Doing something the average person doesn't do.

The joy of spelt

2012-02-08T12:48:00.000Z

Spelt is lovely. It's a grain that fell out of fashion a long time ago, overtaken by common wheat in the main for breads, cakes, puddings, breakfast cereals etc. But over the last couple of years, with the focus on healthy eating and the rise of intolerances and faddy diets, it has started to make a comeback.

I came across it first with Dorset Cereals and their "Tasty Toasted Spelt" muesli. They use toasted spelt flakes to give added crunch and nuttiness to an otherwise quite soft grained muesli - most mueslis are quite soft textured with little crunch provided in the form of nuts, but that's a different sort of crunch. Dorset have a really good cereal there and I really do like it. Onto the scene now comes Sharpham Park with their range of spelt based products; biscuits, pasta, flour and cereals.

"ABOUT BRITISH SPELT

Spelt is a natural grain which was brought over from the Middle East around 7000 years ago, and become common in southern England from around 500BC. A cross between Emmer wheat and Goats grass, it has a distinctive, naturally nutty flavour and unusual and pleasing texture. Unlike common wheat, natural spelt has not been hybridised or chemically altered, and it remains as simple and hardy as it was when it was first introduced. British spelt is versatile, delicious, nutritious, and easy to digest, making it a fantastic alternative to other conventional grains.

There are a large range of products that can be made with British spelt, including bread, pasta, crackers and biscuits, as well as flour for you to make your own tasty creations in the comfort of your own home. It can also be distilled to make beer, gin and vodka, popularly practised in Poland and Bavaria.

As the gluten in natural spelt is soluble, it can be used by people with wheat intolerance or IBS, which can be difficult disorders to cater for and have become increasingly common in today’s society. British spelt has many attributes and benefits for everyone to enjoy, and provides particularly nutritional benefits for athletes, vegetarians and children. Natural spelt is a healthy and highly nutritionally beneficial choice as a sustainable wholegrain for the twenty first century, and will no doubt prove popular in the years to come."

I was pretty interested as I've been dabbling with spelt based cereals and adding spelt flour into breads and malt loaf for a while, so decided to try their muesli.

The thing that hit me first about this muesli was the taste. It is a -lot- stronger and nuttier than the Dorset Cereals one; and in a really good way. The down side is that based on the description of "light and crispy", I was expecting crispyness and crunchiness, but again compared with the Dorset Cereals one it was softer and most definitely not crispy. That was a real disappointment. But, in truth that doesn't really matter. Putting aside the description, putting aside an expectation of crispiness, this is a really nice muesli. Where Dorset Cereals have produced something more of a cross-over between muesli and (corn/cereal)flakes, Sharpham Park have produced a really good muesli here. I've recently been having my muesli with milk and whey protein mixed in and any cereal that can cut through that flavour is pretty impressive in my book. Sharpham Park Miller's Muesli does just that.

Overall, as a muesli, I think this is the nicest tasting one I've had. The strong nuttiness of the spelt is very clear as an overtone and the other ingredients are enhancements and extra notes of sweetness, tanginess and a softer crunch. I'd be happy to replace any other muesli with this and despite it being £3.99 for 450g vs. £3.04 for 560g No Added Sugar Alpen in the "consumer" range of muesli, or £3.99 for 690g of Dorset Cereals Tasty Toasted Spelt in the "fussy bugger" range of muesli, it's probably worth it for the taste. Plus you know where it's come from and it's produced under the Soil Association Organic standards.

I'm now really rather tempted by the spelt porridge that Sharpham Park does, the only annoying thing is that nowhere I buy food from stocks any Sharpham Park products - hint hint @AbelandCole and @ocadouk!

Planning planning and preparation

2012-02-07T20:46:00.001Z

I'd be buggered if I didn't plan and prepare.

Every week, I make sure I have the week's training schedule laid out in advance. Yes, there is room for flexibility and shuffling sessions about if it needs to happen due to work and real life not being 100% predictable, but the week has a shape and set sessions from coachJez's programme (or mine if there isn't one from Jez). Without a plan and a schedule in place, my training would be directionless in general (which, by itself, is an enormous long term problem) and on a day-to-day basis I'd have no idea what to pack in my sports kit bag.

The same goes for food. Breakfasts are relatively easy and cookie-cutter (no, I don't have cookies for breakfast!). Lunches and daytime snacks generally have to be sorted in batches in advance; making lunch and snacks every morning for that day at work is a heck of a drag and relying on that energy being there every day just doesn't work. So, every couple of days I make lunch base of all the vegetables and fruit and the protein gets added on the day. I have a couple of snacks in the fridge at work and pots of portioned out nuts and a pile of fruit alongside a big plastic box of other safe snacks like wholegrain and seed breads, mixed nuts and seeds, cereal bars etc. And dinners are planned on a daily basis, to a rough weekly cycle to cover getting in some oily fish, red meat, white meat and eggs. But again, if left to when I get home from work to think about it there's a requirement for a big surge of emotional energy required to think it through and sort it out, when I'm just tired and hungry and likely to just go for whatever's easiest at the time. There's weekend batch cooking that covers a couple of meals a week and the rest is quick to cook from scratch (usually 30 minutes or less, e.g. omelettes, frittata, salmon fillets with couscous & veg, steak and veg, sausages and root veg mash).

Without that planning and preparation I'd fall by the wayside; I'd train less, I'd eat badly more, I'd get stressed out by it all more often, I'd make much less progress. There's so much energy needed to do the training and the showering and the working and the eating and the cat feeding and the recycling and the commuting and the washing and the sleeping and the putting the washing away and the shopping, any savings that can be made by bundling planning and preparation up and doing things when the energy and inclination is there in advance of when they're actually needed are well worth having.

