Category: Life

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 the accumulative affect of each discipline. Perhaps the swim will make the ride a lot harder, then the run even harder yet. The run after the ride was hellish, it put a minute on each mile.

I must, post haste, do a mock half. My next day off is Thursday, if it is  at least a few degrees above zero I will do it then.

I’m hoping that it was his attitude that was at fault. I know it is an endurance race, where finishing all you are after. It ain’t going to be fun. It will be painful and a battle of will. Like that bike racer said “pain is temporary, quitting is forever.”

He, the I.M. aspirant, seemed to think it was going to be fun.

 

Must do the whole half, ASAP. Then I’ll know what I am up against.

 

After the two weeks enforced laziness (due to ice and snow) I got off my arse on my days off. Did a short but windy ride to Helsby (30 hill-ish) miles followed by a 7 mile run. Then the day after went out and did a 17.35 miles run. It was supposed to be an 18 miler, but I cocked it up a bit. Irritating. Anyway, I am on track for my marathon run in Wales on the 10th of April.

Work are still dicking me about with the bike. Finally got it all sorted; bike package, codes, websites, etc, etc, got to the final bit ‘enter amount in pounds’ when I found out that although the government scheme is up to £1,000. DHL have set the ceiling at £500. The package I want is a snip at £664!

Balls.

Still trying to negotiate a deal with them over it. As soon as I get an answer, yes or no, I’ll get the bike then join the Warrington triathlon club! Oh yes, there is such a beast! Joy!

I’d be too embarrassed to turn up to the group training ride on my old heap!

They do coaching and training in all three disciplines. That is what I need, someone to push me. My running covers the distance, eventually. Faster is better.

Well, I’ve paid up for the full I.M., no backing out now. If it’s impossibly hard that just means I have to train impossibly harder! Or cheat. Could I disguise a moped as a push bike? It’s a thought.

Later,

Buck.

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 in an embarrassed sweat. He gave me a few shunts then said he was going to stop me.

I drove it back, just wanting to get out of the cab and have it done with.

 

He set to explaining, again, how tight the car parks are where we deliver, and how if I couldn’t do a simple back on to an open bay I’d have no chance at the store. He said that I needed more practice, and he was aware that you can’t get the practice without doing the job.

“So what I plan to do”, says he, “is suggest to the management that you go out with one of the assessors for a few store runs while we teach you the job, get your experience that way, then let you go out on your own.”

What they had planned yesterday, but this time with the benefit of me having already proven myself through the assessment!

He said I was cautious, which is a good thing in a newbie, but I had the makings of a good driver.

I could have kissed him! After all the build up, the expectation of being failed on principle, to be told he wanted me to be trained up as a driver!

I’ll sleep well tonight!

Now I have to wait for the management to get back to me. But seeing as it was the site GM who had me doing all that induction paperwork yesterday, I am hopeful. I still shouldn’t be, not with the track record of my works, but I can’t help it. All the augers and portents are hinting at this being my break. If only so I don’t have to do another assessment, I hope so.

 

What a day!

Buck.

Things MIGHT be happening at work! I stress ‘might’, I’ve heard a lot of promises before, to no effect.

I have been battling for over fifteen months to get work to honour their ‘warehouse to wheels’ incentive. I paid for my own licenses, just needed them to send me out with a driver for a week (or put me shunting, or anything to get me from ‘just passed’ to ‘competent/ confident’) but all I got was promises and lies. I kept saying, ‘it’s there on the board; warehouse to wheels’, their solution was to take the board down.

Anyway, I had given up on them. Then, last Friday, I was in the transport office when one of the drivers asked if I was driving yet. I told him I wasn’t, that DHL were a bunch of bastards who would never let me drive for them. He shouted the transport manager, saying ‘this is that lad from the warehouse with his class one’.

The manager had a word with me there and then, said ‘come in Monday for an assessment’!

