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I’ve started on my next two impossible challenges. Going sub 3 hours for a marathon, then going sub 10 hours for a triathlon. I’m hoping to get the sub 3 in April on the Manchester marathon. I’ve made a training plan and it *just* has me running half a mile extra each week at the blisteringly fast (for me) pace of 6.45 m/m. I accidentally started at a mile instead of half a mile, so this week I did 1½ miles to keep it up. That’s not all the running I’ve been doing, obviously.  My long run last week was 18 miles, today I’ve just run 20. This is going to have to stop. It’s a brilliant exercise in mental toughness and discipline but it is horribly painful and I’m risking overuse injury. Also it’s really discouraging to struggle so badly on a long-ish run and have your pace drop right off, when you are aiming to be going longer and faster.  I’m thinking now that the sub 3 is going to be so hard I may have to accept just getting faster this time, then do it next time. That’s as nothing to my second challenge. The sub 10 Iron tri. My PB, this year, was 13.17. My swim was 1hr 40, I need to knock 40 minutes off that. Transition 1 (T1) was 11 minutes, need to just run through, 4 minutes max. My bike was 7hrs 01, I need to get to 5hrs 25 T2 was 7 minutes, needs to be 4 minutes My marathon was 4hrs 18, needs to be 3hrs 26. Look at those figures! Apart from the transitions (just run through) the only one I’m confident I can achieve is the run. I’ve finally managed to enrol with a swim coach at Orford leisure centre. Wendy’s workmate goes to the same class, he says the instructor is a well respected triathlete coach. Apparently he wants to know exactly what you want to achieve, then is brutally honest about whether you can do it. I’ve been giving it some thought, I’m arbitrarily setting the bar at 3 years. I’m thinking: I’m 52 now, I can get fitter and stronger but my body will get older and slower. It’s not a battle I can win. I reckon I can force my body to do as it’s told for another 3 years, beyond that I’ll have to wait and see. I will be telling the coach then that I want to do a 2.4 mile swim, in an hour, within 3 years. If he says it’s not possible I’ll still train and try to prove him wrong, but at some point I’ll have to lower my sights. I hear competitive knitting is the next big thing. All of this may come to nothing. I may never even get a sub 3. I always have unrealistic expectations of what I can achieve. Then I achieve it anyway. It’s going to be a sad day when I am forced […]

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I forgot to say, while I was looking for a 954 FireBlade I had my eye on a few. The others were higher mileage but had upgrades. I’d narrowed it down to 3 that I really liked and was undecided. I was leaning in favour of the one I got, and decided to do a history check on it. You could get one check or three checks for the price of two, so I ran the other bike other as well. I had been struck by the wording on the ad, but not unduly. “Had if for more than 3 years and never been trashed or abused in my ownership…” In my ownership.  The check came back, it was an insurance write off in 2012! That was the best £4.99 I’ve ever spent. The other bit of good news I forgot is my legs. Yesterday on the bike the pain in my knees was so bad I thought I’d broke something. Then I forced them to run 26.2 miles. The best I was hoping for was being able to finish before the injuries crippled me. Last night I could barely walk, but as today has worn on it’s faded to a bad stiffness. I think it may have just been abuse soreness rather than an actual injury. That’s a relief. I can give it a few days to fully recover then I have to crack on with my speed training towards a sub 3 hour marathon. And start swim training. The fast boys (and girls) were out of the lake in fifty odd minutes, I was 1hr 40, again. Just looking at the breakdown of my race. I came out of the lake in position 884 (out of 880, possibly) I finished in position 485, overall. If I learnt to swim…   More for my benefit here are some stats. 1,025 entrants. 929 started the race (told you it was awful weather. 96 clearly had more sense.) 849 finished the race. 58 Did Not Finish (DNF) 16 Cut Off (told to stop as they were too slow) 4 Queried (something fishy about results, I assume) 2 Disqualified.

