Busy Day.

The photos above where taken during my long morning run. I covered just over 11 miles quite comfortably, if a little slowly. Afterwards, I finished off the grouting in the bathroom and then moved to the garden to sow seeds and tidy-up. I put radishes and spring onions between the rows of potatoes that I set lask week and peas up against the fenc. The spuds had a good long chit and so leaves are already starting to poke out of the soil.

Lost.

On Sunday I ran with a little bit of a hangover and what with the heat it turned out to be a survival mission. So much so that I ran straight passed this maze and didn't even notice it. It was only when I measured my route using Google Earth that I spotted it.

View Larger Map

After a few minutes pondering I suspect that it's cut into a tall crop and wasn't actually there at this time of year. I'll check it out next time I run there.

Training

The picture is of me just prior to my Saturday morning training ride. I took another of me smiling but it was too scary to upload!

Had a bit of a break from blogging but as this is supposed to be my training diary I thought i ought to get back to it. I've just completed an early morning six miler around Walesby Forest, the sun was coming up and I had the world to myself. Early morning is my favourite time to run it's just difficult to drag myself out of bed sometimes, particularly when I've been short of sleep (too much coffee at bedtime!).

Door Frame.

I skipped the time trial because I was late at work, although I did manage to get some filling done around the door frames in the living room. We're having carpet fitted first thing on Saturday morning so tonight is probably a write off too. More filling, re-touching and staining to do before the carpet is down. Hopefully, I'll get my time trial done over the weekend.

1st Testing Week Pt 1

Last night I did my first run test, I was supposed to swim but I left work late and didn't get to the pool in time. The test consisted of running three miles as fast as possible but with a heart rate cap of 150bpm. Even with the heart rate cap it felt quite tough, firstly because I had to move my Sunday 11 miler to Monday and was therefore quite tired and secondly because I didn't warm up properly. I completed the run in 25:25 which averages out to 8:30 minutes per mile, not too bad under the circumstances.
This evening I went straight to the pool after work and performed a swimming test. This involved a warm-up followed by a 1000 metre timed set, which I finished in 21:30. The same pace over the ironman distance would result in a 1h12 swim leg which is around the same time as last years effort and would be quite acceptable this year.
Tomorrow night I am intending to perform a 10 mile cycling time trial...

Testing week

I'm just starting my fourth week of proper Ironman training.... So far I've done plently of running, a bit of cycling and not enough swimming. My running consists of a daily run of between 1.5 and 6 miles, with a longer run on Saturday or Sunday.
Cycling so far has been limited to a weekly ride on my training bike which amounts to about 25 miles. The week before last I cycled to work as well giving me a 52 mile round trip. This is supposed to be a recovery and testing week but next week I'll cycle to work at least once, the aim eventually to get about a 100 miles of riding out of my commutte on top of what I do at the weekend.
I've been swimming in the local 20 metre pool and I can knock out about 2000 metres of mostly bilateral swimming fairly easily. This needs to increase to 4000 metres, however, as the weather gets warmer I should be jumping in a lake twice a week and that will get me 2 miles every time.

This is a testing week and so tonight I'll do a swimming time trial, Wednesday night will be a 3 miles run with a heart rate cap of about 150bpm and Thursday will be a 10 mile cycling time trial with a cap of 160bpm. These will give me some numbers to track progress. Next week I'll crank up the volume a notch.....

Bricks.

One of the things I want to do in the garden this summer is build a brick barbeque and a pizza oven. Here's a link to a good pizza oven building site. http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/gl_plants_other/article/0,,HGTV_3609_1384328,00.html

First ride to work on the bike without an engine.

I cycled to and from work on Wednesday and got absolutely drenched, it's a 52 mile round trip and so is a solid training session. The morning ride took 1 hour 45 minutes, giving an average speed of 14.8 mph - not bad for the first of the year. The return journey was only a few minutes longer but I was absolutely dead beat by the time I got home. Having worked late I had to ride home in the dark, and despite having powerful lights and reflective gear a muppet in a little Fiat still managed to clip me.

Ride

Cycling to work for the first time this year and it's raining. Sweet!

Gimp

Ann-Marie insisted on taking a photo of me in my gimp outfit this morning before I went out on my training ride. I ran straight off the bike and because I was wearing quite a few layers I left the 'tights' on to avoid the inconvenience of changing. This resulted in a torrent of abuse from a gang of kids and a few drivers hooting their horns. Won't being doing that again in a hurry.

Froggy.

Tonight when Ann-Marie let out the cat she found this little fella and his friend on the door step.
While I was downloading the frog photos from my phone I found this picture of my morning tea mug. I was so tired that I managed to pour my cereal into the mug instead of the bowl.
And this is a view of an area close to where the River Maun and the River Meden meet.