It sounds a bit bloodless and mechanical, but it's not. There is always room for spontaneity, it's just not compulsory to get through every day. Spontaneity is hard to do all of the time. Planning and preparation is what successful people do to be successful.

Healthy living: My Vitality

2012-02-06T12:20:00.000Z

There are a bajillion diets and self-help books and web sites on how to lose weight out there and they're mostly the same; do this thing or that thing, count this or that and you'll lose weight and feel better etc. etc. If you've read any of my stuff on weight loss, you'll know my views on all of that.

So, when I was asked if I'd like to try a new site, I thought "bah, it's going to be more of the same old crap", but thought I'd try to have an open mind and read the press release at the very least.

It’s Not All About Weight Loss

With the New Year comes a national obsession with trying to get rid of those ‘extra few pounds’, we all put on over the Festive period, as quickly as possible. It sees thousands of us signing up to gyms, weight loss groups and websites and sales of supplements, promising instant weight loss, soar. In the rush to drop weight however many of us forget that it’s not all about losing weight and let the rest of our health slide. A new ‘healthy lifestyle’ website hopes to counter this trend by offering a member’s site with a difference…

MyVitality.com ‘can’ certainly help you lose weight, but it is so much more than that and is a must for those whose New Year’s resolution isn’t just to drop a few pounds, but to give their general health and wellbeing a boost.

MyVitality is effectively a nutritionist, life coach, beauty therapist and chef all in one. When you sign up to the site you fill in a health questionnaire that asks about your lifestyle and symptoms. It follows this up by asking what your health aims are over the coming months; it’s ok if you just want to lose weight, but what about wanting to get a better night’s sleep, clearing up your skin, beating that bloated belly or having more energy when you come home from work?

Designed by health experts, the system then creates a 24 page profile created specifically for you. This is no common profile shared by hundreds of people, because the experts behind the site understand that someone who wants to lose fat, but also has issues with energy is going to need a totally different diet plan to someone who wants to get fitter for sport, but struggles with stress.

The profile that is created tells you what your nutritional priorities should be, which foods to eat and what supplements could help you achieve your goals. Alongside these dieting tips the site also helps with ‘lifestyle actions’, whether that’s getting more sleep, deep breathing exercises or getting a better sleeping regime.

Alongside this the site also has a huge resource database to help you achieve your goals and suggests recipes that can help, provides information on herbs, spices, supplements and herbal teas, has a ‘daily action log’ and a ‘hunger scale’ to print off, and even sends you e-mails to steer you in the right direction.

It still looked a bit "we're different from all the rest, honest!", but why not give it a go? So I filled in a few details and signed up for an account. The first thing that I was initially confused by was the fact that there was a one month signup after which your account expires, but you could choose to sign up for a rolling monthly subscription thereafter. Odd, so I thought. How on earth can you track things and get trends and all the lovely statistics I usually love? Again, swallowing my preconceptions, I got on with getting started.

The first thing you do is fill in some basics, name, height, weight, measurements and then there's a mahousive, long, long, long questionnaire. The questions cover all sorts of topics in fine detail... form how often you eat cruciferous vegetables, red meat, dairy, nuts etc. to "do you have loose stools or get diahorrea?(sic)", "do you remember your dreams?"

There are questions about how you feel, physically, mentally and emotionally and whether you're happy with certain things or have feelings of guilt... in all, somewhere around 200 questions to profile how you are doing in general.

Once you've waded through the quite extensive questions, you are rewarded with the results and a full profile. (I've completed four over the last month; you'd normally only see one listed after your first run through the profiling).

The summary gives you a nice precis of the full 24 section/page report:-

And then you can dive into the full report. I did get confused at this point as all there is on the site is your report(s), some daily action log sheets to print out, the ability to take a new questionnaire and access to the (rather pathetic) recipe database. I was expecting other things to log and track, like what I ate or weigh or -something-. There isn't though. But... this site is different, so it doesn't matter. They're proposing a different way of looking at things.

The full report covers a huge range of topics. All the way through there are reminders that the recommendations on each section don't need to be worried about in isolation - some will say "do more of $x" where the next section says "do less of $x", so in the conclusions at the end there is a final recommendation as to what to do about $x on balance and that's the one you need to take heed of.

Sometimes, it can be a little confused...

There are additional factors that it takes into consideration, such as whether you are involved in heavy exercise:-

Having had a lot of information from you on a range of subjects, there are calculations and decisions made to give you your top 3 areas to target. God knows if you try to tackle too many things at once, you're quite likely to fail, so it's good that the report gives you the priority areas overall.

The results of the first questionnaire I took targeted these as my highest priorities...

As you can see, it's really not about weight loss, gain or the basics for someone who is very much adrift with the state of their physical health in terms of being heavily overweight. There is a strong focus on reducing stress factors, getting more sleep, incorporating relaxation and "me time" as well as hitting any areas of nutrition that are weak.

My main recommendations from the first questionnaire were to eat more nuts and seeds, drink peppermint tea and liquorice tea (thanks to TeaPigs and the delicious mint and liquorice tea for hitting the spot there!), and take some time to relax in every day. It also suggested some supplements (which there's no questions about so there's no data for it to know whether you are or aren't taking them already - which I was for the main one suggested, EFAs or CLA). There does seem to be a lot of clevers behind the suggestions in each category. I get the feeling someone has paid for a lot of data and science to populate "the system" with good algorithms and data,

In the report there were suggestions on which were nutrients to hit by priority:-

And where to get them from, naturally, i.e. which foods.

There does seem to be quite a focus on reducing wheat... though I eat very little of it anyway as we only eat bread at the weekend, we almost never eat pasta - sticking to unpeeled root vegetables, couscous, wholegrain rice sometimes.

And the usual red meat hatred, though, hilariously, it's also in my "superfoods" recommendations.

