Cycling - the ultimate geek sport?

Most sports can be real money pits, if you really put your mind to it. Triathlon attempts to be more expensive than most by combining several sports into 1. Outdoor swimming requires a wetsuit (specialist, of course, and you can clear £300 easily on an off-the-shelf, before spending as much as you want on having it customised to fit your particular physique). Running is in theory cheap, however you'd be surprised how fast trainers wear out, and how expensive they can go.

All this pales into comparison, however, to the bike leg. My first triathlon bike (bought a whole 6 months ago now)cost about £450, and on top of that I've put some cheap aero bars, some new tyres, and a fancy rear-mounted bottle holder, as well as the near compulsory pump, lock and basic repair kit. I reckon that I ride around on about £600 of kit. I regularly joke that my bike costs less than one wheel from some other peoples kit.

I've been doing fairly well at the cycling, given that it was the discipline that I started training on most recently... On sprint distance events I'm placing in the top 5-10% of a field on the bike, and I've also signed up for Ride Across Britain in 2010, which should either sort out my endurance or kill me. as an encouragement I decided to buy myself a new bike, and gave myself a budget of £2000. Which sounds like a lot for a bike....

...then I did the proper thing, and started to do some research. I was vaguely aware that bike geometry had some part to play, as did weight. I very quickly discovered that there is an entire sub-culture out there determined to to spend thousands of pounds to reduce the weight of their bike by a few grams, and that this obsession trickled down to every single part of the bike.

A few examples for you to mull over. My old bike had a Shimano 105 Rear derailleur (the bit that moves the chain up and down the gears). For £50 perfectly practical. It's weight is 222 grams. If you want to save a bit of weight (especially in the wallet department), you may instead plump for a hand-crafted carbon fibre model, at 120g. For a weight saving of less than 100g you pay £700 more.

How about a water bottle holder? Cheap at half the price, for £80 It only weights 27grams, before you put 750 grams of liquid in there... Or perhaps you'd like some handlebars for £800.

Insane costs, in return for a lower weight you could gain just as well by taking a decent-sized shit before a race. You could always go for a package bike, which could save you a fortune. I only just managed to find one that broke the £7,000 mark, though I'm pretty sure there are more expensive ones out there.

The real trap here is that the right kit on a bike can make you faster. It's one of the few sports where you are very reliant on a bit of mechanical kit, and as with anything competitive people will seek seconds where they can, and I have no doubt that for elite athletes those seconds count (even in 9-hour races such as Ironmans). For the over-enthusiastic amateur, however, there are definite barriers at the engine level, and I'm pretty certain that I'm not going to see much of a time benefit with a £10,000 carbon fibre shard rammed up my arse.

So I set about looking at the various options open to me in the price bracket, and it's here that I noticed a real similarity between cycling and PC specs...you can spend an in-ordinate amount of time tweaking and fiddling to get the theoretical biggest bang for your buck. The huge range of parts for a bike, and the number of manufacturers mean that there are a huge combination of setups to choose from.

I toyed with getting something fairly exotic, however realistically machines like that would rarely leave the house, as I'd be constantly terrified of getting a puncture (the more extreme wheels have a type of tyre called a Tubular, which differs to normal tyres in that they have no inner tube, and are instead a fully sealed tyre that is glued to the wheel. Apparently these reduce the roll resistance with the road, and thus make you faster, but do mean a puncture is going to screw you over big time). I'm a big believer in training on/in the kit you race with, so practicality had to play a part.

After lots of hunting around I finally found a bike that covered most of my needs, and (with a well-timed sale) was within my budget. Hopefully, tomorrow, I shall be the happy recipient of a Felt B12.

It's the cycling equivalent of a mid range graphics card, or a CPU with the architecture of the expensive brands, and ripe for over-clocking. It has the same frame and geometry as £5,000 bikes, and some wheels that are noted for decent aero-dynamic design without insane cost. The individual parts of high enough quality, without going too far over the "minimal weight reduction in return for massive outlay". It has some (compulsory) "fuck you" bling bits too (gotta love the frame cut-outs for the wheels, and the rear brake tucked in behind the seat-post). None of the bits you would expect to wear out are so exotic that they can't be replaced easily (an important consideration when you consider that I'll be training for a 1,000 mile cycle next year).

