I think Spring may have arrived...

It's not raining, and according to my garmin I've just been out cycling in temperatures in excess of 15'C, which is T-Shirt and Shorts weather in my book.

It's now (checks countdown) 67 days to go until I head off from John O'Groats. Training has been going well in the main...in March I maanged 50+ miles a day for 8 days straight, and apart from a little bit of sleep re-adjustment I managed fine, with no bio-mechanical foul-ups. We also managed a trip down to Exmoor, where the UK Half-Ironman is based, and did a day's cycling on the route...renowned as the worlds toughest half-ironman (I can see why...each 25'ish mile lap has a series of hellishly steep hills, including 3 20%+ ones). We did pretty well, even taking on the vicious headwind no the "easy" section of the course. I'm currently clocking up about 900-1000 miles a month, and all my spare weekends are now booked out until I set off, typically with 100-mile rides back-to-back.

Easter went less well...the first day started well, but deteriorated into a cold and windy rain-storm, and I started picking up loads and loads of punctures. This culminated with me trying to repair an innertube (I'd run out of fresh ones) 2 miles from Twyford in a mini-gale, while being lashed with rain. I called the cavalry (Gill), who very nobly came out as a back-up rescue, however surprisingly (especially to myself) the glue held, and I was able to roll back into Reading, where Sweeney Todd's Pie Shop rescued my plummeting body temperature with a pie and chips emergency serving.

Once I decided to look at the bike again I found out that the back tyre was blistered and cut up...the result of a hard winters use. The tyres are the originals, and they have racked up about 3,500 miles, including the tarmac-armageddon that was January. I spent yesterday cleaning/greasing the bike, and changing the tyres over to some fresh folding ones, which should see it through spring/summer. I also got the TT bike ready to roll, and hopefully I can start giving it some run outs, with an eye to the weather of course!

In the other world, I've started work on the Blood Angels 40k army. I was delaying until I had seen the official codex (released on Friday), and could work out what units I was to include. I ended up doing a decent sized order, and spent the easter weekend working on assembly and base-coating. I'm going to be using the same painting techniques as I did on the Tau, with a few lessons learnt. For a start, I'm trying to make sure that the models are flexible, and to that end wherever there are equipment choices, I'm adding magnets to allow swappable arms/backpacks etc etc. The house has resonated to the sound of a Dremel this weekend, and my initial supply of 150 magnets has quickly been embedded in the models, random arms and backpacks. There is a 1-day tournament at the end of May, and it would be good to have a basic force built up by then (though obviously it has to fit around the cycling...I'm in the decent position that if I miss the deadline I can always use the Tau instead, who have been performing much better recently, and have even clocked up a couple of victories!)

There is a photo project log of the assembly and painting of the Blood Angels here (typically not great photos, as they are taken with my phone as I work...). As with the Tau, the end goal is for about 3,000 points worth of army. I would expect to finish that late summer, and then look to start work on a new army for autumn/winter.

Everything would be much easier if I didn't have to work (quick work update...more redundancies, I'm not affected, and I'm so in demand that no-one is allowed any of my time...go figure). Easter shot by is a blur of cycling, drilling and super-glue, and my next weekend with nothing to do is the arse-end of June, a.k.a the brief gap between JOGLE and the Bournemouth Triathlon (my first sea-swim!).

Hard Graft

The snow seems to have held off a little in the past month, so I've been working on getting some mileage out of the bike. It's still been stupidly cold, and wet, and windy, so it's been a long way from pleasant, but it's important that I get myself moving now, so I don't suffer too much in June.

On the last weekend in January I did a training ride with Threshold. Really good day, and great confidence builder for me. There were about 50'ish riders there, and after a number of talks (Halfords, who are providing the machanical support, SIS, who are doing the 'sports nutrition' aka liquid carbohydrate, as well as a little bit from Chris Boardman and James Cracknell) we all kitted up for a ride in the cold, slightly icy West Berkshire countryside. I bit the bullet and put myself in the fast group, along with about 14 other brave souls. We were being led by a local lad, a 9-hour Ironman (which is a pretty awesome time), an SIS athlete and Cracknell himself. We very quickly managed to lose the lad who knew the route (he dropped back to help a straggler, and we missed a couple of key turnings), and found ourselves about 10 miles the wrong way, and on a main A-Road. After a bit of discussion and map-pointing we decided to head up towards Swindon, then cut back to the route. The A-Road managed to contain a fair percentage of arse-hole car/va/lorry drivers, most of who received cheery waves and verbal abuse (it would have been quite funny if one of them decided to stop...Cracknell is a big fella, and some of the other guys were well-built too, and I'm more than happy to kick when they are down), but we eventually found our way back on route, just in time for a monster 16% climb. If I'd known it was coming I would probably have failed it, but as it was I ground my way up, which was a huge mental hurdle beaten (I've previously died on 11%+ hills). We ended up going past the slower groups (who had cunningly not taken an enormous diversion), and most of our group ended up staying back with them, so at the end only 3 of the riders finished as the fast team, and I was really chuffed to be one of them. We covered about 70 miles in total, with just under a mile of vertical climb, and an average speed of 17mph.

