Dark Sky

This was the sky as I left work on Wednesday, the picture doesn't really do it justice. Blue sky to the west and then a perfect ridge of black clouds.

Last night I went along to my triathlon club's evening swim session to pay my annual membership fees and to get in the water for the first time since December. My arms ached after the first couple of lengths, but all the running I've been doing has built up my endurance and this was reflected in the pool. It still hurt though!

I haven't written anything since Sunday but I've been consistent with my running having logged a 3 miler on Monday, then 6.2, a short sharp 1.5 and another 3 miler tonight. Both 3 milers were done at a brisk but sustainable pace and averaged 8.5 minute miles. I would like to see that fall to 7.5 minute miles at some point and continued weight loss should help. I've lost around nine pounds since New Year Day mostly down to a reduced carb diet.

Upside down dog.

I ran 3 miles on Friday, 6.2 on Saturday and another 3 miles tonight. We walked the greyhounds today and then went to visit a friend of Ann-Marie's. His dog for some reason prefered to tilt his head right back instead of twisting it around and I managed to catch him in the act with my phone.

Essential Selection

I spent most of this evening catching up on paperwork that had been allowed to pile up since Christmas. Tonight's run was a 6.2 miler with a headtorch and Pete Tong. Funny how much quicker a run goes with the Essential Selection assaulting your ear drums. I think from now on I'll make my mp3 player a regular companion on anything but the shortest runs.

Looking forward to the weekend - it's been a long week!

Weigh-in Wednesday

Today has been hectic, up at 5am and at my desk by 7am. Tonight we had a plumber coming to look at the current state of our bathroom before he fits the new suite that was delivered today. Only at about 10:30 did I manage to get out for a 1.5 mile run. Prior to running I weighed-in and found that I had put on nearly half a kilo since last week, although my body fat percentage was stable (83.2kg & 19%). I can put this down to the huge curry I had on Saturday and possibly the 'salad' I ate in a restaurant on Friday night. In fact I know that earlier in the week I was more than 84kg and the hard line attitude to food that I've taken since then has pushed the numbers back down. Unfortunately, this means that I need to lose about 3kg in ten days to meet my 80kg by Watford Half target which is frankly going to be difficult. I need a 2310kcal deficit per day to achieve that weight loss and even with a combination of calorie restriction and increased training it will still be impossible to create that deficit without ruining my half marathon performance. I'll have to be strict and just see where I end up when I weigh-in Wednesday.

Busy

I've been busy the last few days but managed to squeeze in a 3 miler both yesterday and tonight. I've an early start planned tomorrow and hopefully it won't be frozen so I can use the motorbike.

Spuds

Ann-Marie and I started the day by ripping out most of the bathroom. I left Ann-Marie scraping wallpaper while I changed the spark plugs on my car. The first HT lead that I disconnected revealed that the reason my car had been mis-firing was because the lead was rotted so I got on the motorbike and went to the local independent autofactors. I was chuffed to find that a set of HT leads were half the price of Halfords. Later I layed out my seed potatoes in trays to chit. I've got four varieties to try out; Wilja, Desiree, Duke of York & King Edward which are a mix of early and main crops. They'll chit for about six weeks and then get planted.

Before sorting out the spuds I did a 7 mile run that turned out to be one of the toughest runs I've done in a while.

Daemon

Ann-Marie was feeling ill today and so her daemon was keeping an eye on her (you'll understand if you've seen Golden Compass).

Most of today was spent trawling around bathroom showrooms and then to my parents' house for their anniversary dinner.
Between bathrooms and dinner I did a new run. It was made up of parts of other routes and was measured at 4.5 miles.

Golden Compass

I ran 3 miles after the cinema tonight and I've now run everyday for two months, having almost clocked up 200 miles.
The 'Golden Compass' was good but there were enough gaps to warrant reading the book. I'm sure the witch was the girl from Casino Royale, I'll have to check on imdb.

Knackered

A tough day at work meant that I could only manage 1.5 miles of running last night .

Tonight we're off to the cinema to see 'The Golden Compass' and so my run could well be short again.

Body Fat

Last night I knocked out another 'longer' run of 6.2 miles. I felt quite heavy legged but still got through it in about an hour. While I was running I thought about the differences in my Christmas weight for this year and last year and whether my streak run could have affected it.
This year I weighed in at about 85kgs and last year it was 88kgs, a difference of 3kgs. Last year I stopped running for most of November and December and this year I ran every day. I decided to calculate how much fat I might have burnt off due to running.