Fingers crossed it should arrive tomorrow, and after I've put it together (and bolted on the obligatory bits, like a new bottle holder (plastic) and a computer (cheap, but I did go for the wireless model) I'm looking forward to hitting the roads and seeing how she rides. I'd love to get her down the local velodrome, but that's out of action until September due to re-surfacing. Of course to justify it I now have to get my times down, however I'm not daft enough to think that "New Bike = Faster Time"...it goes nowhere without a rider, so I'd better knuckle down and work twice as hard training. I know how much I enjoy dashing past someone on a fancy bike, so now it's up to me to make sure I don't give someone else that pleasure...

More mid-week Racing

Last night was my third sprint triathlon of the year. For this one we decided to try a different organisational company called Human Race, who are doing a monthly series sponsored by 220 Triathlon Magazine. They have a good reputation (and also organise the big Windsor Triathlon).

The organisation on their part was certainly better, I just wish the same could be said of myself. I was once again racing with Harry, however he'd been up working the previous night on a panic fix, so was somewhat off kilter. For part I have an interesting collection of leg injuries (a strained Achilles and a still broken toe), meaning my running has been non-existent. As I cycled to Harry's I also picked up a puncture (I've had a real issue with tyres recently, as the brand I use have been recalled due to manufacturing errors, and the replacements seem to be ropey as well). A stone had punched itself all the way through the tyre, leaving a fairly big hole. There was no time to fix it at Harry's place, and I had my spare at home, so I called Gill, who very kindly diverted to mine to grab the spare, and a new inner tube, before heading to Dorney Lake. As we set off the rain (which had been intermittent throughout the day) became a vicious deluge, making it pretty apparent that the tarmac would be wet for the race.

We arrived about 50 minutes before the race kick-off, and quickly registered and moved the kit to the transition area. As we were racking up Gill turned up with the tyre, so I quickly got to swapping the rubber over. The big benefit of folding tyres is that they are pretty easy to get on and off the wheel, and with the aid of a track pump I had the front wheel replaced in about 5 minutes. After that it was a hurried sort out of the rack and kit, before dropping off my bags with Gill (who I think is resigned to me throwing bags over the fence to her in a race...I really am a bit disorganised at the start), squeezing into the wetsuit, and walking over for the race briefing.

The route was a bit different to the last race at Dorney...for a start the swim route looked pretty close to the correct distance (previously it's been either too short or too long), the bike route was on the other side of the lake, and consisted of 6 laps of a flat loop, with 3 corners of real note. The run was on the island, and was a fairly simple 2 laps up and down. We waited for the final swimmers from the early wave to clear the water (to rapturous applause and encouragement...one lad had been breast-stroking it, but bravely put in a 25 metre front crawl for the crowds), and then everyone piled in. We were in the main wave, and over 150 people had registered for it...by far my biggest start to date. Harry and myself went through our customary good-lucks, then split up to avoid thumping each other over the head once the race got underway.

The swim start was hectic, and very violent. For the first 200 metres there was a lot of punching, bashing and climbing going on. I was wedged in between 2 other swimmers, and the guy on the right of me was pushing in pretty hard. I ended up pulling off a fairly nasty move, which involved rolling onto my side, and coming down on top of him with my shoulder, effectively dunking him. I think that made him pull up (I certainly didn't see him again). Once he was gone I was able to drift to the right a bit, find some clear water, and settle into my stroke. By the first turn I was just behind a big group of swimmers, however they had the decency of all going off course on the return stretch, while I managed to keep a straight line right back to the final turn, and ended up ahead of them by a good 25-30 metres, and was on the toes of a single other swimmer...we ended up coming out of the water together, and I just got ahead of him in the run into transition to swap over to the bike (end time for the swim was 13.47, with a transition time of 1.32...not bad, though there is time to be saved in transition).

