Author: Buck

Yesterday I took all of my new toys and gave them a work-out. I’ve been wanting to test my level of fitness (mental as much as physical) in the only way that’s relevant; by doing a half Ironman. That is; swim 1.2 miles, (in under an hour) ride 56 miles (under 4:30) and run 13.1 miles/ half marathon (under 4 hours). I have had a multitude of excuses why I haven’t done so to date. The snow and ice being a rather good one, then getting a day off when it was above zero degrees and when the swimming pool was open in the morning, etc etc. Yesterday I took the plunge. I didn’t quite go the whole hog, leap from one discipline straight in to the next, but did all three over the course of the day. I got fed in between, and even took a shower. Pussy! I did the swim at dead on the time limit. This was, he says hastily, at least partially down to poor use of equipment. I was using the lap counter on my watch to mark the lengths swam, but I don’t think it was registering every fumbled press. Also, as it’s only got a 30 lap memory I swam 10 lengths (6 mins) and pressed it, swam another 10 and they took 9 minutes! I think I lost count. I couldn’t have dropped my pace by 50% in such a short space of time. Anyway, I just about made it, I think. I’ll give it another go soon to find out. As I said, I had to rush home, run Wendy to church, grab some grub (I live in terror of the energy crash!) put the washing out (all recognized events in the revised Ironman rule book) then set off for the ride. It was windy and a bit nippy, so going into it I wasn’t even sure if I was going to try for the distance, a factor that lead to the delay between events. No point in going off half cocked if you are not even going to go the distance. Even into the wind it was so much easier on my lovely new bike that I decided to go for it. I had two, two minute stops to drink water and eat, and still made the meerkat landmark in 1 hour 50. Sat down and had five minutes while I troughed out and put my gel pads on. Apparently cycling can cause a pinching on a bunch of nerves between your toes which leads to your feet going numb and freezing. I thought by moving my foot-to-pedal position in the cleats I might have overcome it, so didn’t put on gel pads (which cushion said nerve cluster, supposedly easing the condition). Wrong. My feet were like ice to the touch, even though I was sweating. So I put the pads on whilst stopped. That particular horse had already bolted. So it was ice cold numb feet all the […]

I’ve got my super new Boardman bike. I’ve swapped the tri bars over from my old bike, which has now been reassigned to the role of work commuter. That’s 55 miles a week on a heavy bike further weighed down by panniers, waterproofs, pump, lights et al. Got to be good for easy muscle building/ gradual stamina building. But that’s old kit. Not exciting at all. New kit, my lovely Boardman bike!  Finally! The picture doesn’t begin to do it justice. Even if it weren’t all blurry. I spent ages viewing different websites and comparing the specifications and relative merits of different bikes before going for this one. I went for it because it was the best for the price Halfords did, and the cycle2work scheme was run by work exclusively through Halfords. But when that was in doubt I asked the seasoned push bikers and triathletes on Twitter for suggestions, and this still came out top spec for the money. So I got it. The one thing I wasn’t expecting was for it to be so damn pretty! The pictures, even the good quality zoomed in one on Halfords site (which I can’t seem to steal for here) don’t do it justice. The tyres are tiny, the wheels have that tapered ‘filled-in’ jobby going on to aid the aerodynamics, the gear changes are by twitching levers on the brake levers and the handlebars are sublime. Old racing handlebars were just a U on it’s side. You angled them down a bit so you had a slightly lower/ further forward racing position. This inevitably meant you slid into the bottom of the U and were very uncomfortable. Boardman have given you three brilliant riding positions, on top of the bars, resting on the rubberized tops of the brake levers, right down on horizontal bottom bars or crouched with your hands resting comfortably on a flat diagonal section, Obvious, once you’ve ridden it. One of those ideas that are so simple and perfect you can’t believe they ever did it any other way. It is light as feather and in all ways lovely. The keen eyed amongst you will have noticed the want of pedals and mudguards in the picture. This I fixed. I got some fancy ‘cleat’ pedals (the ones that lock your feet into the pedals, much to the amusement of many as you fall sideways at traffic lights!) and some lightweight ‘barely-there’ plastic mudguards. Thus equipped, I then needed to buy the specialist triathlon trainers which fit into the cleats. That will be another £90. Kerr-Ching! The three holes in the soles accept the screws for the cleats, which in turn wedge into the pedals, locking you in. Also you might notice the big hole under the toes. This is so you can hop out of your wet suit, pull the one velcro strap tight (the shoes having been left in situ in the cleats) and cycle away, all the water draining out of said hole. That’s a […]