First we need to convert lbs to kgs - 3kgs = 6.6 lbs

To burn off 1lb of body fat a 3500kcal deficit is required, so therefore 6.6lbs of body fat requires 23100 kcal.

The accumulated mileage of my streak run, which began on November 18 , is 133.6 miles up to the end of December (see the link in the sidebar).

It is normally accepted that 1 mile requires a calorific expenditure of 100kcal (or thereabouts) so I expended 13360 kcal over and above what I would normally expend. This is equivalent to 3.8lbs of body fat.

So all things being equal my streak run can account for a weight reduction of nearly 4lbs. The rest has to be down to dietary changes, such as a reduction in portion size, and a concerted effort not to eat too much Christmas food.

Camenbert

Cooked up a potato, courgette & onion bake with a lump of Christmas camenbert and a handfull of rosemary from the garden. The camenbert was a Christmas/house warming present from my sister and it originally weighed in at 1kg. I've been slowly working my way through it and now only have about a quarter left!

Ran 3 miles tonight and hoping to do a six miler in the morning if the weather is ok and I manage to get up on time (5am start).

70mph

On the way home from work tonight I accidently hit 70mph on my GS125. I worked late and so the roads were clear and I had the throttle wide open and the last time I looked the needle was creeping past 50. With nothing up ahead and possibly a bit of help from a tail wind it carried on creeping all the way to 70mph.

Once I got home I had a few hours of coding to get out of the way followed by a 3 mile run. The run seemed to go well and at a good pace but had I been wearing my watch I may have been disappointed.

Who let the dogs out?

Today we went to the Greyhound Rescue centre in Sutton-On-Trent and walked four of their recently retired racing greyhounds. They get walked twice a day but as former kennel dogs they still seem to love getting out into the open, tugging on the lead and sniffing everything.

Later I ran 1.5 miles.

Daylight.

Yesterday I actually ran in daylight for the first time in what seemed like weeks. Time passes quickly when you can see where you're going! 6.2 miles at an easy pace.

Today I'm going to clean the green house and then go over to the greyhound rescue centre to walk some orphans. Then tidy my office and put my seed potatoes in boxes ready for chitting. And hopefully get over to my parents' house to pick up my turbo trainer so that I can start logging some mid-week bike miles.

All this is subject to me dragging my lazy ass off the sofa....

The Bee Hive

1.5 mile run finished just before midnight with dinner and a pint swilling around in my stomach. The pint was consumed in a pub called the 'Bee Hive' which is in a village called Maplebeck. The entire pub consists of two rooms whose total area is smaller than my living room. It has a large wood burning fire that heats the tiny space up to sauna like temperatures. This was confirmed by the thermometer on the wall that was reading close to 30 degrees centigrade. The bar is inhabited by a noisy group of farmers who banter about what's getting planted this spring, why the roads are flooded, the price of broiler chickens and how townies are flooding the rural areas among other things. Very entertaining to listen in to.

Short

1.5 miles tonight.
The end.

I haven't seen one of those for awhile.

This was the view from my office window as the sun went down at 4:00pm. I haven't seen a red sky for quite awhile.

Too slow.

Another day on the motorbike and another 7.1 mile run. I averaged 10 minute miles on the run which is way too slow. Not that long ago I would be doing 8 minute miles at this time of year and 7:15s by the Watford Half Marathon at the start of February. I wonder how I'll do this year?

No room at the gym

Actually managed to go to work on my motorbike this morning. There were a couple of huge traffic jams as I skirted around the edge of Nottingham, both of which I was able to weave through arriving at work about 15 minutes late instead of the 45 had I been in the car.
This evening I decided to run to the gym to begin my strength training for this years Ironman. When I got there though it was so full of 'New Year's Resolutions' that I just carried on running. I covered about 3 miles, but because of the detour I won't know for sure until I measure it on Google Earth. I wonder how long it'll take for gym numbers to fall to normal levels?
It's windy outside at the moment, hopefully it'll calm down enough to ride by morning.