Still not easing me gently into the job, ie warehouse to wheels, but at least giving me a shot. Obviously I immediately started bricking it! I’d not been in a cab for over a year, and I was supposed to hop in and drive around the deliberately torturous test route. I booked three hours refresher driving, with the intention of driving around the actual course. The bits I know are daunting, I rang the people I took my class two license with as they are Warrington based. Got the number off the website, rang and made a booking ASAP. It wasn’t until the end of the call he said ‘do you know Bolton at all?’

Eh?

Turns out the Warrington site has been ‘mothballed’, and no, we wouldn’t be able to drive to Warrington to try out the test route.

Super.

So I did that straight after work on Tuesday. I was very nervous. It’s the best part of sixty foot of truck, and my last memories were of the terror of those Groundhog Day driving tests.

As it turned out, I jumped in, tentatively edged us out, then was fine. He took me around some really tight corners, or so he said, I thought they were alright. My perennial problems cropped up though; passing too close to parked vehicles and carrying too much speed into situations.

He said at the end that I was still up to test standard, but my inexperience did show.

 

I went in work today with my heart in my mouth. The head assessor was out, so I saw the other one. He was going to take me out, then realised I had no experience. Then told me to come back later. I went back, but then they had no spare trucks. Instead he sat me down and went through three hours of health and safety and driver induction paperwork. He said to tell my manager that the site GM had told him that was what he wanted me to do. So it had been passed up the chain of command and a strategy had been implemented, it seems.

When I’d done the induction stuff, he said the head assessor was going out on a store delivery tomorrow, and he was going to take me! Or rather, he was going to go out on a run, but now he would instruct and observe me doing the delivery! Then I am to do the same accompanied by a regular driver two or three times, then in the new year they would  see if I was up to speed then send me out on my own!

IF, I said if, that actually happens, that would be ideal. Exactly what I wanted. Just fifteen months late.

I’m not getting excited yet though. First they’ve actually got to get me out of the gate in a truck, then I’ve not got to cock it up, then I can start thinking about this being real. They’ve talked the talk far too often.

 

Ironically, after all this health and safety driving talk, the first thing I did was run someone over in the car park!

Well, I pulled out of my parking spot and he ran straight into the side of the car on his pushbike. The front wheel went under my wheel arch and stuck with the bike still upright. He flew over the handlebars, sprawled across my bonnet, then bounced to the floor.

He wasn’t hurt but it shook me up no end so it must have been nasty for him. I was parked in a row of cars, he must have been riding along the front of the row, out of my field of vision, I pulled out, he ploughed into me. I was really guilt ridden, but I don’t think it was all my fault. He went into the side of me. He should have realised that I might not see him, and he could hear my engine. I would have been cautious in his shoes. I expect he will be, next time!

 

Which brings me to my cycling. I went for a ride on Sunday, my day off. I looked up a point twenty eight miles away and set off. My concessions to the freezing weather being a pair of leather gloves and a lightweight sweat shirt. What I didn’t realise was that cycling (in my army boots, to keep my feet straight) doesn’t move your toes and does keep your feet straight. Also, that gripping a pair of bare steel tri bars, even wearing thin leather gloves freezes your hands a zero degrees or below, especially when you are in one position for four hours. By the time I’d reached the half way point (twenty eight miles away, in the sticks) I was frozen. I was stomping up and down, trying to chew a solid Mars bar and get some life back into my feet. It was painful and miserable, and I still had the other two hours ride back, getting colder as the sun went down.

Then I got the obligatory puncture. Fixed it and plodded on. By the time I got home I was in a terrible state. Wendy thought I was on my way out.

NEVER. DOING. THAT. AGAIN.

If it’s cold enough for snow, I don’t go! Which, incidentally, applies to the army as well! They’re in no rush to get my training done, so they can wait until it warms up a bit for me!

One highlight of that ride was coming across this in the sticks at the end of my ride

  

A thirty six foot, straw statue of a meerkat! In a field in the middle of nowhere! Cool or what?