The bike is quickly turning into my favourite leg, and last night was no exception. The weather, which had been looking ominous, had cleared up, the wind had dropped, effectively turning into great cycling conditions. I was able to quickly get up to speed (about 24-25mph) and start hunting down the faster swimmers. I'd remembered to tape a couple of energy gel sachets to my bike for this race, and it paid off, letting me keep my speed up for the 20km leg. As it was laps it got a bit tricky to work out who I was passing, and who was from a previous wave, or a lap behind, however no-one overtook me (well, one guy did, but he was a lap down, and I quickly took him back when he overcooked himself) and I was regularly flying past people. As the surface was wet I was taking the corners gently, but managed to get past lots of people accelerating out onto the straights. I'd targeted myself at sub-33 minutes for the bike section, and was chuffed to roll in 32.39. I then wasted half the effort by having a rubbish transition (the tongue of my trainers dived in as I pulled them on, so I had to sit down and re-fit them).

I'd decided beforehand that I couldn't risk pushing myself on the run leg...my Achilles is not in great condition, and I really don't want another 6-8 weeks of downtime while I let another bit of me recover. I ended up running with another chap who came out of transition with me, and quickly formed a gentleman's agreement to pace each other for the most part, and finish on a sprint. This worked really well, and coming into the last kilometre he said we should aim to take the 3 people in front of us. we got past the first 2, and then I had to let him go ahead, as I started to get the formation of a stitch (this is what a summer of not running does for you). I trundled in with a run time of 20.55 (which is a bit slow for me, by about a minute, but it was expected to some extent). Final time was 1:10.07, and a final position of 27th out of 233, which I'm really chuffed with.

No photos this time, but Gill borrowed a camcorder which I'll be sorting out tonight, so hopefully some video of Harry and myself swimming, cycling and running. We checked the footage out on the screen last night and it looks really good.

I have one more sprint triathlon this year, and then it's into winter training, which will consist of learning to run again (planning to do cross-country, and also train for Reading Half), learning to swim properly (without using a pullbouy), and building up cycling endurance and strength. I've signed up for Ride Across Britain for June next year as an incentive to get my endurance up...if cycling 110 miles a day doesn't sort me out, nothing will!

Halfway House

Nearly halfway through the year, which is more than a little scary. Time to see how the New Year Resolutions are shaping up...

1) Regain running fitness after injury.
I missed my target of 1h 30 for the Reading Half, though in retrospect the physio treatment time lines meant I never really had a chance to get back up to speed properly. Generally speaking I'm back in shape...still a little slow on the running, but certainly better. It's been helped no end by number 2 (below) and the tri-training. I'm notably a slightly different shape now, as the swimming and cycling take effect.

2) Start cycling to work.
Mission accomplished here. As well as cycling to work, I'm also doing some lunchtime cycles, and whenever possible going to Gill's on the bike as well, so averaging about 100-150km a week. My bike is holding up well, and in general for the distance I'm covering not many punctures or mechanical issues.

3) Do a triathlon.
Again, job done. I did the Dorney Lake sprint tri a few weeks ago, and I have at least 4 more scheduled in over summer, with the possibility of a couple more. More than anything I'm enjoying the variation in training, and I've been doing lots of bike work, and both pool-based and open water swimming. The running is not getting quite the work is deserves, mainly as I have a nagging worry about re-aggravating the knee...

4) Sort out the porch...
This one may not be achieved this year, due to fiscal constraints. Instead I'm currently considering doing one (or more) of the following pieces of work;

• New dishwasher and undersink plumbing in the kitchen
  
• New oven
  
• New garage door

(3) is the sensible option, and I'm going to chase up some quotes once the bonus is in.

5) Eat healthier.
Doing a little better here. I'm reducing the daytime snacking, and work now have a kettle, rather than just drinks machines, so I have moved off the hot chocolate to cuppas, which have far less fat and sugar in it. Weekends are still a bit of an issue, but far better than it was (and plenty more still to do). In my defense I'm dropping weight at the moment, so I do need all the calories I'm taking in, though I could probably do with improving the shift from simple carbs to more useful proteins and complex carbs...

6) Be a little less paranoid.
Who said that?

All in all not too bad. Three are fully achieved, one is in progress, and only one has had to be changed (I'm going to ignore the paranoia one for now, as it's not really quantifiable).

Hilly ground...

I've just done my last long training run before the Reading Half next weekend. I'm on a course in London all week, so won't get a chance to do any long sessions over the week, maybe a 10k at some point.