It's nice to see that herbs and spices are also included in the profile recommendations as important and powerful sources of nutrients. Often when people make the choice to cook as much as possible from raw ingredients, they forget about herbs and spices and they not only make a heck of a difference to the flavours and variety in dishes, they can be pretty handy for plugging some of the vitamin and mineral gaps for minimal effort.

The weakest section, I think, is the recipe and meal suggestions. It feels half-hearted and a bit of an after-thought. You can't search on particular ingredients, nor my recipe name. A bit of a waste of time really and I'd have left it out completely if I were the guys behind myvitality.

So once you've finished the questionnaire and read through the report to learn what the recommendations are and how to improve your overall score and hopefully your wellbeing, you then get motivational emails in your mail box once a day. They are reminders of things to do and try and a little "uplifting" thought for the day. Sounds a bit twee, but I quite like them.

Sometimes there are ones with nothing related to food/eating:-

Over time you may well feel differences. I wasn't expecting to, but I was good and I followed a couple of the main target recommendations... I've added 20-30g of nuts into pretty much every day's eating and I've started to drink mint and liquorice tea and a few other of the recommendations and over the first 2 weeks I -did- notice feeling perkier. I took a new questionnaire and the score had gone up!

And if you look at the individual factors, you can see where the changes have been made:-

Checking in periodically every couple of weeks, with the little changes I had been introducing, I could see improvements:-

Each time following a couple more of the recommendations and... well... after 4 stages of adding in little changes, I've gone from a pretty good start:-

...to a really strong finish:-

I really do feel better, less prickly in the head, my skin wasn't bad but it's almost great now, I feel perky even when I've not had enough sleep and mentally really rather positive (though there are a couple more reasons for that to be the case).

In conclusion, I think this is a great resource for people who already have an open mind to food, nutrition and lifestyle changes. Someone looking for a quick way to lose weight, or a quick fix for their life problems really isn't going to get far. And that's why I think it's ahead of it's time to make a great success of itself. The market is certainly there, but I don't think it's all that big. There are plenty of people in the world who are a lot more tuned in to the "diets are not the way" modern thinking. There are lots of people who understand that in order to look/feel better/different you really have to make long term, permanent changes. This site really is for those people. I'm just not sure there are enough of them who need or want to pay for the sort of help this site provides for it to make a whole lotta money.

I have a programme

2012-02-05T09:28:00.000Z

Finally, I have a programme from my coach, coachJez. It feels funny calling him a coach because he feels more like just a trainer to me. We've been working together for 6 months on my swimming with a little bit of gym work here and there so I don't feel coached, only trained.

Anyhoo. Over the winter he was talking about 'next year' this and 'next year' that and when January came and no programme was forthcoming, I started to get worried. I have some pretty big goals this year and I do not want to screw this up. So I pushed and I finally got a programme.

At the moment, it's 21 sessions to fit in over a month and I'll get the next set after that's done and the results assessed (no idea how that will happen as there's really only one measurement point and that's a 1500m swimming time trial). Thing is, I've already been doing a higher training volume of 10-11 hours a week and this, even with fitting in 7 sessions in 1 week, only sums up to 7 hours with almost no running to speak of - one 30 minute hill reps session! I'd been doing days with 2 sessions in a day, e.g. one gym or swim then a run in the evening, or a gym or bike then a swim in the evening. Now, it's one session per day and the Training Peaks widgets agree that my fitness is dropping off!

See the blue line above, it usually drops off a bit during the week and picks up at the longer sessions at the weekend, but the last 7 days has been a downwards trickle with almost no pickup at the weekend. So, I'm going to supplement next week's training schedule:-

Barbican running track

...with a long, slow run during the week at some point. I also have a bit of a problem with doing mid-week multi-brick sessions - see Thursday for: bike 15 minutes, run 2k, repeat 4 times - in that I can't use a treadmill, so I can't do it in the gym so I can't do it other than at the weekend and even then it's a bit sucky. If it were a shorter session, I could do it at the Barbican Virgin Active as it has a running track. So, I talked to coachJez about that and he had forgotten about my inability to use treadmills and said he took it on board for the next section of the programme. In the mean time, what I may do is try that 90 minute brick session at Barbican after work; but it depends on work as to whether that will happen or not.

We'll see. And so next week probably looks like this:-

Let's bake love!

2012-01-30T06:46:00.000Z

Mrs Crimble's gone all saucy!

A while back I was introduced to Mrs Crimble's Chocolate Orange macaroons which were utterly delicious. Lovely flavour, moist texture and don't leave you covered in crumbs. Now Mrs Crimbles has brought out a new look and a new taste.

Mrs Crimble’s Total Makeover

Mrs Crimble’s, one of Britain’s best-loved bakery brands, has had a total makeover and has launched a brand new product. With the new strapline ‘let’s bake love’ Mrs Crimble’s has shrugged off her cardie and is ready to party. The new packaging is brighter, bolder and more contemporary. It captures the pleasure that comes with biting into a Mrs Crimble’s Choc Macaroon or discovering a large chocolate chip buried deep inside a remarkably chocolatey Double Choc Brownie.

‘Our new logo is heart incorporating an oven glove,’ explains head honcho, Jeremy Woods. ‘It symbolises the love that people have for Mrs Crimble’s products.’

Large Cranberry Macaroons - Mmmcranberry!

They're labelled as "large", and they're certainly bigger than the chocolate orange ones but I wouldn't call them large in isolation; I'd expect them to be the size of those big cookies you get in bakeries. Anyway, that's a nit-picky point and I think Mrs Crimbles has really done it again; these are utterly delicious.

As with the chocolate orange macaroons, the initial hit you get is of sweet, moist coconut as you'd want from a good macaroon. The next delightful flavour you get is of cranberries but they're not scarily tangy, they're more like raspberry jam. So the overall effect is very much like a Bakewell tart. So, with a mug of tea, it's like having a Bakewell tart but without all the heavy icing that comes with a Bakewell tart. And I really like it.