Here’s a link to an article on it;

http://nantwichnews.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/meerkat-sculpture-at-snugburys-wows-a51-drivers/

That will do for now,

later,

Buck

As it was my day off today I thought I’d treat myself to a day in the Lakes, trying out that Trihard, so called ‘UK’s toughest triathlon’.

 

The thing is, all of the challenges I’ve set myself I’ve had a reasonable level of fitness to start with, and a huge dollop of bloody-minded determination. Basically, set my mind to it and got the job done however beastly the ordeal. Such as my first long bike ride. Set off, knocked off 51 miles (‘cos I got lost, otherwise would have done the 56 miles that is the half I.M. distance) then did a half marathon run straight after it. It was hellish, but I just got on with it and did it.

Such was my expectation for this little adventure; maybe half kill me, but just battle through.

 

A few minor set backs to start with. Such as it being in the Yorkshire Dales, not Cumbria. Way into the Dales. Two bleeding  hours of foot down! Then I couldn’t find the start point. Grrrr.

Got it sorted eventually.

 

I looked out of the car, it was a 1 in 4 ascent to start. 25% hill. Challenging. It was so long, as well as steep, that I ended up pushing my bike up a bit of it. Beaten at the first hurdle. I was stunned (as well as shagged!) but carried on. A few miles later it did it again. 25% hill. This time it went on for several miles. I ended up stood on the pedals in first gear on the lower front ring, tacking across the road from one side to the other trying to keep the momentum going. I failed again.

The one good thing about bloody Yorkshire, as I saw anyway, was there was hardly any traffic on the roads.

I got to the top of that hill/ mountain range and I looked like this;

 

 

Which is not just knackered, it’s shell-shocked!

I’d ascended from the level of the river, here;

 

Up roads like this;

 

I was sorely (I choose my words advisedly) tempted to turn around and go home. I couldn’t face the prospect of going down the other side then having to come up it again. It had cost me quarter of a tank of petrol (£12.50 –ish) to get there, same to get home so I pushed on. I was beginning to concede defeat, but thought I’d better get the full measure of the course and myself whilst I was there.

One thing I did learn, for this race I will be taking my tri bars off. You are either heaving at the normal handlebars going uphill, or hanging off the brakes trying not to crash, going down.

 

What do you know, when I got to the point I realised was going to be my furthest extent, I had to climb right back up again!

By the time I had got to the last 3 miles I was not just beaten, I was destroyed. I’d forgotten to take any food with me, so had a massive energy crash. My legs had nothing left to give. I was riding up the start then pushing even on moderately beastly hills  (of which there are lamentably few!)

What a wake-up call!

 

This one is not going to be determination. You need to have the legs for the job. And food.

 

The full course is 42 miles which you have to complete (with the 1800m swim included) in less than six hours. I managed 25 miles in 2 hours 47. And had nothing left to give. Without the swim. Which the route map planner gadget worked out as 2558 calories due to the terrain. See above under ‘energy crash’.

I have my work cut out for me.

I will have completed a marathon, half I.M, and full I.M. distance by the time I get to this one, but I may well be proudest of crossing that line. I am in shock. The last time I worked that hard was when I first ran a mile and half, off he bat. That was fifteen minutes of panting, gasping, and pushing through, This was nearly three hours and an utter failure.

 

Rise to the challenge!

Buck.

I’m still on about my triathlon. Run away, run away now.

I am still working up to the full Iron Man distance Outlaw race (July 24, provisionally) but I have found a few diverting projects besides.

 

In may (21st, to be confirmed) there is a half I.M. distance race in Cornwall. That really appeals! Quick swim around St Michael’s Mount, (1.1 miles) tootle to Lands End and back on the pushbike (56 miles) then a half marathon run (13.1 miles). Even the swim won’t be on a level surface!  So enthused am I, that I’ve talked Wendy into taking a weeks holiday down there. I would like to make it two, but she won’t leave the cat for that long!  

 

That could be me!