Off and on, since I wrote that entry saying about the whole other mindset of army/ civvy life, I have been wondering if I over-egged it. Whether, in fact there is that much of a difference. The other day, for no apparent reason I remembered an incident from the last T.A. outing.   Our group, C section, were with the other two. We’d been out dicking about in the field all day. For one exercise we’d dropped off our bergans (backpacks) and gone out on patrol in our sections with just our patrol webbing (think: Bat utility belt!) and rifle. When we’d finished, the three sections regrouped across a dip in the terrain from the bergans. As a bit of team building the corporal said we were to race across, pick up our bergans, then race back. Last section in to face a forfeit. We ran off, got to our bergans, then as I was helping one of the girlies in our section on with hers I heard a P.O. (Potential Officer) from our section shout out “Come on 3 section!” as he started to run back. I continued to help my team mate. As we were running back she fell over. I stopped and helped her up then ran her in. We were last. I was furious. I shouted at the P.O., “It’s supposed to be team building! You don’t leave a man down, you prick!” I was actually livid. The squad moves as fast as the slowest man. You take their bergan, their webbing, you drag them with you, but you do not leave them behind. He had run off and left the slowest to struggle. Whilst technically it was a woman down, the point remains valid.   Deep breaths. *in with calm, out with homicidal rage* Just thinking about it has got me wound up.   Anyway, my point is; I don’t think I over-egged it too much. As you move further away from the army mode you assimilate it into your civvy way of thinking until you can’t see the join. Then you remember incidents like the above and it just doesn’t fit into your normal way of life or thinking.   As soon as the weather looks a bit healthier I’ll have to get back and do the last part of my training. Cold, sleep deprived, over bullshitted fun. Talking of the bleak conditions, I haven’t been able to go out and run or cycle since my last entry nearly two weeks ago. It’s been constant snow and ice. No way am I running or riding in that, I’d break my neck! There’s no real excuse why I haven’t been swimming, mind.   One of the chaps on twitter is a Scouse triathlete and he recommended his club. Apparently they do team swimming three nights a week in a 50 metre pool, with a coach, 7.30-10 pm, £3.90 a lesson! It’s 12 miles away. Not too bad. Then from April to September they do outdoor […]

I received my first copy of Triathlete’s World magazine a week or so ago. The only reason I subscribed was because the website of the same name had some interesting test reviews of the kit you need. They publish the introduction to the articles to get you interested, then tell you you have to be a subscriber to read the reviews and conclusions. I thought that was fair enough, it has all the information I need and will help me integrate into my new community. After a wait of over a month the first issue arrived, I grabbed it and flicked through. Massive disappointment. No ‘buy this bike, this kit, and follow this training plan for instant triathlon success’. Hmmph.   For a week or two it sat there untouched, a silent reproach for impulsively subscribing to a magazine I’d never read. Yesterday I picked it up for something to read in bed. It’s actually bloody good.   The article to which the title of this entry refers is not what I wanted at all, though! Some chap, very competitive, did a duathlon (run, bike, run) with some triathletes, decided to do the ‘sprint distance’ event (750 metre swim, 20k ride, 5k run). Then he heard about Iron Man distance as some chap at his works had done one. He thought “Well, if he can do it, I must be able to.” Is this starting to sound familiar to anyone yet? I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s like I know someone like that.   As a step-up he then did a half I.M distance race (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile ride, 13.1 mile run) and it all went horribly wrong. “I’m never going to win a triathlon. but I love getting out there, seeing other people pushing themselves, pushing myself as hard as I can, trying to get faster. The half-Iron Man event wasn’t like that- it was a war of attrition. On at least a dozen occasions I wanted to stop, just stop.” …”I didn’t pull out. Instead I shuffled off to start the most torturous run I have ever been on and several hours later shuffled across the finish line. Then I waited for the amazing sense of achievement to kick in- I’m still waiting.” He has abandoned, or at the very least put on indefinite hold, his full I.M. plans. Shit. Not what I wanted to read at all! He had already done the (admittedly bit gay) sprint distance tri, and presumably had trained for the half, but still found it more than he could handle. I’ve done a bit of running and entered a full I.M.. Shit. I was actually looking forward to the half as a bit of a giggle, nice splash about in the sea off Cornwall, scenic ride, pleasant run to stretch my legs off. I keep telling myself that I did that 51 mile ride then 13 mile run within the time at my first attempt. But there is […]

After all the grand plans of yesterday, of a measured incremental easing into the job of driver, I walked in this morning and got told I was going out for an assessment. That’s that. I know that in yesterdays entry I was saying their word is not to be trusted, that they’ve said all the right things before and not delivered, that I’d believe it when I saw it, but I couldn’t help getting my hopes up. I was gutted. Before the assessment the guy was showing me half a dozen files on his desk, all driver accidents that were ongoing. “And these are from competent, professional drivers.”  Basically saying the job was too hard for a newbie driver like me, be prepared to fail. He couldn’t do me then, so I had to come back in a few hours.   I ‘phoned Wendy, telling her they were setting me up to fail, that they’d gone back on everything they’d said yesterday. She was gutted for me. I spent a few miserable hours brooding on how they had screwed me over, again.   I went for the assessment, for the fourth time in twenty four hours, this time I got one. I was a dithering wreck. I sat in the cab, the seat and steering wheel were fully adjustable, had to been shown how to adjust them. The gearbox was a fancy-pants automatic/ optional manual input. Had to be talked through that. Needed to insert my digital tachograph card, didn’t know where, let alone how. Talked through that. Before I’d even set off I could see I wasn’t impressing.   Got going, he said we were going to do a few laps of the warehouse and a controlled stop to give me a feel of the beast. I forgot, did one lap then lined us up with the guardroom gatehouse to go out. He told me to proceed. In retrospect, I missed a chance at some practise, there. Went out, got onto the road that runs all the way alongside work, at the second (easy) island I let the trailer wheels run over the pavement. Purely through nerves. That, again, was a fail. After that I really raised the bar. The two corners I was dreading, (a T junction turn at the bottom of Birchwood Expressway, and Burgesses paper shop corner in Latchford village) were both unexpectedly easy!   I did really well. A few minor positional mistakes, but the roads were so empty I could easily correct. I was starting to feel good about myself. I was thinking that I would be able to pass some bugger else’s assessment, even if these bastards were out to screw me over. Then we got back in the yard and he told me to back it onto a bay. I was fairly confident with my reversing ability, I’d spent long enough cracking it for my driving tests. Could I do it? Could I buggery! It was one of those where you break out […]