No tiles seem to be missing! Hopefully the weather will stay calm and I'll be able to ride to work tomorrow.
This evening I prepared four portions of winter vegetables with garlic and rosemary (from the garden) to be eaten over the next few days and a batch of banana wholemeal muffins as an alternative to the crap I would normally snack on.
With a couple of muffins in my tum-tum I've just finished a three mile run to fulfil today's streak run requirement.

wind

Woke up to gales this morning and so this evening I'll be checking the roof for missing tiles. High winds also meant that I had to drive to work as the motorbike would be too unstable in a crosswind. More's the pity because I hit a traffic jam that made me 30 minutes late for work. It's bright and clear now!

Tandem ride

18 miles on the tandem with Ann-Marie followed by a 1.5 mile run. We didn't mean to do 18 miles for the first ride of the year but we took a wrong turn and a small loop became quite a large loop. It's been 3 months since I've been on a bike and I'm aching in lots of places that
I'd forgotten existed.

Before that I finished off digging the garden and afterwards did a little fix on my motorbike electrics. Hopefully, the weather will be good tomorrow and I'll be ok to ride in.

First long run of the year

Here's a shot from my New Year's Day run up on the pit tip. It's nice to have trails like this on my door step.

Today - 7.1 off road running miles in the dark with just an led headtorch to light my way. Nearly went arse-over-tit when a malicious tree root jumped out in front of me. Funny when I think how much longer these weekend runs will get as the year goes on.

More guitar practise - a bit of Bach and a few other bits and bobs.

And I got my first batch of seed potatoes ready for chitting and Ann-Marie and I priced up bathroom suites.

To finish a long day I watched the Disney Jungle Book DVD I got for Christmas which brought back memories of being about 5 years old and listening to the soundtrack. The King Louie scenes are still the best!

Another 3 miles running last night after a big plate of welsh rarebit and a bit of guitar practise. The Christmas decorations came down too.

Today I have a list of tasks as long as your arm. The first of which is to measure the bathroom.

3 miles tonight at a steady pace.

And a first look at Python.

Training.

Today I ran 1.5 miles and it was bloody freezing!

Goals for 2008.

Here are my goals for 2008 divided into sport, learning and life.

Sport

• Ironman UK - Looking at 1:12/6:30/4:00 for a sub-12.
• Do a performance test every training cycle - Every 3 or 4 weeks depending on the protocol.
• Run everyday - It's called a streak run and I have to run at least a mile every day. I've actually been doing this since the 18th of November last year. I need to focus on my running and this is an easy way to do it.
• Keep a training log - To track progress.
• Get down to a low racing weight - 80kg or 17% b.f. by Watford Half Marathon (first weekend in Feb) and then 74kg or 10% b.f. in time for Ironman UK in September. I'm 84.2kg and 21% b.f. at the moment.

Life

• Start a wedding fund with Ann-Marie - We've got until the 3rd of October 2009 so we should be able to get a decent wedge together.
• Blog everyday - I'm going to use this blog as a training log and a diary. I'll aim for at least a sentence everyday and try and post a picture too. If I don't have access to the internet then I won't bother!
• Grow some veg - I've got a nice big garden now and I intend to use it.
• Cook more - If you're going to grow your own veg then you might as well do something with it.
• Start teaching beginners guitar lessons - I'll advertise and see what happens, but first I need to refresh my chops.
• Watch less TV - I'm going to try and only be in front of the TV if I'm doing something else. e.g. eating, blogging, coding, etc, etc
• Sort out our new house - I don't like to be so general, but there's so much to do it's unavoidable. Find a plasterer for the living room, modify the fitted wardrobes to take our kingsize bed, unblock the drains, convert the loft.......... No point having a specific goal, I'll just keep chipping away at it though.
  

Learning/Tech

• Learn some new technologies - Things like Python, Ruby, PHP, F#, WPF, etc, I'll set a couple of tasks for each one. Things like a Hello World program, mandelbrot set and a classic computer science problem. For January I'll look at Python.
• Look for a couple of side projects - I've got a couple of coding ideas rattling around in the back of my head that I'll start to implement this year.
• Pass my motorcycle test - I've done the CBT. Next up is the Theory Test.
• Learn some Greek for our holidays - I've got a Pimsleur course and it would be nice to finish that before we went to Crete in September.
  

Obviously these all break down into smaller goals and there is a lot to do