Thinking in terms of fuelling long rides (or runs), I wondered whether these macaroons might be an option. The criteria for me is tasty, high carb (preferably complex and simple mixed), calorie dense, not crumbly and not high in other macro-nutrients than carbohydrate. Let's take a look then; tasty - tick, high carb - tick, mix of complex and simple carbs - nope, calorie dense - tick, not crumbly - tick, low in other macro-nutrients - no.

On balance, given the "no"s are important ones but there are a lot of "tick"s, I think these would be best kept to one or two on a long ride to help with variety in flavour and texture. These macaroons are very nice and I really like them; more than the chocolate orange version.

(As a bonus, they're gluten free for those who have difficulties and preferences that way.)

Ditto and a further comment

2012-01-28T17:25:00.001Z

Mr TOTKat did a bit of a mad parkrun this morning. Having decided to cycle to Eastbourne for their inaugural parkrun, he (unintentionally) tempted me to join him, but I knew I wouldn't be confident in being able to get to the start before 9am and didn't want to hold him back so I decided to do my long ride followed by a run by sitting on a turbo trainer in the garden, under a heater (and I still got cold toes!) for almost 4 hours before running around the neighbourhood a bit.

It seems that while the circumstances of our mornings were different in that Mr TOTKat went all the way to Eastbourne, leaving the house shortly after 04:30 and I didn't even leave the grounds of the house until after midday we had a shared experience overall. We both felt great on the run.

We've both been training consistently since the end of December and we both felt completely fine running after just under 4 hours in the saddle. I felt particularly pleasantly surprised when I started running off the bike... the sessions of brick circuits that Jez has had me doing in the gym(*) have made a huge difference to how my legs feel off the bike. Previously, they'd feel almost like they were someone else's legs; heavy, wobbly and slow. Today, I just felt like I'd had a really good warm up before my run, not that I'd been slogging in the saddle for nearly 4 hours, and I boinged off down the road. Loving that very much!

* example brick circuits
- 10 minutes warm up on the static bike
- 5 minutes hard spin in a high gear, 2 minutes standing climb, 1 minute seated climb, 2 laps of the running track
- 6 minutes hard spin in a high gear, 3 minutes standing climb, 1 minute seated climb, 3 laps of the running track
- 7 minutes hard spin in a high gear, 3 minutes standing climb, 2 minute seated climb, 4 laps of the running track

Judgement day, or, "I need Haribo!"

2012-01-25T08:46:00.000Z

People judge. Every minute of the day. They have their own values and standards and ideals and apply them to others. We all do it, but there are a large proportion of people who think it's OK to vocalise their judgement when it is a "socially acceptable" judgement to make.

I'm talking about food this time.

There I was at my desk in the office today, with a lovely Wiggle delivery, complete with the little bag of Haribo. Someone makes a quip that packets of sweets really shouldn't be something that I have in my possession. I make a half-hearted attempt to let them know that, actually, I'm trying to find stuff to keep me fuelled during endurance rides that aren't gels 'cause I can't stand gels, but it's sort of pointless because the people around me at work just don't get it. It's because they don't do it. Most are fit and healthy and some do some pretty hard sports, but simply not 3-6 hours training sessions or longer, building up to a silly-long endurance event so they simply don't come across the same nutritional challenges.

People are brainwashed into a simplistic viewpoint that sweets, biscuits, cakes, fried food, pies etc. are all "bad" and that anyone fit and healthy "should not" and would not be eating that stuff. But as any fule kno' who does a serious amount of training, and particularly a serious amount of endurance training, you really will need to eat stuff which is commonly considered to be "bad" otherwise you'll have real difficulty in functioning with your training load. Take long distance cyclists; it's well known that they can't get enough of Percy Pigs (M&S chewy sweets), Haribo, Jelly Beans etc.

OK, they -could- get a lot of their fuel from "real" foods, but the sheer weight to carry and the volume to ingest would be impractical. There are a number of reasons that sports science has come up with carb drinks and energy gels and it's mostly because: A. energy take-up mechanisms for one simple fuel (e.g. glucose only fuels) can't dump enough into your system fast enough for long sessions (so you really need a mix of -oses); and B. simple sugar rich natural foods are bulky and heavy and often contain other macronutrients in large doses that you don't want to be processing large amounts of during an endurance event. The rule of thumb is 60g carbohydrates per hour of effort and trust me, that's a LOT of sugar!

Yes, on a normal day, with a normal training duration I'd eat real food by preference, but god help me if I don't practice, try, and error and find out what high density carb fuels work for my digestion in advance of the longer races. So don't judge me by the average standards; I need Haribo!

Consistent training... early results

2012-01-23T12:30:00.000Z

Consistent training. That's the key. And the last 3 weeks have been really quite good (I was ill 4 weeks ago, so missed a few sessions). If you look at the sessions success, you'll see a few red ones in there, but trust me it's a lot more consistent than it used to be and I don't really have a proper training plan so I'm just trying to get more base stuff in there than I had before.

And the results are really starting to show in my performance charts (the blue line is overall fitness, pink is fatigue levels, yellow is "freshness"). You can see clearly an improvement in fitness, though the significance of the scale eludes me at the moment, upwards seems good to me.

What really caught my interest was the small dip in fitness where I didn't do much while I was sick - the big drop in the pink line - really was quite small in the grand scheme of things. My fatigue level dropped significantly, which helped me recover from being ill and conversely the freshness level goes up and I'm back on my feet again not much lost over that 2.5 week period of two illnesses back to back (one chest infection and a gastric thing). Onwards and upwards now and I'm looking forward to see how things shape over the coming weeks and months.

