of running and stuff

feeling a bit of a let down just now.. and i need sympathy dammit!

usually i can’t givev blood when the wagon comes round at work as it usually turns up just before or just after a race. when i heard it was coming today and couldnt find an excuse not to i decided i ought to.

faff no. 1 was filling in the form and reading the blurb.
faff no. 2 was going through the form question by question (why didn’t we just do that to start with?)
faff no. 3 was having my finger pricked, no problem.
and then finally i got put on the couch bit to have my blood taken.

evidently i have a low pain threshold or something as it hurt quite a bit….. in response my body went into a bit of a shutdown mode and hid all my blood elsewhere.

unfortunately this blood could have been usefully going round my brain etc.

the staff werent exactly being reassuring for a first time donor and exchanged a little shake of the head before whipping the needle out & doing what i recognised from my recent first aid training as treatment for shock.

bloody hell…. do i feel useless or what?

so now i’ve lost an hour of my day have an aching arm and no moral benefit to show for it.. oh and a leaflet on ‘feeling faint’ reassuring me it’s perfectly normal.

not terribly encouraging and i dont even have enough change to cheers myself up with a choccy bar.

well i do keep thinking of terribly interesting witty things to write here but then fail to do so.

i’ve started swimming again now and was pleased to find it was ok and i could knock out 500m of crawl at a reasonably comfortable pace. apparently i have been missed at the club’s coached winter sessions, as the coach was asking after his ’star pupil’. i wasn’t aware i’d made that much of an impression but then i couldn’t swim 25m when i went along toward the end of 2002.

managed 250m in what looked like 3:55 although that is based on squinting at the clocks at th far end of the pool as i’ve misplaced my watch, and the best i could muster for a single 25m length was 19seconds which is actually faster than i thought!

also if i’m to manage olympic & half-ironman distance this year i have to not only get comfortable with swimming 2km but also doing it in murky open water. i’ll look to replace my wetsuit in the new year as it’s not terribly comfortable but then it was cheap and has served it’s purpose, hopefully a more flexible, more expensive suit will make me feel more comfortable.

i’ve almost got my races for next year fully planned and need to start entering some of the more popular ones soon. i’m also fighting off requests by a friend to do marathon de sables in 2006, which obviously i’d lvoe to do but may result in divorce (i even offered to pay for lisa’s entry too which at £3k a time i thought was very selfless! but to no avail).

will keep doing … stuff… next week and hopefully get a more structured training schedule underway soon. the second in a series of 5mile races is the weekend after next.

here’s the official photos of moi from the event, you can even order one for your wall here if you like!

first run(on the left)
bike lap 1
bike lap 2
bike lap 3
second run

last saturday saw me once again at the top of box hill in freezing conditions awaiting the start of the ballbuster. i missed it last year having done it the 3 previous years, glutton for punishment or what!

lack of my usual meticulous pre-race preparation as well as training and motivation meant i wasn’t terribly well motivated for this. a quick spin on my bike to check it was working revelaed that it was indeed very very coooold…. i only made it to the view spot and back and already my hands were turning a strange colour.

i racked my bike and set up my transition area before heading off for a little running warm up. not much opportunity to see any of the runnersworld or tritalk peeps as you’re all busy worrying about your own problems! although i did manage to spot jon (newly acquired brother in law) who was doing this for the first time, whilst he’s a stonking cyclist i was hoping he’d be cack at running… apparently not.

as usual we gathered on the field (frozen rather than muddy this year) near transition for the start and funnelled through the car park onto the road. i wasn’t wearing my watch, and i didn’t care.. thats how unmotivated i was for this! now running i should be ok at and i worked my way through the pack comfortably in the hope of catching jon if he wasn’t as quick as he claimed. i never saw him but kept pushing on telling myself i should be able to keep up half marathon pace especially on the descent.

i suffered on the this first climb back up box hill for some reason my legs just didn’t seem up for it but tried my best to keep up with those who repassed me.
my fastest first run to date in 53:46 which is in fact 6:45 minute miling and faster than my half marathon PB. i resisted the temptation to walk into transition although i was feeling a little sick by then.

i located my bike, got my extra top on, helmet & swapped to cycling shoes before heading back out onto the road (i’d cunningly put my cycling gloves on on the way up the hill).

the first lap on the bike was uneventful although i struggled to take on my now freezing energy drink and there was no way i could face the energy bar packed in my back pocket. by the end of the lap my moral had sunk to rock bottom and i really couldn’t work out why i was bothering. used to ignoring my brain’s mental turmoil my legs kept going up the hill and i managed to deceptively flash a ‘i’m enjoying myself’ smile to my sister. i was expecting lisa & my parents to be at the top of the hill by now, they weren’t but had they been i was quite prepared to stop and call it a day. once round running and once on the bike so an hour and 20ish into the race, that’s 2 hours to go i was just so not up for it!

having mysteriously failed to pack it in i found myself on the second lap of the bike and had to give myself a good talking to. realising that i had passed people on the climb who were yet to finish the first run i decided things couldn’t be that bad. after a change of attitude i managed to get some fluid down but still couldn’t face the energy bar. the second lap was probably my fastest as i relaxed into it despite the painful windchill headache i got on the descents.

one more lap to go and then i could get back to running, another 8miles i knew i could deal with. releived to be back in transition i swapped shoes and abandoned the bike gear before heading out with my little bottle of flat coke.