I'm struggling on all fronts...speed, stamina, and strength on the hills, and it's all really down to a lack of training. I only got the all-clear to start ramping up my distances in the middle of January, and got back to Road Runners a month ago. I've been increasing the distance way beyond the recommended 10% a week, and while I'm now reasonably confident that I'll get round, it's not going to be breaking any records, and I'm certainly not looking forward to the hills. It doesn't help that I entered the before my injury, and so have received a stupidly low number (125, out of about 17,000). At the time my goal was 1 hour 25, now I reckon I'll be doing well to get under 1 hour 35, which will be my slowest half ever (and almost a minute a mile slower than initially planned...)

On the plus side, over summer I'll be doing triathlons, with the first one booked for May. I now have all the kit, and will be concentrating on the cycling stuff once the half is out of the way... the goal is to get up to the required 20k at a sort-of decent speed, and then focus on boosting up the speed while the weather is decent.

Fingers crossed I don't screw my leg up next weekend then...

The long road to recovery...

So it's about 3 weeks to the Reading Half, which I've arbitrarily picked as my deadline for recovery from the rather persistent leg injury I've picked up. At the moment (touch wood-like laminate) I'm on track to finish without completely ripping up my tendons, however I'm not sure that the time is going to be exactly stellar.

On Sunday I completed my first 10mile+ run, covering 11 miles in just under 80 minutes. I reckon this puts me on course for a final time of about 1 hour 35 minutes, which will officially be my slowest ever run :-( I've started Road Runners again, and hopefully I can gain a bit of a spring in my step from the interval work that spans from there, however I doubt 3 sessions will be enough to get my pace from last year back... It's all rather depressing, how quickly all the conditioning and training falls off.

Over the summer I'm planning on doing some triathlons, and this week I should be ordering the bike and wetsuit. I haven't been on a pushbike since I did my CBT on a motorbike about 4 years ago, so I've got to get back into the habit of cycling. the plan is to do the commute to and from work 2-3 times a week (about 10 miles each way), so hopefully I can quickly rack up the miles and get a semblance of technique in place. The swimming worries me a bit less, as the distances I'll be competing over initially are well within my training set routines. Hopefully I can rack up some training in the wetsuit in my local pool, just to get the feel of the extra buoyancy.

Frustration and relief...

I had to make a decision last weekend to pull out of Tough Guy. It's the first time that I've failed to do a race, however I couldn't risk repeating what happened to me at the Grim in December. I'm stubborn and bull-headed enough to finish a race even when I'm in agony and doing serious damage to myself, so ultimately the safest option was to not go. The deciding factor was a treadmill session on the Friday, where my knee twinged at 8km... There was no prolonged pain, but just a warning shot to remind me that it was still vulnerable. I was really down about it, however the weather this weekend has been verging on biblical, with sub-zero conditions and snow. Harry, a mate who has done it previously, and did it again this year, has reported ice-covered lakes and "extreme pain". I'm not in optimal shape, and I can't believe anything other than attempting to complete that would have set my recovery back 3 months. Maybe next year...

The rehabilitation is still on target, and I'm running 5'ish miles at the moment, with 7 weeks to go until the half. There is still a long way to go, and I'm hoping the weather warms up a tad soon, as it's extremely hard to motivate myself to run outside right now, while treadmill sessions are just sweatathons. The swimming continues to go extremely well, with the average session covering a couple of kilometres. I need to start focusing more on technique and speed now, and have a couple of articles to work from to aid that. Feeling pretty confident about getting some triathlons under my belt this year now... hopefully this month I can source a bike and wetsuit.

Generally January can be considered the month of birthdays. I'm fairly rubbish at doing anything on mine (I went swimming), however Gill was a star, and whipped up a delicious roast lamb dinner for me (her first ever roast as well). Her birthday was a couple of days later (how organised of us to co-ordinate our birthdays), and we went to Ikea to buy stuff (she has a couple of projects, including a cat furniture tower, while I wanted some kitchen storage), and went out on the Saturday (pizza and film..I'm a classy guy). Then, Kate's birthday (Rob's better half) was on the following Wednesday, so we all went to a Chinese for an "all you can eat, and then a dessert". Delicious stuff all round. Next weekend is mine and Gill's first anniversary (that's shot by) and we are off to Colleys to celebrate. God knows why she puts up with me, but she does, and I'm all the luckier for it...

