Category: Uncategorized

(…the giant steps we had to take. Sisters of Mercy song lyrics.) I’ve just read through my blogs for the year, (so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.) and it was an eye-opener. You, (perhaps just I) take for granted where you are and what you’ve done. Then I read back and bloody hell! I’d totally forgotten. This time last year I hadn’t ridden a pushbike or swam for 3 or so years, hadn’t run for 5 months, had no life, was low, and all I did was work and sleep. I did my first run of 5 miles last January, then a few days later just about made a 10 mile pushbike ride to work. I remember how bad that was. A year on I’m spinning it up and going for better times, back then it was all I could do to finish the 10 miles. The swimming remains my Achilles heel. Then I committed to the Outlaw triathlon. From my worst fitness in years to an Outlaw in 7 months. It feels a bit like it happened to someone else, so I don’t mind saying that was quite impressive. Work was a pain. I couldn’t train around the stupid-long shifts they were giving me every day. I got myself into a flap thinking about how I was going to have to quit either my job or the Outlaw, I thought there was no way they’d let me have short shifts, logistics just isn’t that kind of job. I asked, and they changed my start time and gave me shorter shifts! Thanks work, that was really great of you. I went from no running for 5 months to 3 marathons over 3 weeks in 3 months. I’ve had a few setbacks, sports injuries from ‘too much, too soon’ (Every. Time!) and doing stupid things like running without socks, wrong size cycling shoes, etc, but I did the Outlaw and got a personal best. The sports injuries have killed my hope for a sub 3 hour marathon in April. *sigh* There have been a few fails over the year. I didn’t keep going to the tri club, I was over-committed so had to quit my Russian language school and there was that (mercifully brief) period of really nasty depression that killed my training stone dead for a month. Over the last year I’ve sold one motorbike, bought the awesome FireBlade and recently crashed another motorbike. I bought my road pushbike, fitted it for triathlon, bought a turbo trainer, a bike computer and my triathlon specific pushbike. Wendy got her pushbike (and has ridden it nearly 10 miles in total, lol), passed her car test first time and got her Mini. Also I’ve recently returned to the saxophone and bought a cheap straight soprano sax for use at work. Also I’ve gone back to being a vegetarian. And have found a wonderful site (and bought the cookbook) called minimalistbaker.com . It’s all vegan recipes with 10 ingredients or fewer. I wasn’t […]

I’ve been having patches of anxiety and such for a while. Then out of the blue I’ve been slammed by a really nasty bout of loony-ness. Depression. I’ve had several attacks of random loony in the past, I was expecting that again. Where I fixate on one trigger event or concept (the local kid’s ball, – I still get uneasy at the sound of a ball bouncing –, or prior to that, Death and Time) which is horrible and scary. But no, just depression. In our family that’s at best passé. It’s been a few weeks now. On the bright side, it’s not constant, I keep having good days. They other day I was having an episode of sane and I convinced myself I was just imagining it, that it was just feeling blue with a large dose of self pity. I was driving along, concentrating on the road and my Russian ‘tapes’, when suddenly it hit me full force. Utterly crushed me. More than I thought I could endure. I’m not imagining it. And the self pity is hard earned. As I say, in my family my little bout of nuttiness is embarrassingly minor. I’m the guy with the plaster on his blister telling someone in a full body cast how much it hurts. But when it washes over me it takes everything away. I can’t get excited, or make plans, or do anything. The bad bits feel literally unbearable. The weird thing is; whilst I know consciously that bouts usually last three months and that it will probably go again in a day or so, when it hits I can’t believe I will ever be right again. I’ve had a good day today, hence being able to blog. I’ve not done any training for about a fortnight, totally not been able to face going out to my swim lessons. On the bright side, I’ve been constructive in my avoidance. I’ve built a really spiffy and sturdy back gate to replace the shoddy fence-panel-on-hinges thing I put up originally. For some reason the wind funnels across our house. At the front we’ve had to bungee cord the bins to stop them from flying away, I have to park my motorbike on the pavement because it’s been blown over twice out front, and the back gate gets blown off it’s hinges. I’m totally on top of that now. Also, I’ve returned to the saxophone.  And I’m flying through some really good books. Also I’ve found a brilliant vegan cookery site https://minimalistbaker.com/ and I’ve been cooking loads. I was after veggie fare, to be honest, but that came up on a search for fried rice. Some gorgeous food. Best damn veggie burger I’ve ever tasted. The stir fry rice is delicious. And, amazingly, vegan. It was only a few weeks ago I was telling someone on Twitter that the only good thing (in my experience) about vegan food was it took the sting out of the fear of death. It must […]