Since then I've ben doing the mileage I can, averaging about 150 a week. I'd really like to see that moved upto about 250-300, and hopefully once the weather sorts itself out, and we get a bit more daylight I can work on making that happen. As the big countdown on my blog reminds me, it's now 110 days to go...all the transport is booked up, and it's really time to knuckle down and get the mileage in. In March I have a week off, and I plan to do 9 days of 50+ miles a day (about 3 hours in the saddle), to put in some hard work on recovery and fatigue management. Towards the end of March I have a weekend in Exmoor planned with a mate, and we are going to do laps of the UK Half Iron-Man course, with a goal of doing 100+ miles in a day, with about 3 miles of vertical elevation as some hardcore hill training.

When I'm not cycling, running or swimming, really enjoying being back into 40K. I've been going down to Spiky Club in Reading, and finding out that;
1) I suck at 40K
2) Tau are a really un-forgiving army to play

I have an impressive loss:win ratio at the moment...perfect in fact. I am un-non-beatable. as such I intend to start work on a second, and more forgiving army to help me learn the game... This time I'll be working on a Blood Angels army, as they have a new Codex out in April. I've picked up a job-lot of second hand miniatures, and planning to begin work on painting them sometime this week. What I really need is another dose of snow, as that gets me painting in double-time, however it does affect the training somewhat!

Getting back into it...

It's been a tough month if you're keen to be outside training. We've had just shy of a foot of settled snow in Berkshire, combined with a shortage of grit meant pretty much impassable roads. The snow has left (for now), but it seems to have left behind some fairly epic potholes, and vast amounts of crud on the road in the way of stones, grit etc, so cycling contineus to be a challenge... The trainig plan has gone out of the window, and right now it's very much catch-up and mileage building again. I have a training ride this weekend (Sunday), and overall I'm expecting to break 100 miles that day...

As the countdown cheerfully reminds me every time I head here or the RAB2010 website, we are now over halfway through the training, with about 135 days left to go...faintly terrifying. To aid me in my constant terror that I'm not doing enough I have a new toy (Christmas present from Gill ) that lets me keep very accurate track of how little I'm doing, and how badly I am doing it. The stuff it kicks out can be seen here. It's way more accurate than the old phone stuff, and includes other funky data points like cadence and heart rate, which has already proved very useful in working out how I react to fatigue (I now have it bleeping warnings at me if my cadence goes below 80)

Quite aside from the training, there is also the sorting out of the logistics of getting to and from John O'Groats and Lands End. The trains run as far as Wick, which is about 20 miles from JOG, and can deal with (wait for it) about 16 cyclists a day, which would be an issue when you consider that roughtly 650-700 will be turning up. instead our bikes are being shipped up separately, and we make our own way. I've decided to fly, as most other options involved a 6-7 hour coach ride from Edinburgh or Aberdeen (I don't travel well, and I can't think of anything worse than violent travel sickness the day before setting off on a 1,000 mile cycle). I'll be heading to Southampton, flying to Wick via Edinburgh, and then taking teh shuttle bus to JOG. It's all booked, and ready to go, and again makes it all sem just round the corner now...

While this year the focus is going to be on cycling, I'm also going for a fair number of triathlons. Currently booked up are the Merchant Taylor Olympic tri in May, the Fritton Lake Olympic Tri (also in May), the London tri (in August, doing the extended bike ride to 80km), and the Vitruvian Half Iron-Man (in September...season finale I guess). On top of that I'm doing the Reading Half Marathon (March...probably going to be rubbish again), and I'm looking at teh Human Race Evening Sprint Triathlon series at Dorney Lake as well. There has been some mention of giving bike Time Trialling a go as well, as Reading has a fairly active cycle club, and it would give me an excuse to give the TT bike a showing.

So all in all a fairly manic year. I estimate last year I cycled approximately 5,000 miles... I would be shocked if I didn't top that by some margin this year. I also need to keep the running up (I need to be at least half-marathon fit throughout the summer, and into autumn) and also comfortable doing 2km+ swims in open water...so I could really do with the weather sorting itself out!