Snow and Chillis

It snowed here yesterday morning and given the chance I would have been on my mountain bike sliding around in the woods. Unfortunately, I was on my way to work in the car. I did get a short run done in the evening, after I'd finished cooking, but by then the snow had gone. Tomorrow I'm supposed to be visiting a customer up in Blackburn and I'm hoping that an interesting trip doesn't get snowed off, at the moment BBC Weather can't make up their minds.
In my opinion there's only one antidote to cold weather and that's hot and spicy food. Last night I made a tuna based pasta dish that contained 6 chillis - 4 Jalapenos and 2 Thai. With that much 'stopping' power I didn't need to resort to some of the more esoteric condiments stashed away in our fridge (Viscous Viper, Jersey Death, etc). I made enough for two days and so tonight I'll get a second hit.

Weekend

I dragged myself out of bed early on Saturday morning so that I could complete my first long run since Ironman. It was very cold and very damp but being a morning person it felt good to be out. Today I made a Steak and Guinness pie for dinner. This is the filling looking all frothy because I've just added the Guinness.
These are leeks from the garden that turned out to be tiny once that I'd cleaned and prepared them. I ended up tossing them on to the mash potatoes as garnish.And this is the finished pie about to be served. It looks pretty rough but it tasted good with a big pile of mustard mash (if I do say so myself).

Some photos from the last few months

This is the fountain outside of Wembley Arena when I went to see Oasis. The queues were huge!

Although it doesn't look like much this is the hole my motorbike left after I crashed it into a grass verge.
Ritual : Packing prior to Ironman UK. Wetsuit - Check, Swim Hat - Check, Tri Suit - Check, etc.
Halloween Steam train.

So much for blogging every day.

Here's some pumpkins that I've been growing since the summer. This evening I'm going to have a go at making pumpkin soup and I'll look around for a punmpkin pie recipe for Halloween.

Biological controls.

When I went to water my tomatoes last night I found this little fella hidden inside one of the growbags. I decided not to evict him as I'm hoping that he has a taste for slugs.

Mansfield Half Marathon

I ran the Mansfield Half Marathon today in the pissing rain, despite that I had a really good run. This was mostly down to the fact that about half a mile from the start I caught up with another member of my tri club, who is also a fellow ironman, and for the first time in years I didn't run alone. A good natter really makes the miles go by quickly and a bit of peer pressure certainly prevents slackening off up the hills.

Afterwards Ann-Marie and I headed down the road to Rufford Park for a little walk before dinner which is were I snapped the picture of the daisy.

Respiration

Had a fun swim last night, just did lots of bi-lateral and drills. And a pyramid set where I gradually reduced the number of breaths I took per length until I was just taking a single breath at the beginning. The ability to breathe infrequently is pretty useful in an Ironman swim when 500 stronger swimmers are attempting to swim over you in the middle of a choppy lake.

I didn't have a picture of the pool so here's a part of the River Maun that I pass on one of my runs.

Where is the rain.

The weather forecast was for heavy rain today so instead of cycling to work I went on my motorbike. I squeezed in a run this morning and scheduled a swim for tonight to make up for it, but I haven't seen any rain yet. It better start raining soon or I'll be pissed!

Ελληνική είναι δύσκολο.

Other than not doing quite enough training for Ironman, I have mostly been learning Greek.

Greek is hard.

Big bike

Dave the cat in our herb/weed bed.
One of my vegetable beds containing three differnent kinds of spuds, strawberries, radishes, peas & spring onions. The radishes were getting scoffed by the local slug and snail population and so I put down slug pellets. The next morning when I did my watering rounds the gastropod carnage that I discovered was shocking.
My green house is a pig sty at the moment but is gradually getting cleaned up. I've got tomatoes, chillis, peppers, lettuce, sweetcorn, spring onions, cucumbers, cauliflowers, broccolli and god knows what else.
I passed my big bike test today with only two minors. I can now legally ride a 190mph missile and the scary thing is you can pick one up for about 4 grand (Search for Hayabusa on ebay to see what I mean). Hooray!
Here's my little 125 'without' L-plates and a heavily laden tank bag.

Wet.

Motorbike waterproofs are not so waterproof. I looked like I'd wet myself this morning when I walked into the office. I hope we're not going to have another summer of torrential rain.

Not getting enough training done at the moment, too much going on. Having said that I am training everyday, just not for long enough.

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.

Gym Again.

Earlier this year I tried to use the gym but it was so full of people trying to burn off hristmas that I turned around and went for a run instead. On Monday night I tried again and on this occassion I was actually able to get a workout in!

On Tuesday I did an early morning 3-miler and backed it up with 2000 slow metres in the pool. This morning I've done the same 3 mile run and will have to wait to see what the Tri-Club has in store for me this evening at the pool.

Review of Annual Goals.

At the start of this month I thought that I should briefly review the goals I set at the start of the year.