Work is a bit manic at the moment. There is a big project in the offing, and I have a large chunk of work to do for it. To make things a bit more awkward I took some holiday last week (for all the birthdays), and I was on a First Aid Course for most of last week. The end result is that I have 1 week to do an excessive amount of work. Yay? On top of that we have the fallout from the redundancies from the last month, and a general reshape of the department. The full announcement is on Wednesday, however it looks like my next year there is going to be more than a little hectic.

So lots happening, and lots to do, so doing something stupid like staying up half the night to watch the Super Bowl would be a stupid thing...right? Ohh..2nd Quarter has just started...!

Falling to Pieces

After almost a year of getting away with being injury-free I've managed to go through a series of issues in the last couple of weeks...

First off, I came down with a cold for 3 days, the first time I've taken time off work for illness since 2005! I spent the time playing Fable 2, and generally being frustrated at not being able to train. I felt ready to get back into training on the Friday, and went out for a run (I'm missed my Monday long run, as well as Wednesday's track-training session). I sorted out a 12 mile route, and polished it off with what felt like ease...however the next morning there was a sharp pain on the side of my right foot, stabbing every time I put my heel down. I did a little bit of research into this (I have a huge pile of running magazines which have health and injury advice), and quickly determined it was an issue called Plantar Fasciitis, where the muscle that links the heel to the forefoot becomes strained, ripped or swollen. The end result is that for the next 2 weeks at least I'm not running...indeed, just walking normally has been painful, and I've been limping and favouring my left leg, despite having plentiful strapping around the arch of my right foot...

...and of course the strain on the left leg has led to a knee issue. I'm a little more used to these, as I had similar issues a couple of years ago. That knee now has a support, and fingers crossed that's keeping the issue at bay.

So while my various aches and pains sort themselves out I'm limited to cycling and swimming (and I still suck at swimming...). While it's frustrating not to be able to do road training, I have Grim Challenge in 4 weeks time, and I have to be injury-free by then. I suspect I'll be heartily sick of spinning bikes by then...I've already spent over 3 hours on one this week, and while I have a couple of rest days ahead, with just a swimming lanes session before Sunday I'd far rather be outside doing my proper training...

Fortunately I don't have many races planned at the moment. There is the Grim Challenge at the beginning of December, and then a gap until Tough Guy at the end of January. I may do one of the Hampshire Cross-Countries at the beginning of January to give me a bit of off-road practice, and to keep some short-term targets around. After Tough-Guy it's distance-training all the way to the Reading Half, where I plan to break my PB (fingers crossed)...of course, I need to make sure I'm injury-free to do something like that...

Branching out...

OK, not quite running, but its all linked I suppose.

As you probably know, I blagged a long weekend in Spain a fortnight ago. A good amount of that was spent by the pool at the resort, and splashing about. It made me realise 2 things;

• I quite enjoy swimming
  
• I'm shockingly bad at it

I would swim a length (not even a proper one, as it was a shaped pool), and I'd be out of breath. I can only do a front crawl, and even then I'm keeping my face out of the water as I don't know how you're supposed to breathe. It's all a bit of a train-crash really...

I was taught to swim when I was fairly young, as I suspect most people are. I was a pretty weak swimmer back then, and I have recollections of doing 1000m doggy paddle, taking approximately 2 hours to do so! It was very much the case that you were taught enough to not drown in the local river, but not much more. I never really went back in the pool after that, and at uni did scuba diving, which teaches you to use the fins and your legs (which is utterly against the concepts of swimming). Add onto that a fairly unfit young lad and you have the ultimate model in swimming mediocrity.

Fast forward to now, and I'd like to think I'm in a better shape. While I'm not bulked up, I'm mainly lean mass, and have a bit of endurance to me...of course this doesn't help one whit in the water, as I'm still splashing lots, and moving little. There is one important change though...I'm not above taking lessons now, and I reckon mentally I'm in a better shape to take on board what I'm being shown...after all, I've been taking running training on-board for a while, as well as general fitness advice.

