Author: Buck

A few weeks ago I said to a driver at work that I’d found a great route into work but it was cruel on my fancy bike taking it along the canal. He said I should get a gravel bike. I googled one later. It seems it’s much like a road bike (or ‘racer’ as they were called when I was a yoof) but with a wider frame clearance to take fatter tyres, a more relaxed geometry, and a slightly higher crank (for clearance). I had a look. Some of them were dearer than my tri bike. I only wanted a knock about commuter. I had a moan on Twitter and was told that gravel bikes were the latest trend, that’s why they were so expensive, I should look at Cyclocross (CX) bikes (the sport where idiots race through mud then carry their bikes at a run up hills that are too steep and muddy to ride) as it is basically the same thing, but not trendy, therefore loads cheaper. In my usual obsessive way I went from never having heard of one to armchair expert in 24 hours. I decided the one with the best spec on the gears, brakes and brand name frame was the Giant TCX. Then I thrashed eBay and Gumtree for a bike. The problem I had is Giant were most specific that my statuesque 5’ 6½” meant I had to get a Small. Hardly any to be had, and dear. One for £600+. I saw one on Gumtree for £250, with better gears and spec than a £350 on eBay that still had a few days bidding left on it (so sure to go up a lot at the last minute). It was in Bristol. Of course it was. He said it was in average condition. Everything worked but it had a few scratches. Sounds good to me. I arranged to go and look at it on the Saturday, but then he pulled the advert on the Thursday. I was gutted. I did another thrash of the internet and confirmed I was going to have to pay a lot more for less spec. I text him to confirm he’d sold it. He hadn’t! Yay! A lot of muppets had been hassling him over the bike so he’d just pulled the advert. He said they were giving him 20 questions about the scratches. “It’s a £200 bike”. Hmmm, I’d been happy at £250. I said if it was the bike in the pic, and it all worked, I’d give him £230, consider it sold. He said I could have it for £200! It was a long, tedious drive, but the bike is perfect for me. I’ve done some basic tinkering; cleaned years of built up oil off the chain and sprockets, lowered the seat, lowered the handlebars (put the stem under the spacers) fitted clip in pedals, adjusted the (disc) brakes so it now does stoppies, and pumped the tyres to their feeble max. On […]

I’ve known for ages that I have unrealistic expectations. Whenever I come back from an injury I expect to be out of the blocks as fast and as fit as I was before. Usually injuring myself again in the process. Today an idle reply to someone saying I was too hard on myself crystallised my position. “I always have unrealistic expectations, then am miffed if I don’t achieve them first go. If I do achieve them I think I should have done it faster.” Whaddayagonnado?   That’s not the point though, the point is I’ve changed my unrealistic expectations. I wanted to do a sub hour marathon and a sub 10 hour triathlon. Wendy has been going on about how mad I am to keep punishing myself in a sport I don’t enjoy. (I hate the swimming and the cycling really bores me. I like the running.) My only reply is that it’s a big challenge. As she rightly points out, there are plenty of running challenges. After mulling it over for a few days I’ve decided on a compromise. I’ve got the Outlaw triathlon in 24 days, after that I’m going to take a year off triathlon and concentrate on achieving my running goals. Which I will actually enjoy. So I’ve lined up a bunch of races. The Warrington half marathon (on my doorstep, rude not to) in September, the Chester marathon in October and the Manchester marathon in April. I’ve put in a holiday form, if I get it I’ll be doing the Crewe 20 mile run in September as well. And… *drum roll* The Leeds Endure24 (24 hour running race) in July next year! As soon as I get my tri done I’m going to get stuck into a running plan to get me up to speed for a sub 3 in Manchester, and I’m going to be building lots of miles for the 24. Apparently about 15- 20 runners each year get the yellow ‘100 miles’ T-shirt. Guess what I’m expecting to do? I can run 26 miles now, and for Ultra marathons (technically anything beyond 26.2 miles –a marathon- distance) there is a lot of walking/ running. It’s building up the stamina. I did the Ladybower 50 mile ultra in 2014, I’d only trained up to 40 miles so it hit me really hard after 40 miles in the race. I ended up walking most of the last 8 miles. I did it in 10.06. That was without the proper training. Also I’d been training run X minutes, walk Y. When I got there no-one was walking. So I ran it all until I couldn’t run any more. Always follow your training. My point is, 100 miles is do-able.  But I’m going to have to train right up to that distance. The thing is, it’s a timed endurance race, there is no set distance, it’s as many 5 mile laps as you can finish in 24 hours. There’s only me putting an arbitrary distance on […]

Eek! 35 days until the Outlaw triathlon! My training hasn’t really recovered from that 6 weeks of lurgy. I’m back up to marathon distance with my runs, I’ve done a few decent rides of 60 – 70 miles but no 100 milers, and my swim is still rubbish, done about 1½ miles. On the positives, for years I’ve been trying to find a quiet route cycling route. If you want to ride 50 miles in any direction you are going to be on main roads at some point. A while ago it occurred to me that all around Warrington are quiet country lanes. I spent a two days sorting out a loop last week, then found an app where I could plot it out and save it (as something called a GPX file) then I had to find out how to transfer the GPX to my bike PC. I took it for a test ride, the bike PC acting like a satnav on my course, and apart from one busy crossing (which I later realised I can eliminate by doing the loop in reverse) it worked like a charm. 34 miles, mostly really quiet roads, with a few hills. I did two laps, (the second by memory) it’s akin to the Outlaw course. Mostly flat, wind to contend with, a few hills that obviously get repeated. That is the best training thing in ages. You really don’t want to get on your bike when you know you’ve got to ride around town centre or motorway roundabouts.   The other positive is my running. A few times lately I’ve said “I think I’ll beat my Personal Best (PB) at X distance” and have. Looking at it, I’ve battered my PB in every category, since May. Also, which it doesn’t record as a run distance, I beat my 10 miles PB on the tenth of June.  I was recommending my running pack to two women on Twitter who wanted to run into work carrying clothes and makeup, they said their bags were killing them. I was used to pack running in the army before I got mine. Everything bouncing up and down and rubbing. By the end you’re all bruised with loads of friction burns. I got my pack for a 50 mile (ultra) I was running. It was a revelation. It just works. No pain, no bouncing, no webbing burns. Anyway, I recommended it, then got a bit nervous. Was it as good as I remembered? I ran to work and and back (18 miles) to time myself then did a pack run on my last day at work. Carrying a full uniform, a change of running gear (for coming home) a flask, rations and ‘phone. My first pack run in years and years, and my first ever double run day. I liked it. Good training. I’ll be doing that again. And the pack worked a treat.   I still suck at swimming.   I’m looking to get through this year’s […]