Good route, bad route signage

2012-01-22T18:11:00.000Z

National cycle routes. They're a great idea, but ohboy is the signage on the routes a bit pants at times. So, I got a bit lost today:-

See that lovely bit where I go 'round in almost circles a couple of times between Shepperton and Chertsey? That's because there's a critical junction where National Route 4 is sign posted in only one direction, but it's a little loop if you're coming in one direction so you cross it when you're going the other way and can end up going the other way and not noticing it. Especially if you're taking the alternative bit of the route to avoid the bike ferry crossing (which is only 3 quid for 1x adult with 1x bike and runs every 15 minutes on request by ringing a bell).


(I left the HRM on all the time, even when stopped for food/drink/route checks. But accidentally ended recording about 59 minutes in to the ride when I stopped for a wee at the one of the locks and thus ended up with two sessions recorded for it.)

Anyway, it wasn't the end of the world and the route section I cycled today from Kingston, out West and back again, was a mix of road, on-pavement cycle path, gravel track, dirt track and paved pedestrian/bike shared use paths. The majority of the surface and traffic conditions meant that I mostly kept to my objective today of staying in heart rate zone 1. There was one hill which could have ruined it all, but thanks to the advice from Jonny Brownlee last week about getting into an appropriate gear -before- the hill starts rather than my old habit of hitting the base of a hill in a reasonably high gear and then trying to go down through the gears as I slow down (thus losing power quite rapidly), I managed to keep my heart rate much lower than usual on that hill. The tow path along the side of the river was almost cobbled in places, otherwise dirt/mud tracks with exposed roots, pot-holes and lots of Sunday cyclists, runners and families out with dogs, so I had to keep my speed down to be polite most of the time. OK, so there were a few times on the way back where I had to keep things in check as I found myself somewhat lamping it as the wind was less right in my face in that direction and the general, gentle, downwards gradient. And I stopped a few times for drinks and food (yeah, I -still- can't take a drink in the saddle whilst moving but I'm working on it).

All in all, a good ride. Objectives met despite getting a little bit off course a few times. Plus, I got a bit of work in on getting out of the saddle and there's a lot of improvement there too. Not to the point it'll be useful to get up hills, but again I'll get there and there's still a good bit of time before I really need it.

Rockin' smoothie!

2012-01-21T13:42:00.000Z

Despite the fact that Mr TOTKat doesn't like this one, I absolutely -love- it:-

Mint, Choc smoothie (serves 2)
1 cup Liquorice and Mint tea
1x small banana (flesh only)
1x frozen peach
1x avocado (flesh only)
70g chopped Chinese Leaf
75ml skimmed milk
2x scoops chocolate flavour whey protein
1x handful of fresh mint leaves

Make the tea well in advance so it has a chance to cool properly (this is the bit I didn't bother with so it was all a bit faintly warm), chill it if at all possible. Blend everything else very well, then add the tea and blend again. Serve in tall glasses with straws.

It tastes like melted mint-choc-chip ice-cream :o)

One thing at a time

2012-01-21T08:01:00.000Z

I decided that now is the wrong time to mess about with my tea drinking too much. I do like it a lot and it doesn't impact my training anywhere near as much as alcohol. OK, so I am drinking some herbal infusions (BTW the Super Fruit TeaPigs tea is horrible, so I'm sticking to the gorgeous liquorice and mint) which knocks one or two cups of real tea off the count during the day, but otherwise I'm staying on tea.

Solitude vs Clubs

2012-01-16T12:44:00.000Z

It seems strange that I learned this from a day with two top athletes and I'm under no illusions that I was privileged to learn that way...


Me, at 18 months, with my dad at Leeds University pool

I'm relatively new to sport and fitness. Having spent a chunk of my life being more than chunky and more than averagely sedentary, I came to sport very late in life. As a child, I swam from the age of about 2 to 11 and part of that was as a member of Croydon Amphibians swimming club and then Stevenage Dolphins. I don't really remember much about the swimming clubs other than being in races with my dad shouting encouragement from the crowd and the occasional being picked on in the changing rooms as I was a bit younger than most of the squad. (Having gone to primary school in the Elephant and Castle, I could more than hold my own when being picked on; by comparison the home counties lot were amateur bullies ;o)). But when I went to secondary school, the swimming pretty much ground to a halt. Though there was a pool at my school, the support for sport wasn't brilliant and we weren't that good at athletics or team sports as a school. However, there was a great swimming pool in the town centre, a 50m (Olympic) length outdoor pool where I got my mile swimming badge and my Personal Survival awards around the age of 8 or 9. Shortly after I left my secondary school, the outdoor swimming pool at the school was filled in with concrete *sigh*

So, pretty much from the age of 12 I did no more sport. Around 25ish I dabbled with swimming again (mostly to impress a boy) and I ended up doing a lot of long swims - never less than 1600m and on one particular occasion around 4800m. But pretty much, from the age of 12 to 37 I did no sport and, near as dammit, no exercise. And, to compound the problem with my own body, I lost a butt-load of weight and a large amount of muscle into the bargain.

In 2009 I got married and something clicked in my head that I wanted to fix the problem that I'd lost a lot of muscle and I was weak. I may have been a lot less tubby, but I couldn't lift boxes to help someone move house and that made me feel quite worried. So, I joined a gym and started to do resistance training. A couple of weeks after that, I started to get off the tube a few stops earlier and earlier and walk the last few km home. Getting frustrated with how long that took, I decided to try Couch 2 5K and dived in several weeks into the programme. My heart rate would rocket to 190 or so for the periods I was running and I felt -terrible-, but I persevered and after a few months raced my first 10km race putting in a time under 60 minutes despite a touch of food poisoning and a roaring hangover.

Having messed about with cycling a tiny bit (pretty much learned to ride a bike to visit my then boyfriend, now husband, in 2008), cycling a couple of times a month for a few km at a time, along with being a swimmer by background (and now starting to put in some distance swims) and starting in running, I decided to join Mr TOTKat in doing some triathlons. I set to, having heard horror stories about the fist-fights in the swim, looking for triathlons with the swim leg in a pool rather than open water and I came across the Thames Turbo sprint series.