admittedly the start was a struggle to run and not just plod, battling the usual stitch and sipping the sweet coke. a few passed me so i tried to match their pace or at the very least cadence. after a couple of miles i was in a comfortable zone, could feel my toes again and was able to increasingly up the pace, especially on the downhill sections. finally of course came the climb where my legs were instantly numb with lactic acid build up. i had to put a couple of brief walks in and was caught by a few people, i again used the tactic of trying to stay with them as long as possible to pull me up the hill.

i was gradually catching one guy who was walking and just when i thought i was going to get him he started running again. i was stil lcatching but painfully slowly and it wasn’t until a couple of painful ’sprint’ efforts in the last half mile that i managed to catch and pass him.

drink, sit down.. ‘don’t let me do this again will you’.

well organised and a better atmosphere than previous years unfortunately i can’t truly say i enjoyed it this time round. speedy jon came in a phenomonal 16th, althoguh i’m pleased to say looking at the photos he was in a great deal more pain than i was.

results here

oh and at least it was a PB by a few minutes even if an extremely painful one.

the week passed by uneventfully aside from a trip to see the po-lice regards last sunday’s nonse driver, and a little gym run with 2miles either end to get there and back. unfortunately the evenings are getting colder and darker so i’m forced to cover my legs up and wear an unfeasibly bright yellow fleece, does the job though as i usually end up being toooooo hot.

now it makes me feel old to write this but on saturday we went for a ‘nice cup of tea’ at the garden centre, i would add that i had a cracking bit of flapjack but i don;t think that would make it come over any more youthful or radical.
on the way back we stopped off at the new tesco extra which gives the sense of being enormous from the outside with it’s high high canopy dwarfing the human sized doors. Inside it is indeed huge but with the usual depressingly clinical architecture, save for a nicely lit wavy roof section at the front. only having recently opened it was still busy, the queues were long and i’d lost the will to live by the end of the first aisle. what’s the point?

sunday morning arrived overcast and drizzly as i got on my bike and set off on a new route towards coleshill. i wouldn’t normally head quite in that direction as there’s not really anywhere to go but i was off to do a 5mile race as a nice bit of tri training (centurions grand prix series). progress on the bike wasn’t great as i kept having to stop and check my crib-maps i’d printed off but i made it there eventually pausing only to note the nice long downhill on the way into maxstoke that would turn into a climb on the way back!

the entry for this race apparently was the highest ever and i joined a long queue to get my number, it’s normally bette than that apparently but they had some trouble with the numbers. no problem as i’d allowed plenty of time to get there, change, enter and recover.

the race ran along fairly narrow tarmac and gravel paths doing one small lap followed by two larger ones with the added obstacle of a low fence to hop over on each lap. had a quick natter with ultra minnie from the runnersworld forums who predicted she’d be doing some silly time for the first lap. so i allowed her her lap of glory before sneaking past although i don’t think i made that much time on her overall.
i ran for a fair way with a guy from tipton harriers who i could hear as i approached was into a bit of motivational banter with himself and together we closed down on a few people. eventually i passed him and drew a bit of a lead but faded on the last lap a little to have him steaming past me in the final 20m.
i could hear him coming like a train thundering down on me, not that i cared a great deal at this stage as i was starting to think about my cycle home again.

after a cup of tea i headed off into some slightly denser drizzle but enjoyed the route home, and the hill wasn;t as bad as i’d thought. plus as a bonus it turns out coventry is pretty much downhill from there.. save a few climbs as i discovered. whizzing downhill on the big ring was good although i tried to stop my brain from questioning:
a) how much grip my brakes would have on the wet rims
and
b) how much grip my skinny tyres would have on the wet tarmac, leave and manhole covers.
i looked at one of the short climbs and thought you’d be mad to try this in the big ring, so i consequently did and with a reasonably high cadence i made it up.. until i saw the rest of the ’short’ climb and had to grit my teeth until the top came.

on the way down chasing the traffic up to a red traffic light my back wheel confirmed a few things to me:
1) my brakes had more grip on the wet rim than my tyres did on the road
2) my tyres didn’t have much grip on the road
i instinctively released the back brake as i heard the wheel lock and felt the back of the bike start to slew round and everything was ok.

another one of those short climbs, one of the last i knew and thought i’d try it in the big ring again. sadly at a rather lower cadence than last time my legs burned and crired out for a lower gear. in response my brain asked my eyes what was going on and they reported that the top wasn’t far away. so brain in turn told legs to stop whinging. which they didn’t.

all in all an enjoyable day out in my book!

phew… just enjoying a nice recovery drink.

although in this case it’s coffee not some nasty grim tasting protein shake, and i’m recovering from the most chocolatey pudding i’ve ever had rather than the usual exercise. pot au chocolat lived up to its name in an extreme ganachie sort of way….. .. .. … think i’ll go back and have that again soon!

talking of exercise which we werent, did 8mile run on saturday which was harder than it should have been and then somewhere over 50miles on the bike on sunday. this is the longest i’ve done for a long long time and my legs are dead, but the added excitment of some inadequate motorist giving us some verbal and then trying to knock me off made it all worth while.

the police will be paying him a visit.

and tonight i realised why i dont like the gym, one 800ml bottle was not quite enough for my sunday ride of nearly 4 hours worth, whilst in less than an hour in the gym i needed a good 600ml of my drink. way too warm and sweaty. i did a warm up on the spin bike followed by 5mins in aero type position and 5mins ramping up the resistance before hopping on the treadmill for 10mins…. and repeat!
fairly tough but hopefully helpful for my upcoming duathlon.

oh and then we went out for a superb tea.. and THE MOST CHOCOLATEY PUD EVER.