It was hit pretty badly during the floods last summer and was under a couple of feet of water for several months (I know this because I tried to run through it!). Many of the trees seem to be dead and most have their root systems exposed. Hopefully we won't have a repeat performance this summer.

Big Bike.

Last weekend I had a go on a Suzuki GS500, it was much like my GS125 except it was bigger, heavier and more powerful. It went well and I've placed a deposit with the riding school to pay for a test at some point in April. Learning to ride a motorcycle is much different to learning to drive a car. With a car you tend to rely on a single weekly lesson possibly backed up with time on the road with a friend or relative. I was not a confident driver when a took my test. With the motorcycle I've been logging substantial mileage on my 125 since October and therefore most of the technical aspects of my riding are there. I've ridden in wind, rain and hail, and in heavy city traffic and busy arterial roads. So generally I'm a confident rider. When I go for the training course prior to the test I'll be learning to make observations and how to apply the correct procedures as well as learning to execute the required manouvers, such as the U-turn and emergency stop. As the instructor told me when I visited, 'he wouldn't be teaching me how to ride a bike'.

Ann-Marie was away last week and so I spent most evenings decorating. Because I wasn't getting home particularly early and I wasn't finishing decorating until late I ended up very tired. This made me less than thorough at work and I managed to make a mistake on Thursday which took two of us a day and a half to undo. That's an expensive mistake! This is a really good reason to ensure that I get 7 or 8 hours of sleep every night.

500cc

Last weekend I passed my motorcycle theory test, it felt quite strange in the waiting room with lots of 17 year olds about to take their car theory tests. On Sunday I'm going to visit an instructor for a 30 minute taster to see how I do on a 500cc bike, this is to decide if I need a 2 or 3 day training course before taking the practical test.

I finished my antibiotics yesterday and to celebrate(?!?) I ran 3 miles. This is the longest I've run in over a week because the antibiotics/infection made me feel rough.

Aches.

Having just got over an infection caused by an impacting wisdom tooth, I managed to strain my neck when I tried to perform a sharp over the shoulder check on my motorbike. The weight of the helmet gave me a bit too much momentum. Unfortunately, I was still on painkillers for the toothache and didn't realise that I'd done any damage. Now I can't look to the right much further than a couple of degrees.

Stuff that I should have written weeks ago.

The weekend before last Ann-Marie and I went to Robin Hood's Bay for a break. The picture below is the view from our room as I got up to go running.
This is someone's very excited dog on the beach.
On the Sunday we walked from Robin Hood's Bay to Whitby along a coastal path. It was only 6 miles but because of the undulating nature of the path it took us 3 hours.
When we got back home we started decorating the living room. The wallpapering around the chimney breast was a bloody nightmare with external and internal corners.

Once the papering was done I had just enough time to do an oil change and fit a new chain to my motorbike before heading to my mum's for Mother's day dinner.

Rubbish.

After consistently posting throughout January I managed to mess it all up about two thirds of the way into February. I've got excuses but they're all rubbish.

In hot water.

The heating is back on!!! Last night I had my first bath in nearly two weeks (in this house annyway) and this morning I didn't risk hypothermia just getting out of bed.

I'm feeling a little bit under the weather at the moment and so last night and this morning I only ran 1.5 miles. Nothing serious, I just don't want to make it any worse.

Bike fixing day.

Other than mopping out the cellar this morning, after a frozen waste pipe caused the washing machine to back-up, today was mostly spent fixing bikes.

• I tightened up the chain on my motorbike.
• I fit new brake pads, replaced a cable and straightened the rear mech on my Slayer. The cable had pulled through the bosses and was causing the mech to move with the suspension. The most noticeable effects of this were an inability to switch into the lowest gear and the mech interfering with the spokes.
• Straightened the rear mech on my winter training bike. I rode this bike only twice after getting knocked off it last summer and the main reason was because the shifting was messed up.
• Tightend up the crank arm bolts on my tandem (all four of them). They were creaking horribly last time we went out on it.

With the winter training bike fixed I put it on my turbo trainer and did a 30 minute session immediately before I went for run.

Longish run.

After tiling for most of the day I managed to get out for an 8 mile run just before the sun went down. I took a few snaps with my phone which I've uploaded. One of the sun disappering below the horizon, some cattle in the Duke of Portland's flood meadows, Clipstone Colliery - almost completely demolished now except for the headstocks and finally a frozen lake.
I ran in my fell running shoes because my normal trainers are still wet from a run last weekend on a Welsh mountain, no heating makes it had to dry stuff. The fell shoes have next to no cushioning and by the end of the run I felt like I'd run a marathon. Hopefully, I'll get out on one of my bikes tomorrow...

Tiling.

Spent most of my day sticking tiles to the wall. Much easier than I expected.