Thames Turbo are the greatest possible start into triathlon. The races are extremely well organised and run, the club and marshalls are friendly and supportive and I think that made a huge impact on our feelings towards the sport of triathlon and made us want to do more. We improved our times through the series in 2010 and in 2011 we signed up for a lot more triathlons, including a couple of Olympic distance ones (with some pretty robust open water swim starts - needless to say I'm pretty comfortable with that now) and I DNFed a lot due to a knee injury. Training was erratic and inconsistent but we were just mucking about really. The Ironman idea came up and that meant we were going to need to take things a bit more seriously. Training to date had been a solitary affair for me, with the very very occasional ride or run with Mr TOTKat.

Cutting to the chase... Friday 13th January 2012 was the first time I've been out on a bike and a run with more than one other person (apart from races of course!) and it turns out that it's really quite nice. So far, I certainly have preferred to train alone. I'm an anti-social beast at the best of times. Previously I was worried that for Ironman it is a big mental event where you have only yourself to rely on and your own determination and mind, I didn't want to come to rely on being in a group, get too used to it and the supportive environment of it. And I worry ever so much about being The Slow One and holding people up. So I'd really not wanted to join a club or train with others. But that day with Ali and Jonny Brownlee, incredible as it was just to be with them anyway, showed me that people really don't mind as much as I thought they might. It also showed me that, although I was quite ginger about most of the first part of the bike ride, overly worried that I'd mess up in some way, fall off, bin it down a hill or something, once I'd relaxed and warmed up a lot, the three boys really helped me fuss less about my usual worries by being so supportive and considerate. It also resulted in me being a bit more gung ho towards the end, slogging up the long hill in the final stages and bombing down one descent, to catch up with them at the bottom, a lot more quickly than I'd been previously comfortable with.

I'd really like to learn new routes to run and ride as I'm not that imaginative and all I seem to see are the difficulties and negatives. It's probably time to join a club and enjoy some company for at least some of my training sessions, have access to some other very experienced coaches, plus I'd really rather like to race in Thames Turbo colours :o)

Smoothies

2012-01-15T11:34:00.004Z

I've been experimenting a bit with smoothies recently (again), but the ones that you end up putting in a bowl because they're way too thick to drink. So far, I've made:-

Peach and raspberry (with spinach)
Banana, chocolate and peach (with lettuce)
Chocolate, peanut butter and banana (with avocado)*
Salad vegetable smoothie (avocado, pepper, tomato, celery and avocado with olive oil and balsamic vinegar)

And they're all gorgeous and full of vitamins and minerals in an easy to deal with form that's relatively natural (so the combinations for absorption are there, rather than the isolated vitamins and minerals in pill supplements). But. Tricky to eat in that they get quite fluffy and aerated. When you're in a hurry, that sucks quite a bit. On weekday mornings, it won't work for breakfast as there's just not the time. However, in general we should all be taking a good length of time to eat our meals, mostly to allow the body to figure out that we're eating and release the relevant satiety chemicals and then react to them etc. so it can really help with that as the texture forces you to slow right down. The icing on the cake is that they taste pretty good. OK, so they're mainly sweet flavours and I've not got a huge sweet tooth so I'd like to work out some more savoury ones. So far I've managed to make a very thick version of V8 in the savoury flavours; pretty limited imagination there on my part.

I'm not likely to be making and eating smoothies a couple of times a day, or even every day; it's just not convenient time-wise. If I could make one in the morning and have it still in a good state for an afternoon snack at work that might work, but it seems to me that they're best consumed within an hour of making at the longest.

Anyone of the smoothie making crowd out there got any suggestions or experience in keeping them fresh for a few hours or longer? And any ideas for more, distinctly different savoury smoothies to make?

* - recipe added on request:-

1 scoop chocolate whey protein, or 1tsp good cocoa powder
1/2 frozen banana
1/2 fresh avocado
1/2 fresh peach (do not peel!)
25g crunchy peanut butter
2x ice cubes
150ml skimmed milk

Blitz the lot in a blender/with a hand blender. Add ice to thicken more or water to thin out if it's too thick.

An afternoon with @AliBrownleetri, @jonny_brownlee and @n0rm

2012-01-13T18:13:00.003Z

The day we'd been looking forward to, with a little bit of appropriately respectful fear as well as excitement, finally came. This week will go down on the record as being golden and star-studded; having met 4 times Ironman World Champion Chrissie Wellington on Monday at Audio Fuel's product launch, on Friday we went out for a bike ride and a run with two other world champion triathletes at the Olympic and Sprint distances, Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee.

We briefly met them back in October at the British Olympic Ball where, at the time, I was a little bit furious with Mr TOTKat for his last minute bid at the silent auction on "The Brownlees", but was pretty certain we'd've been out-bid after we left to go home that night. A couple of weeks later, we found out that we hadn't been out-bid and we owed quite a bit of money to the British Olympic Association. Not that there is any grudgingness at all about supporting Team GB at the 2012 Olympics at all, it was just a bit of a shock.

Thursday evening came and we drove up to Otley, to the Chevin Country Park Hotel to get some sleep in before the treats that were in store at midday on Friday. We arrived quite late and tired and only got 6 hours in, but felt pretty good for it. Had a bit of cereal and a lovely cooked breakfast - a couple of Weetabix with some raisins, one thick rasher of smoked back bacon, a poached egg, a slice of black pudding, a grilled tomato and a dollop of gorgeous haggis with some toast on the side. Nicely set me up for a 90 minute ride and a 30 minute run that were way less flat than I'm used to.