Also, as a cheap warm-down to the season I’ve just booked a small but taxing triathlon in the lake District. It’s the 14th of August. 1800 metre swim in Semer Water, 42 miles of pure hell hills around the Lakes, lots of 1:4 hills, then a leisurely 12 miles up and over the hills. It has been rated as the toughest (for it’s distance, presumably) triathlon in the U.K.

In a rush of blood to the head I’ve gone and entered that! I was going to build up my stamina at cycling and see if I was up to it, but I just went on the home site, Trihard (love the name!) and one of May 2011 events is already sold out. I panicked and signed up.

Shit, I’ve got some training on now! 42 miles of Lake District hills! There’s incentive for you!

My training has been a bit patchy. I did a quick 30 (hilly) miles to test out my tri-bars. They are not as life-threateningly weird as I’d been lead to believe. Did a 10 mile run just to keep my hand in. Today I got a surprise half day off work so I had a nap then went to the pool. I started off, determined to crack the four strokes/ breath, without lifting my head. Still not ideal but improving. The thing I’ve learned is; don’t blow all your air out as soon as you submerge your head again, hold it until the third stroke, blow it out, then breath on the fourth. It stops that horrible panicky feeling that you have to breath RIGHT NOW, that causes you to gasp in water.

Anyway, I thought I’d try and learn as I trained, so set out to do 100 lengths. Succeeded, carried on to 150. That’s 150 x 20m, or 3k. My rough maths told me (2/3rds of a Kilometre to a mile) that that was 2 miles. Damn you Johnny Frenchman! It’s 1609 metres to a mile, ie 11 lengths short.

I could have been a contender!

Anyway, that disappointment aside, I was thoroughly pleased with that. Less than a month ago I was taking my first swim in 15 years, and was delighted to do 10 lengths, head up. Excuse my maths, but is that a 1400% improvement? Probably not, confused myself in the working out. My point being; if I continue to improve at this rate, by the time of the race I may well flip like Sir Donald Campbell in  BlueBird. I’ll be skipping along like a skimmed stone, hit a bow wave, tragedy. Better learn to pace myself.

The other news is my biking misadventures. I bought a seat pole thingy, (the bit that sticks out of the frame and holds your seat at the right height.) It was a fancy one, designed to push the seat forward into a position favourable for holding an aerodynamic hunch.

When I got it it made me realise just how crap my bike is. I only got it for exercise. I realised I’d paid more for the seat post than for the bike! Then the bloody thing wouldn’t fit! I tried to ‘adjust’ the frame with the application of an angle grinder and bloody-mindedness, to no avail.

Which set me to window shopping for a decent bike. A dedicated tri-bike is out of the question, the crappy ones start at £1,500. My car is probably worth about £400. Never going to happen. So I read about decent ‘entry level’ road bikes, that are fit for purpose with the addition of tri bars (got) and a forward seat post (got). They start at nearly £500! Still wasn’t happening, yet anyway.

Then the chap in the bike shop mentioned Bike2Work, a scheme whereby your employer gets tax breaks for buying you a bike, the cost of which they then stop from your wages, tax and interest free, over a 12 month period. So a £500 bike ends up costing you a smidge over £300. I’ve enquired at work.If they will do it, I can justify that.

Things are shaping up. I have lots of fun stuff to occupy my every free moment, and more besides. I got back to my sax practice today, after a couple of week absence. It was starting to build into an aversion. Enjoyed it tonight though, even if it felt like my cheeks were tearing!

Tomorrow I have to get back to the other hobby that really has turned into an aversion, Kung Fu. I’ve not been for several months now. Once you miss one lesson, you’re more likely not to go to the next, miss a few and you feel awkward going back. Still, that fool from the army has proved that even though I don’t need the skills for the fight I was expecting around here, you always need the skills.

Bite the bullet tomorrow. They want my money, I want to learn. Deep breaths, don’t panic.

If I can go once I’ll be fine, it’s just ignoring the deep formless dread of what will happen when I go back, and doing it.

Right, see if I can muster enough bottle and start again.

Enough for now, I’m knackered. But happy with what I’ve achieved today.

Later,

Buck.