was even worse. Still, that wasn't the idea for the day, I knew I wasn't in great shape hence the camera experiment, can I take pictures on the move (no is the answer).

Outside of slipping all over the place whenever I tried to climb/descend I didn't actually feel to bad. A few stops for photo's (mostly rubbish) will have lost me a couple of minutes and I think the trainers could have cost me up to 10mins, but outside of that I was actually quite enjoying a reasonably steady run in the country. Then I started pasing people that I knew and who should have been well ahead of me. Surely they couldn't ALL be having a bad day could they, maybe they could, or maybe I was running better than I thought. Only time will tell.
So I carried on bimbling along taking the odd place here and there. I had a few problems between 10 - 15 miles when I landed funny and wrecked my leg for a while. It appeared to work its way out (mostly) though and hopefully it'll cause no more problems.

There was nothing really exciting to tell you in the end. I hadn't secretly been flying, others had obviously just been suffering a lot more than I was. My finish result was just enough to enforce my theory that I can only run the Grizzly properly in an odd year, so roll on 2009, when there will be proper shoes and no camera.

Even years - bad
2008 - 68th - 2:50:24
2006 - DNF
2004 - 53rd - 2:13:13
2002 - 57th - 2:22:43
2000 - 60th - 2:49:36

Odd years - good
2007 - didn't race
2005 - 33rd - 2:32:46
2003 - 9th - 2:22:59
2001 - 15th - 2:31:26

Slack end to February.

Well February finished at a bit of a canter, or a limp to be more precise. With several smaller sessions that were a lot more intense than normal my legs complained, a lot!
On Tuesday I managed 55mins with my bunch of Essex runners. Part of the session involved sprinting hard uphill (10 times) for 10secs and then running backwards down to the start line again. I'm not sure if this was the session that smashed my legs up or if it was a combination of the previous 3-4 days but boy have my legs suffered for the rest of the week. I managed to turn the tops of my calf muscles (on both legs) into mush. I was struggling to even walk around on Wednesday so I gave training a very wide berth, on Thursday I thought I'd give it a go though and went running around Marlow for an hour with two of the lads from the club there. The pace was nice and steady for me but I had to let them get away on the descents as my legs just couldn't run downhill at all.
On Friday I was contemplating postponing my planned return to Exeter Uni for their treadmill test session but things were easing slightly and my Squad swim session on Friday night seemed to ease things further so I thought I may as well give it a go.
Todays treadmill session was every bit as painful as last weekends, not knowing anything about pace/distance/time is torture in itself. Luckily my calves behaved and I got through the 10k in 37:20. Shelly was there with me this time so there's proper video footage. Once I've trolled through it to see how bad it is I'll stick a clip up on youtube and link it to here.
This time next week I'll be resting up ready for The Grizzly, then after that it's bike, bike and more bike. Honest!!!!!!! ;-)

Right, I've got to scour the internet looking for a new car. Until next time Ceeeee Ya

Iain