Ali and Jonny arrived on their bikes at 12 and I was a bit of a wuss and let them know that I'm not so great with hills. Off we headed onto the Yorkshire roads and the first new experience for me was riding two abreast and chatting while riding. I normally ride alone or behind Mr TOTKat, so riding in a group of 4 and actually chatting most of the time was an interesting change for me.

It was a chilly, crystal-clear, bright day and I was very glad of the skiing socks and overshoes I had on. It took a me a good while to get warmed up and the first few rises and hills were hard. With my relative inexperience on the bike, I'm not as confident as most so descending and corners can be less than fun. But as we made progress I got up the hills, making my apologies for not being able to talk while going up them, albeit slower than the boys but I got up them indeed.

As we rode, I chatted mostly with Jonny; about all sorts of things, the boys' training schedules, how they train (mixture of types of sessions in intensity, discipline etc.), triathlon as a sport, training camps in Lanzarote, easy changes I can make to climb hills on a bike better (get on the small ring earlier, get down the gears earlier to keep things moving - it's all about keeping things moving), Top Gear, the fact that Jonny doesn't drink tea or coffee and the time he got a fly in his eye going up the hill we were climbing at the time.

The Brownlees were great, lovely, sweet, considerate guys and patient with me being not so strong on the bike. Any time the boys steamed up a hill and I was plodding up, they'd scoot back down a bit to make sure I was OK (I'm just not that quick up hills, getting better though!). I really really enjoyed myself. And then there was a 30ish minute jog afterwards, over terrain Mr TOTKat and I, as city-based runners, are just not used to. Uneven ground, adverse camber, tree roots, rocks, puddles and mud, crunchy frosty grass (sounds great underfoot)... great for the core and brain. Makes for not making as much distance in the time out running compared with running on park trails and pavement and it can be difficult to come to terms with it, but you (I) just need to get over that and see it for what it is... not the same thing at all as running on park trails and pavement. But again, we both enjoyed ourselves tremendously.

As we got ready to go out for the run and hung about in the hotel foyer, I caught a glimpse of Jonny's midriff as he adjusted his clothes before heading out. My goodness me, professional functional fitness generally results in a pretty cut physique, but the likes of David Beckham in his undies commercials photo shoots would be put to shame by Jonathan Brownlee. If Jonny is ever short of a bob or two, I'm sure he could easily scrape a few extra pennies in from advertising Armani boy-knickers or similar.

OK, so they're both professional, world champion athletes, so you'd expect them to be good but they're so incredibly graceful when running and cycling. Always moving on the bike, always keeping the pedals turning and at a pretty constant cadence, effortlessly and frequently getting out of the saddle at what seem to be only very slight rises to keep moving at a constant rate. Running behind them, the thing that struck me and Mr TOTKat was how incredibly light on their feet Ali and Jonny are. Ali in particular looks like he's floating on a springy cushion of air. While they're really fluid, natural and lovely to watch on the bike, running is clearly their naturally strongest discipline. Where Mr TOTKat and I were gracelessly stumbling about over the rocks, roots and mud, Ali and Jonny skimmed over it all, seemingly effortlessly.

As we got changed for the run, Mr TOTKat and I were talking about just how much we enjoyed the bike ride and I had a huge confidence boost from it as climbing is my biggest weakness on the bike. Mr TOTKat said I'd got a lot better since the last time we were out together on a ride with any hills; he was only 15s or so faster than me up the long hill towards the end of the cycle route. Looking at the ride afterwards in MapMyRide I was even more pleased to find that there were 2x Cat5 hills and a Cat4. Great news for Hell of The Ashdown in a few weeks with the 5x Cat5s and 1x Cat4. I think I might just get 'round without turning into a snotty, teary, broken person at the side of the road walking up a hill 'cause I can't get up it on the bike :o)

Today, Friday 13th January 2012 has been a really great day so far. I feel on top of the world, motivated, inspired, my confidence really boosted, and appropriately humbled, as expected, by a pair of young men of great character at the top of their sport. And to top it all off, we're having dinner with them this evening! Hopefully the photos that were taken of us before our ride out together will turn up soon too.

...and I'm not cross with Mr TOTKat any more for that last minute bid. Quite the opposite.

Meeting @chrissiesmiles (thanks to @audiofuel)

2012-01-13T09:30:00.000Z

...and she does. A big, infectious smile.

Wound up and fidgety, the woman who left everything out on the lava plains of Hawaii in October 2011 was sitting a couple of feet away from me on Monday evening this week. Scar on her left calf, from a nasty bike crash two weeks out from the Ironman World Championships, still very much in evidence and from time to time, swinging her legs like a school girl while she told stories and answered questions from the audience. She comes across as a bright, talented athlete with little time for voodoo and quackery and puts her trust in natural ability and the capacity for the human body to achieve really unbelievable things if you work hard and push yourself with the right training.

Mr TOTKat and I were lucky enough to get a place in the audience of the Audio Fuel "Tri Harder with Chrissie Wellington" launch on Monday this week. In the basement of a swanky bicycle shop (srsly, there were Venge frames and suchlike, just hanging on the wall - as Chrissie put it "...so we can perv at all the bike porn") 100 people gathered to learn about the new product and hear what Chrissie had to say.

There are four sections to "Tri Harder - a comprehensive range of training programmes for triathletes and runners, designed and coached by World Ironman Champion Chrissie Wellington.". LACE UP (with part of the proceeds going to CAF), Ride Harder, Run Faster and Relax With Chrissie. We were treated to an explanation and demo of parts of the Tri Harder product - a set of audio tracks to help a triathlete run and bike faster, plus a couple of relaxation and mental preparation ones. A chirpy young lady called Ellie, a personal trainer from Barnes, demoed a section of one of the bike tracks on a turbo trainer and then Shaun from Audio Fuel persuaded Chrissie to demo part of one of the run tracks on a treadmill. Thankfully for those of us in the room who are amateur athletes, Chrissie had the good grace to be a bit breathless after a few minutes at 18kph on the treadmill!