There doesn't seem to be a market for "adults who can slowly drown" swimming classes. Plenty for non-swimmers, but no improver classes (I suspect a lot of this is pride...most people have a paradigm that swimming lessons are for youngsters), so I contacted a local leisure centre (handily only half a mile from my house), and asked their opinion on my best route. They recommended a course of 1-to-1 lessons with an instructor, and the price was a lot less than I thought it was going to be! So I start in 2 weeks time... I did the paperwork last night, and met the instructor, giving me a chance to cover off where I was, what I'd like to be able to do and where I feel I'm weak (breathing and technique...basically the 2 aspects of swimming). She was very pleasant, and seemed confident that I could be gotten up to a much better standard.

I'm quite looking forward to it. I love the idea of being able to nip round to the pool, swim for 30-40 minutes, then get on with my life, and it will be a good accompaniment to the running training, as well as the general fitness training!

Aching Legs

Roadrunners has turned a bit brutal in the last couple of weeks... As we move into autumn the distance we are doing is going up, as apparently races over the winter months tend to be longer. We've been handed into the care of a new trainer, who apparently does over 100 miles running a week! At the moment I'm impressed if I clock up over 20 by comparison...

We have 6 weeks of his routines, followed by another 6 weeks of cross-country training. Last nights session was vicious;

1. Do a 2 mile run at a good pace (6.40min miles for me)
   
2. Do 3-4 sets of 8 laps of track (2 miles), and 3 minute rest at 10k pace (about 1.36min laps)
   
3. Die

I managed 3 and a half of the reps...I could have probably finished the fourth one, however I would have been the only guy left at the track. It's a bad sign when your track session is longer than your long run, and it's a big eye-opener that I need to start upping my mileage. I'm currently doing about 7-8 miles on a Monday, and about 5 on Friday. I think I need to start adding to both of these, with a final aim of 14-15 on Monday and 7-8 on Friday...at least! Add that to the equivalent of 9-10 at Roadrunner, and I'll be over 30 miles a week at least...still short of the 40 that most people recommend, but far better than currently.

The big issue is that the Friday run is probably going to have to be before work, and I'm not exactly the best morning person in the world. I'm trying to get into the habit of doing a 1 hour workout on Friday morning before work, however I'm moving buildings next week, and won't have a gym in the office anymore, which means getting my arse to Rivers, and working out there instead. On the plus side the changing rooms are better there!

If I can manage to fit in Fridays morning session it gives me the potential to add in other morning sessions, and hopefully start breaking me out of my early-doors lethargy...

Times Change...

Someone has just forwarded me an email conversation from 2006, just before I started going to the gym...

The gym thing is actually a plan to give me more time, as I've sort of hit a critical threshold of un-healthiness where I feel tired all the time.

Look on the bright side...tomorrow I'll be doing my first formal exercise in about 20 years...I'll probably start bleeding from the eyes or something...

You wouldn't believe how much that sort of thing scares me...I was shown round the place on Monday, and half the equipment looks like torture equipment. The treadmills seemed to be going way too quickly for my liking.

I've picked a gym out of town and everything just to make sure I don't bump into anyone I know...

My (tentative) plan is to go straight after work 2 nights a week, then once at the weekend. I imagine each visit will last 5-10 minutes before I collapse, and get a free trip in an ambulance...

By comparison, I've trained for the last 5 days straight, with plans to train tonight and tomorrow as well. I now feel bad if I don't train for more than a couple of days!

Sprinting sessions

Roadrunners last night was a brutal session. After a normal warm up (gentle run for about a kilometre, and some drills) we had to do a flat-out 800m, with a target of beating the time we did 5 weeks ago. I managed 2.21, which is a whole 4 seconds off my time, so pretty chuffed with that.

We went on to do about half an hour of something called "Bus Stops", where teams of 3 run with 2 people on the track at once, with one resting. Our team consisted of 2 similar paced runners, and one slower person...I was unfortunately the lead person when I was on track with the slower guy, and so ended up doing both my laps at full pace, while the others got a rest on one lap...

...and if that wasn't enough, we ended up with about 20 minutes of 200m relay sprints, which very nearly killed me. The problem with those is that there was another team of 3 with _very_ similar pacing to ours. It ended up with us racing them round (quite naturally we won :-) )

I'm really enjoying Roadrunners...its a very different challenge to anything I've done before, and its making me push myself a lot harder. I did the Woodley 10K at the weekend, and by my standards did fairly badly, going off too fast, and burning out halfway round. I was chatting to some of the other runners about how their various races went, and blaming one fairly quick guy I tried to stay with at the start (my fault really...I knew he was way faster than me). I have 6 weeks until my next race, and my focus in that time really has to be stamina and endurance, as that's where I'm really letting myself down at the moment.