Firstly, I decided to look at what I had actually been spending my time doing and what has been working for me.

• Running everyday.
• Blogging regularly.
• Focusing on the Ironman and looking forward to the training ramping up.
• Practicing the guitar when I can.
• Riding my motorbike to work when the weather is right.
• Revising for the motorcycle theory test.
• Watching my diet.
• Getting more sleep (7-8 hours).
• Preparing the garden to grow veg.

There is no mention of side projects or learning new technologies and if I'm honest with myself that sort of thing is difficult to fit in when you've recently moved house and are attempting to train for an Ironman. The technology goals were borne out of a desire to be more effective in my day job, but on reflection that will be better served by being more relaxed and less stressed about trying to fit everything in. Being fit, healthy and not too tired will also help me get through the work day. I've been really enjoying squeezing in a little guitar practice and whether or not I eventually start advertising as a teacher I will try to play more. I've been eating better but most of the food was quite simple such as meat or fish with a green salad. I think sleep is really important too and so getting enough will be a new goal.

Secondly, based on how things are going I'll write revised goals (less detail this time unless there's a major change).

Sport

• Ironman UK
• Performance Testing
• Run Everyday
• Keep a training log
• Low racing weight for Ironman.
• Get 7-8 hours of sleep most nights - Sometimes this won't be possible but I'll try hard.
  

Life

• Keep up wedding fund
• Blog 'nearly' everyday
• Grow some veg
• Continue to eat a healthy diet - as opposed to cook more. Note : I bet Ann-Marie that I would eat no chocolate until after the Ironman!
  
• Play the guitar more often - as opposed to teach guitar.
• Watch Less TV
• Sort out our new house - tiling next weekend, and finish off the amateur carpentry I started in our bedroom.

Learning

• Pass my motorcycle test - the theory test is booked for early March.
• Learn some Greek - not yet started, nearer the time for this one.

Hopefully, I've made my goals a little more achievable. We'll see.

Another morning in the stone age house...

Still no heating or hot water. It's so cold this morning that our cat has wedged himself between my leg and the laptop to keep warm. He's going to be almost as disappointed as I will be when I have to get up for my strip wash.

Cwm Carn

Today I went to Cwm Carn in South Wales, it's only 15 minutes from where we were staying at Ann-Marie's mums house, and home to some pretty hard core mountain biking. It's the first time that I've used my mountain bike since October last year and unfortunately it wouldn't go into the lower gears which is an issue when you're dealing with the Twrch trail which begins with a massive climb. After much frustration going up, and a maximum heart rate of 183 bpm, I hit the descent with relish. There are some amazing bermed sections of singletrack and a few rocky bits, although no Coed-y-Brenin style rock gardens. The route is only 15 km so if I hadn't struggled so much with the climb I would have probably gone around twice. I followed the ride with a quick run but because I was at the bottom of a valley it was inevitably uphill. I always forget how battered I feel after a tough mountain bike ride, it's a true full body workout.

Stone Age

Our lives are in dis-array at the moment because our central heating boiler, serviced by British Gas not three months ago, has just been condemned by the very same. That means no hot water or heating for ten days at least. This can be added to the growing list of disasters which have befallen our new house including our bathroom fitter buggering off on holiday for a month having only fitted half the bathroom and our plasterer getting knocked off his bike a couple of days before he was due to start work. I went running this morning so that afterwards I would feel warmer during my 'character building' strip wash.

Other than that bombshell it been a fairly quiet week mostly recovering from the half marathon last weekend. This weekend I'm off to South Wales to look at wedding venues and so I should get some quality mountain biking done while I'm there. Cwm Carm or Afan Argoed? Decisions, decisions....

Watford Half

This morning I made my annual pilgrimage to Watford in Hertfordshire for the Watford Half Marathon. It's a tough undulating course but it's where I got my half P.B. back in 2004. Since then I've got gradually slower until this year when I finally saw some improvement and got a 1:48. I started off running eight and a half minute miles and then waited for the slow down but it never came. In fact when I got to the halfway point I felt pretty good and went for a negative split. That's the hardest I've run in years.

Snow & Panic

This morning when I poked my head out of the front door to check for motorcycling suitability the only reason I didn't get on the bike was the wind. It wasn't too cold, there was no rain, snow or even a frost. Then it all changed! The three pictures above were taken over the space of a couple of minutes. My usual route that skirts around the outside of Nottingham was blocked and so I turned around and braved the city centre traffic. It was a good call as it was all blue skies and flowing traffic. The 'city folk' had no idea what was happening a few miles outside of the city limits. I saw several abandoned cars, the aftermath of a crash and lots of emergency vehicles heading in the opposite direction and all because of a few minutes of heavy snow. The picture below is the view from my office window when I got to work - there's a little cloud but the sun is bright. Hopefully, we'll have no more snow until tomorrow when I can take advantage of it with some slippy mountain bike action!!!