Author: Buck

The Wednesday before last was the first open water dock swim with Mersey triathlon club. This is what I joined that club for; practise in swimming in a wetsuit. I duly packed all my kit and set off to Liverpool. Need I say that I left it to the last minute? Only to find the satnav didn’t recognize the destination? So I was racing out to the car, trying a new address, not having it work, running back in, upstairs to google something close. Eventually I found the prefix postcode wasn’t right, that was why it wasn’t recognizing the addresses.

I set off late, blindly following the satnav. You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? I got to the end of the motorway and saw signs for Bootle docks so I followed them in defiance of the satnav. Turns out Bootle docks are not the same as Salthouse docks. The satnav may have been right. When I was finally in the right neck of the woods I realized I’d forgotten the £2 swim fee. By the time I actually found the place I felt I was too late to play.

The docks itself was a surprise. I was expecting some derelict dock in a Scouse ghetto. It seems to be a des-res. Right on the sea front (obviously) with a Hilton hotel in front of it and a million people taking the air. It was posh as buggery and well crowded. Not how I wanted to do my first open water swim, in front of loads of people.

To cheer myself up I’ve been down my allotment today. It is something positive to be thinking about.

It’s gone from this:

I had a run worked out on ‘Gmaps pedometer’ (a site that lets you plot your exact route, allowing you to zoom in and click it turn by turn if you are following a path or otherwise not on a road.) The same route I was running before I buggered my knee. It worked out as 20 miles, when I did it more exactly it was 20.1 miles.

Since those heady days I have done one ten miler, rested for three weeks then ran two more ten milers.

Yesterday being the last day off of my long weekend I was supposed to do a half IM distance tri. I did the 1.2  mile swim in the morning then couldn’t really motivate myself for the 56 mile ride and 13 mile run. Then it started raining. I was doing a sterling job of prevarication in fact, then my Triathletes World magazine arrived and inspired/ guilt-tripped me.

Woo-hoo! Finally a development!

Obviously not with my works, who are the biggest bunch of knobs in the history of ever.

Our Robyn (my niece) said to apply to Jack Richards (hauliers) for some weekend work last year. At the time she was dating the son of one of the transport managers, so believed he would look upon my application favourably.

I seized the moment today and set out to try to do a full length ride.

To set the scene; my previous longest ride was 56 miles, which I did twice. Both times nearly killed me. They say when you are comfortable with a distance increase it by no more than ten per cent. I laugh in the face of such scientifically proven training methods!

As it’s my weekend off (yay!), it was quite warm, sunny and not too windy I went for it. I looked for somewhere ‘there-and-back’ so I would have a definite goal (and no option but to persevere when I was knackered). Morecambe fit the bill. 56 miles, the requisite 112 round trip.