Regarding the graphing stuff, I nearly have it working (just need to fine-tune the data ranges, then add in some file selection and image scaling options), at which point I'll be able to add the running data onto these posts. I consider this to be cool in a geeky kind of way...

It can't be good for you...

Roadrunners last night, and another really hard session. It was touted as a "bleep test for endurance running", and it really did work out like that. We had to do 400 metre laps, with a 60 second recovery between each one. You started at your 10k pace (so a 1.38 lap for me) and then each subsequent lap had to be 2 seconds faster... I was running with Harry from work, and we managed to surpass both our expectations, and get down to a lap time of 1.14 before finally failing on the 1.12 attempt.

I reckon that from fresh I could have achieved a faster lap, however as we slowly got faster and faster I could see my heart rate staying high throughout the recovery period, and the last 3 laps we were starting while I was still well over 160-bpm (for reference, my resting heart rate is about 50, and the highest I've ever recorded myself is at 190, while more training is done about 170-175, with race pace at 180'ish...I normally recover pretty quickly down to 120-130). I'm really enjoying the RoadRunner workouts...they are a very different type of training to anything I've done before, and really challenging.



I've got the Woodley 10k this weekend, so after circuits tonight it will be rest and recouperation until Sunday. In theory I'm playing cricket immediately afterwards, which may be an interesting challenge (I use the word "play" in a very loose role...I can't bat, I can't bowl, and whenever I'm in the field my body goes onto autopilot and moves out of the way of highspeed cricket balls...)

Once this weekend is over I really have to step up my distance runs. I reckon 2 runs of 10 miles a week should do for now. One will remain on Monday, and teh other will have to fit in at the weekend, and I suspect that as the temperature rises its either going to be very early morning or stupidly late at night. It will be hard work, however I need to hit the targets...

Summer Running

I've been a bit lax since the half marathon, and my mileage has dropped right off. Joining Reading Roadrunners has made me realise just how much I need to do in order to meet my own targets. My weekly mileage is about half what it needs to be, and my weight is slowly, slowly creeping up.

I've got a 10k run this weekend, and I'm fairly certain I'm going to do badly, as my stamina has taken a real hit in the last couple of months. I'm slowly starting to build the distance back up again, and at some point in the near future I plan to add a second long run into my weekly schedule, probably at the weekend. I think both my weekly long runs need to be at least 10 miles in distance, however I'm not used to running in warm weather, and its a real struggle. On the plus side it does open up the river route in the evenings.



When I do my training runs I wear some Polar gear that measures heart rate, altitude and running speed. This in turn kicks out an interactive graph that lets me see how well I did or didn't do. Here is tonights, and it shows that I covered about 13k in an hour, and kept a fairly steady pace throughout. The heat really made it a struggle, and I've imbibed about 2 litres of liquid since then. Hopefully the pain now will translate into improved performance later on in the year...

Flavours of shattered...

Today's recipe is tired, but feeling good with myself. Did Rivers running club today, which in reality has been Kveta and myself doing medium to long runs for the past 4 months, which has been good as we've pushed each other to keep the miles up. Today, for the first time, we had a new starter, and as a result when we went out got round just about 3 and a half miles in 50 minutes. To her credit she was obviously exhausted, but she kept going, and kept her sense of humour as well.

When we got back I'd not broken a sweat, so decided to go back out for a proper long run. Kveta had to go back on duty, so I ended up doing an 8 mile route, including a section along the Thames (complete with half a tonne of midge like biomass smacking me in the face) before heading up to do a lap of Prospect Park. its the longest run I've done since the half, and it felt pretty good. Now, 4 hours on, my legs don't ache, just a slight feeling of fatigue that lets me know they've worked.

If I want to improve at Roadrunners then I really need to take the initiative, and start doing the mileage again. I've been lax the last couple of months, and there is no excuse for it. The club can help me with speed and technique, but ultimately I need to make sure that I have the engine to support everything else. Long runs aren't hard, they just need the motivational kick in the arse to get out and do them...