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.