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Things are coming together.

After all my talk of why I couldn’t fit an aftermarket exhaust silencer (“end can”) on my bike I got talking to someone on Twitter. He said to try a certain brand, so I went and looked. They said you could just straight swap the can, no retune, no remapping the computer for the fuel injection.

Huh.

More ups and downs with my training. I went out for this week’s fast run on Saturday and just had nothing. It was shameful. I don’t know whether it was starting off at race pace, not fuelling properly beforehand, wearing too hot clothing, all of the above or nothing, but I just couldn’t. I ran 1.6 miles and had to stop and get my breath. I turned around and came home. I was devastated.

On Sunday I got an early finish so forced myself out. I was going to do the 8 mile run I’d done the week before. Set off at a relaxed pace for a mile, a mile faster, faster, a mile breather then belt it back. 8.37, good start, 7.23, good, faster, noticed I was doing 6.45 pace, sod it, let’s do it! No breather, straight into race pace! I did the first half mile, turned a corner onto a straight and the wind was in my face. I had to dig in and really push, got 6.46, turned around and had to get my breath back at race pace. I had to use every mental trick I have to keep going (it doesn’t hurt any worse, just keep going to the corner, to that lamp post, done a mile and half, that’s three quarters, this is furthest I’ve done at this pace, another quarter mile and I’ll quit, etc) did it in 6.44. Redeemed myself. I had to stop for a few breaths, then continued at a jog for that mile. Got 8.10, OK, it’s back on, upped the pace again 7.32, and an extra .3 of a mile to make it a 10K in 47 minutes. All in all, pleased with that.

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.

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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.