A year ago I had a moment of biking epiphany. All my life I’d loved Harleys, Brits, Cafe Racers, etc. Basically pretty engines in stylish bikes. That also sound awesome. While at the same time I poured scorn and contempt on plastic-fantastic, pocket-rocket, ugly, race bikes. Then, in my moment of clarity, I realised that was a superficial and nostalgic view of biking. Air-cooled, naked (no fairings) bikes look gorgeous, sound nice, but just don’t bikey things. The true essence of bikes, the aspiration of the 50’s/ 60’s Cafe Racer is speed and handling. It’s realised in race bikes. I’ve become my own antithesis. I’ve just bought the most bikey of bikes. The legendary Honda FireBlade. (“The Bike That Changed How Bikes Were Built”.) The best (older) model. Obviously the tech gets better, the performance gets more extreme, but this is the desirable model of the not-the-latest (£19,000) bike. I bought the scruffy Honda VFR750 (“The Best Bike Ever Built.” Thinking about it, only Honda get these tags, the other one that springs to mind is the 1970’s CB750 “The Worlds First Superbike”. Kawasaki don’t get “Ugliest Green Bike Ever”, though I’m willing to start using it.) as it was the benchmark for reliability, but still nippy and handled well. I was so impressed I rushed out and got a pristine VFR800fi. I just never took to it. Loads of power, comfortable, the pinnacle of Honda reliability, but chunky. I never felt comfortable throwing it in to a corner. Suddenly, last week, I had a whim to trade it for a FireBlade. Then I did the obsessive internet research thing and found the model I wanted, only made for 2 years and prized, so dealers were charging the Earth. Instead I sold my VFR800fi and bought one private.  By some miracle the sale went smoothly and I got the bike I was after. A more of less bog standard, 2003 954cc FireBlade, only 13,000 miles. Look at the condition of it!   The ‘more or less’ is that white panel on the nose. Don’t like it, but it’s not a deal breaker. I was scared picking it up, after the last sportsbike I had (the Suzuki TL1000S) that was instant, all-or-nothing, unmanageable power. Plus this one had a brand new, back tyre (they say to be very careful of new tyres for the first 100 miles or they can slide out). And picking it up from South Wales (no bikes are ever local, it’s the law) it obviously rained. But it’s a Honda. Smooth, easy to ride,docile. And then you turn the throttle. Wow. I’ve never ridden anything like it. 60+ mph first gear, then there are 5 more. What the hell, Mr Honda? The “Changed The Way Bikes Were Built” thing is the lightness. Until then it was just bigger, more brutish bikes. The FireBlade wasn’t as outright powerful as some but it was so light the power to weight ratio and it’s pure handling blew everything else out […]

My Achilles tendonitis in my left leg cleared up after a few weeks of nursing it, but then my right tendon started hurting. I think, it’s a combination of things, “too fast too soon” on the run was just the final straw. I think it’s bike set up as well. I bought a pair of, supposedly, wide fit cycling shoes in the exact size for my foot. The online tutorial on cycling shoes said they should be the snuggest pair of shoes you own. Any movement is losing power and causing friction and pain. To be honest, they totally suck. I went for another long ride to test them, (I think it was about 100 or so miles) by about 70 miles my right foot was feeling numb so I tried wriggling it around. Big mistake. The pain was so bad I really thought I was going to have to get off and push my bike for 20 odd miles. It was enough to make me shout out. Happily it happened just as I was about to start a steep hill ascent, so I found out that applying pressure to it returned it to just uncomfortably numb. I managed to ride home, but every time I hit bumps or lost direct pressure to my right pedal the pain came back. I’ve tried adjusting the cleats backward and forward and to the sides, I can ease the pain, but it still hurts. And the punchline is the knee pain I had, that I bought these shoes to cure, is still there. On the other hand it’s kind of swamped by the intensity of the pain in my right foot, so, small victories. I’ve bought a shoe stretcher off eBay to see if I can sort it out. I remembered, afterwards, that was the pain I used to get at work, before the doctor told me my boots were too tight, causing the bones in my foot to grind.  The left shoe is fine. The race is in two weeks so I expect I’ll be using my old shoes.  While I was trying to eliminate the knee pain I came across another tutorial, by a genuine expert, on the perfect bike set up. Instead of “foot in position X, flat foot, knee bent to Y degrees” etc, she said the seat height is your inside leg times .857 (or something). That’s the distance from the pedal to the top of your saddle. No ifs, no buts. Fair do’s. She had her test subject to demonstrate. She said his set up was out by quite a bit (½”) by this formula, then proved it with angle measurements. I applied the science. My set up was out by 3”. Oh. So all the time I was riding my foot was stretched and the pressure was going on to my tendon. Hence, I assume, the injury. Balls. I tried adjusting it to the science but ended up moving it back by an inch. It felt […]