I saw a picture a while back, under “Britain’s Best Cycling Routes”, somewhere up in the wilds of Scotland. It’s supposed to be the UK’s toughest ascent, and just look at the roads! Empty, sweeping, awesome. Sadly it’s in the middle of nowhere, the holiday accommodation I could find was either fully booked or rich people only, and when I asked a native it seems the pictures are totally misleading, it’s famous and a mecca for caravans and such. Imagine wobbling up a couple of miles of leg burning ascent while caravans and mobile homes are trying to pass you and each other!  Anyway, nowhere to stay, so no. But the seed had been planted. Top of Scotland, hills, great roads, sparsely populated, little traffic. I tried a bunch of places but they were all booked, finally got a caravan in Nairn. Great. Booked it. Where’s Nairn? Oh. 6½ hours drive away. Way, way, up in the Highlands. That was our last stay in a caravan. We got up there and it was sunny and warm, as you could hope in June, then it started raining and turned cold. It turns out we’ve been to that neck of the woods twice previously, so we’d already seen the tourist sites. I feel bad for Wendy. She says it was alright, but the only thing for her to do there was walk and eat. And huddle by the fire. I had a good training session. Killer hills, gorgeous, empty, back roads, great running and cycling. Poor Wendy, though. Next holiday is somewhere that’s got holiday stuff to do. And has brick walls and double glazing. Here’s a few snaps. And look at this, Microsoft have finally dumbed their photo editing thing down enough that I can use it! Pole ruining snap, then gone! Voodoo, I tell you! Still not the best of pics, but the tech impresses me greatly.   And here’s a video of Wendy down on the farm. 4 hours in Scotland and she went native. https://youtu.be/zzX-tDZfRvQ The video of her ploughing fields in her high heeled, slingback wellies didn’t load. That’s about it. Great training, rubbish holiday for Wendy. *sad face* Next time. Later, Buck. PS, Wendy started feeling ill on Friday afternoon, said she was going to pack her kit for the morning drive home in case she didn’t feel good enough later. If we were doing nothing, why waste all of Saturday driving back? We had the idea at 16.30, 17.02 we were packed, caravan cleaned, car loaded, bike stripped and bagged, and out of there.  And it lashed it down all the way home. Started to aquaplane twice, bit of focusing trip back. (Should mention that Wendy started to feel OK again as soon as we hit the road.) Which meant today I was free to pick up my bike panel from the spray painter, cut the hole in it and fit it, with crash bungs. My bike looks groovy again. All the bottom red panel […]

Just reviewing. I did a blog on the 4th of May, saying I was finally clear of that evil bug. I’d made several false starts at training, only to be too weak to continue. Since then I’ve done a bunch of rides on the Sufferfest, but on the easier setting, to get my fitness back. I did a few fast runs then decided to run a marathon. I did it, but it was so, so bad. I actually quit several times. I thought, ‘Right, just get to the next mile marker and I’m turning around, I just can’t carry on.’ Then I carried on. It was a triumph of bloody mindedness and grit, but I just wasn’t ready for it. As usual I’d been starting swimming. Tomorrow. OK, the next day. I hate swimming and I’m really bad at it so I have a huge aversion to overcome. Then, at the beginning of last week, I looked up when a TV series was returning (Stranger Things). The 4th of July. I thought, ‘Great, that’s only a month away…., hang on, my triathlon is the end of July! AAAAAGGGHHH!’. I’ve done about 4 or 5 swims since my last triathlon, no long rides, and even my run fitness took a battering from that 6 weeks of terminal man-flu. And I had 9 weeks to get to 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile ride, 26.2 mile run. PANIC! Oh, and work have been stitching me up with long shifts again. Super. So this week I’ve done 3 swims, 2 Sufferfest sessions and a few runs. I worked out a target-work-backwards plan. Then thrashed it. As usual. By the end of this week I was supposed to be up to 50 lengths of the pool. First swim I did 52 (in 40 minutes), second 62, third and hour, which I think was about 80 lengths or 1.2 miles. (I wiped the data before I had chance to confirm, but it was roughly that.) Today I thought I’d see where I was by doing a half. Being a Saturday there was no lane swim or adults only, so I had to go to an open swim session. I got half an hour’s swim, 42 lengths (2/3rds of a mile) before all the parents and toddlers piled in and I had to quit. Then I did a hilly 62 miles on my bike. 3,156 feet of elevation. Some of them were killer steep, I did 43mph in an aero tuck down one hill (then had to slog back up). I need to do that run again and again. The hills killed me. I had nothing. I wobbled back in the pitiful time of 3 hours 47. Then I went out for the run. 13.1 miles. The first two miles I was quite happy. 8 minute miles, not too painful. Then it hit me hard. I was desperate to quit. I slowed the pace and ground it out. It was miserable. I was looking back at the […]