Author: Buck

I’ve had some really amusing conversations of late. Not humorous, so don’t expect LOLs. Just amused me.

Some guy at work as I was getting changed out of my bike gear, got chatting about how he was a pushbiker. I said it was killing me getting my fitness back. The first time I rode 56 miles then ran 13 miles on day one.

“YOU RODE 56 MILES?”

Things are looking up on the training front.

As I keep saying, I started from a position of no runs for 5 months, no rides or swims for 4 years, on January the second. Despite missing whole weeks of training due to work battering me with hours, I got it up to 20 miles run. On the bike, I’ve been doing turbo sessions and top gear rides, to and from work, but hadn’t actually tried out a long ride. To be honest, the horror of that first ride to work in January was still hanging over me and I was a bit reluctant, scared even, to set off. Also we’ve had massively untypical freezing weather, which didn’t entice.

Anyway, it was mild on Friday and I needed to know where I was up to on the ride. I set off for Wales. Turns out the mild was in sheltered bits, it was blowing a gale. I managed 20  miles into the teeth of it then turned around. The wind was so bad, and so focused in one direction, that I rode up the long, steep drag out of Frodsham still in the saddle, on my aero bars. On the way out I was actually having to pedal to keep my speed up going down the damn thing.

I’ve only been training for 10 weeks, after 4 years away from swimming and biking, and 5 months away from running. Today I did a 20 mile run. It was hellish, but I did it. A bad, painful 20 miles, is still 20 miles.

The reason (I think) it was so terrible is actually a good thing.  I was at the gym last week and a tri geezer came on and jumped on the tri exercise bike (spin bike thing). I was on the treadmill at the time but I was watching him out of the corner of my eye to pick up tips. Position and such looked just as uncomfortable for him, but what I noticed was he was going really slowly. I jump on, put it in a fairly tough gear and grind out a half hour or hour. He maxed the gear and slowly forced the pedals around.  That got me thinking back to when I was good on a bike. When we were teenagers and we’d nip to Wales for the afternoon we just stuck it in tenth gear and went.

*lightbulb*

I screwed up my courage and went to the Warrington Triathlon Club swim session. Hooray! They are a really keen bunch, with two proper training coaches. I did two lengths then they started trying to sort me out. Being basically untaught since whatever they said at school they have their work cut out.

I was windmilling, my breathing is all wrong, I need to rotate my body with the strokes, lift my head by 45 degrees when face down, stretch out my leading arm, raise my elbow on the pulling arm,and only kick to balance my strokes.

The killer one for me is the breathing. I am aware of all the others and I’m trying to put them into place, but buggered if I can get the breathing. Rest your head on your leading arm, push the arm forward to rotate in the water, as your pull arm clears your face, breathe. Ha! Suck in loads of water and cough your guts up, more like. 

The first thing is work. I asked, in a rambling, apologetic way if, when possible, I could have shorter runs. I was flustered because it felt so cheeky. I asked for longer runs last year, I didn’t want to them to think I was getting all precious and picking and choosing my runs. I was thinking straight Didcot and back, 10½- 11 hours. In a case of ‘careful what you wish for’, I got a week of 7-9 hour runs. 45 minutes overtime in the whole week. It’s normally about 8 or 9 hours, easy.

That is what I asked for, but not what I meant. The next week was back to Didcot runs.

That was a mite disturbing. On the bright side it has given me time to train, which is what I desperately needed.