My training is taking all sorts of turns. Because I was dropping off my plan for the sub 3 hour marathon in April I was upping the mileage more than the rule of 10% per week. Also, because I was pushed for time, it was basically every run I was doing was trying to raise the bar. Every run. Not a pace run, a long, easy run, sets, rest, then batter it. Go out and run 3 miles at stupid pace. Next run try and run 3½ miles faster, next run try and run 4. It was a stupid thing to do. I’ve gone and knackered my calf. As soon as I try to go fast it sets and starts hurting. And gets worse the more I push it. I was scared it was a tendon thing, but Dr Google says it’s just a weak muscle or muscle overuse. Too much, too soon. I need that printed on every pair of trainers I buy. The remedy is rest, then slowly build up again. With some strengthening exercises. I did about 2 runs in 2 weeks. The first it had eased off so I warmed up for 2 miles, as soon as I went fast my calf seized. I managed to shuffle home. The second I started slow but it was hurting so much that I turned around at a mile, but then it eased off so I turned around and managed a 6 mile run. That was when I hit Dr Google. Armed with the knowledge and the experience that I could, slowly, push through it, I tried a long, slow run today. I managed a half marathon with no real problems. I’m hoping to build some stamina and maintain some fitness so I can build my speed again. I’m thinking April is out for next year, though. Downer. I’ll try for a flat course later in the year, if I can’t do it for April.   On the bike front I’ve got my fancy pants bike set up on the turbo trainer and I’ve got a monitor and a laptop so I can run Zwift. It’s a computer game that, with all the techno bells and whistles I’ve got fitted, monitors your power (in watts), your pedalling rpm and such, and converts it into your speed and performance in the virtual cycling world of Wattopia.  Which all sounds a bit pointless, but the thing is you are on a resistance trainer so it’s all good, hard training.  You can see the power and rpm you are pushing out, you get to race against other people from all around the world in real time and there are challenge sections where is suddenly says you’re on a timed section, the best has just finished it in 3 minutes 49, your ETA is 5.45, so you have to go flat out for the length of the challenge to try to beat it. And if, like today, someone comes past you with “such-and-such […]

My training is taking all sorts of false steps. There was that disaster when I thought the top Tri people ran without socks (confused it with riding without socks, which I think is a thing) and knackered my feet for a fortnight. Then I went for a professional bike fit (getting the saddle at the right height, position forward and back, angle of seat, setting the cleats in the right place, adjusting the handlebars to correct length of reach, armrest, and height, etc. Basically getting the bike to be a perfect fit for me.) The guy doing it was an ex Tour De France professional rider, so he knew his stuff. The fit is great, totally not how I had it, so hopefully that will rule out further knee pain and such. Better than that though was the free advice. It took about 2½ hours to fit me up (really!) so he had plenty of time to talk. Everything I thought is wrong. Everything. I remembered as a kid riding all day in boots and jeans and going flat out in top gear. From that I extrapolated the best way to train is no padding in your shorts to toughen up your nethers, and put it in top gear on the trainer and grind it out until you get huge muscles. All wrong. As he pointed out, if you could toughen up your bits don’t you think the professional riders would do it? And don’t go for big muscles. You have the physique you have. He said, as a runner, I’ve got strong legs anyway, get them moving. I am comfortable at about 70rpm on the bike. He said I should be aiming for 95. I’ve done a few training rides on the turbo trainer at that cadence. It is brutal. I’m in a pathetically low gear, legs screaming, sweat streaming off me. He said to maintain that cadence so when you transition to the run your legs are already at the right speed. Fair do’s. I’ve just got to adapt. After he’s adjusted the bike to perfection the tri bars had a big bit sticking out the back which needed to be cut to length. Which entailed taking the gear cables off, then rethreading them through the frame. I gave it a go. I managed to do it, but it just wasn’t right. The rear derailleur wasn’t taking the slack on the cable. So I had to take it in to Ron Spencer’s to have a proper bike mechanic look at it. It turns out there is a length of outer cabling, through which the cable must pass, hidden inside the frame. That was out of line so the cable was snagging. Got that fixed, brought it home, all set to start battering my commute. The seat post isn’t the conventional round one, it’s a thin, long, aero blade. I can’t fit the clip on mudguard to it, or mount a rear light on it. *sigh* The last two […]

Finally got to my first swim lesson with the proper coach tonight. Martin, Wendy’s workmate, (who has been going for a while) said the coach will ask your goal, assess your swim, then be brutally frank about your chances of achieving it. Martin has heard him tell people they just don’t have enough years left to achieve their ambitions. I was all set for confrontation. You say I can’t do it, I’m going to prove you wrong if I have to go to a different coach to do it. He told me to swim up and down while he walked besides me in the pool. After 2 lengths he stopped me, and asked what I wanted to achieve. “I want to be able to knock 40 minutes off my 2.4 mile swim time within 3 years.” No problem. 3 months. Bugger me! Didn’t see that coming. I suspect he may have misheard me, but he was very positive about my chances. He was happy with my stroke, my kicking and my rotation, said not to change it. He correctly identified my initial problem, not being able to breathe.  He set me a task of swimming to the deep end, then dunking under and breathing out through my nose, surface, in through my mouth and repeat. After a few goes of that he told me to breathe every second stroke on the swims. It sounds stupid, but it was really working. I had been keeping my head down for as long as possible because every time I breathed I had to roll right out of the water and stick my head up to get a huge lungful of air, which more or less stopped me dead. Then there was the panic of missing that huge breath, and the panic as I was running short of air before I took it. By only breathing out through my nose it trains you to only breathe in through your mouth. You’re not wasting half of your breath seconds blowing out. By doing it every second stroke I was sipping regular air. Never running out, never panicking, not having to gasp huge amounts, which in turn let me relax and keep my head in the water as I breathed.  That is my first ambition, to master the smooth, head in the water, breathing of the good swimmers. He had another point as well. “The trouble with adult swimmers is they come here and tell me why they can’t do it before I’ve even had a chance to look at them.” He didn’t think there was much wrong with my swim once I’ve got my breathing right. He really thought I could do it. That is the best bit of tri news I’ve had in ages. As I say, I know I can batter the run, the bike is going to be incredibly hard but just a matter of constant training. The swim was what could have stopped me dead. Brilliant. Buck.