After the demos, it was time for Q&A with Chrissie and the floor was opened up for questions. Mr TOTKat asked the final one, around being a first time Ironman trainee this year and what tips she might have for a first timer. Chrissie was wonderfully supportive and positive and quite honest with her answers and explained a bit about Kona 2011 and finally getting to actually race. Getting to the start line knowing that winning was not a certainty and probably not even a likelihood. Having to live in the moment throughout the race, facing the very strong temptation many many times to pull over and stop and beating it every time. She talked about her first pro coach and what he said when she asked him if she had what it took to be a professional triathlete and he answers that yes; "(you've) physically got what it takes but we'll need to chop your head off". At the time, Chrissie was over-analysing, over-thinking, beating up after a bad training session and being really hard on herself all the time. Rest and relaxation she saw as "weakness". Mr TOTKat commented to me afterwards the parallels he sees between that and me (a flattering comment, but the way it was intended was more that I have similar challenges to that one Chrissie had way back).

So, aside from the great opportunity to meet such an inspiring, strong, world champion as Chrissie Wellington (every time I hit a hard patch in a training session, I think of what she's achieved, her great big smile, how strong she is and I push on through - it's true to say she is my greatest inspiration in my Ironman journey), I think the Tri Harder suite has bits of interest to me. I certainly would like to take a look at the LACE UP and Relax components as they cover areas of particular challenge for me; not so much the Run and Cycle ones as I do have a coach who has a programme, drills and training sessions for me.

Messages from Chrissie that I took away from the evening are:

The most powerful piece of equipment in your training and racing kit is "your mind".
Enjoy the journey to Ironman, don't focus solely on the race. It's a long journey!
Getting through pain and in general - be in the moment.

Next on the awesome luck and World Champion heroes front comes later today... we go for a bike ride and a run with Ali and Jonny Brownlee. Watch this space for what we get up to and exactly how humbled we are by putting in physical effort alongside superlative athletes.

Tea that's not tea

2012-01-10T21:03:00.001Z

In the quest for "interesting things to drink" that aren't alcoholic and in a half-baked investigation of Not Drinking Tea, I had a bit of a taste of some herbal infusions.

To be honest, I've always found herbal infusions to be pathetic and disappointing. They always smell great and then taste of naff all. So I wasn't expecting a whole lot when I bought some TeaPigs - Liquorice and Mint tea. I'd bought some for my mother for her birthday last year and I'd been recommended that liquorice tea might be good for some little imbalances in my overall well-being (more on this one later) so I picked that rather than a more traditional peppermint or camomile.

And thank god I did. The first taste test, I brewed a cup for 5 minutes or so and had a sniff. It smelled pretty darned good, to be honest, but then I've been lured by a good smelling herbal infusion before. I took a sip and the first second confirmed my prejudice from before; bland, pathetic, wishy wash.... ohgod! Suddenly sweet! And minty! And really rather tasty. After the first split second of the watery, mildness, I was pretty blown away by the flavour. But after the first cup, despite being surprised by the power of this infusion, I wasn't fussed about having any more again.

The second cup I had a day or two later was just as good. Then the next day, in a meeting, I found myself fancying a cup.

The short of it is, it's good. I like it. Like it enough to go through the same process again with the Lemon and Ginger flavour. Less of an initial success so far than the Liquorice and Mint, but I think it might grow on me. Next on the list is Super Fruit and I have high hopes for that one. TeaPigs, so far, really quite rock!

Smoothie test

2012-01-07T09:56:00.000Z

I read a few blogs here and there, mostly because they're health & fitness blogs and I've followed the people for a while and am interested in what they have to say and in following their journeys as people. One of these is a lady who (amongst many things) is a vegetarian with a focus on raw foods; Laura. She's a total whizz with the green monsters and smoothies in general, makes them all pretty and textured too, and I'd been interested in smoothies for a while. I've dabbled here and there and been mostly limited to quite boring, samey ingredients of banana, banana, strawberries, banana, maybe blueberries, but that's been it. I've also tried getting greens into the smoothies but I've only ever had "difficult" greens available for that; things like kale and winter greens are extremely fibrous and with a hand blender, you end up with a very tricky (in fact bordering on unpleasant) smoothie that really feels like you are forcing yourself to eat it.

In an attempt to have more of a proper go at smoothies, I got some peaches to freeze and decided to try the other blender attachment, which is basically a small table-top blender that you fix the motor section to the top. And this is the result...

Having checked Laura's blog for some recipe inspiration I blended up:-

Half a frozen peach
Half a frozen banana
1/3 iceberg lettuce
1 scoop chocolate whey protein
100ml milk
2x ice cubes

And was amazed by how thick it turned out. It's like a mousse! And it's a huge bowl. Really a lot bigger than I was expecting and a little bit too sweet and slightly bland, but I'm having it for breakfast anyway. Next time, I'll drop the milk down to 50ml, up the peach to a whole one or even two and see how that changes the taste. I'm looking to get more acidic tang from the peaches and a bit more flavour. The texture is so aerated that it's a bit difficult to eat; you need to chew the air bubbles out a bit before you can swallow. Not sure it's a practical breakfast for me seeing as how long it takes to eat, but it's a bunch of fruit and veg in a bowl in an easy format which has to be a good thing.

Another learning - again, the hard way

2012-01-04T20:53:00.000Z

Virgin Active Bank has a new masseuse since I last had one. This one is -good-. I had a deep tissue massage today with her and for the first time, I felt utterly beaten up afterwards. Thing is, I had a training session with Jez booked for 2 hours later. Biiiig mistake!

Jez started me off on a cycling intervals, 5 minutes sprint, 2 minutes single leg each side then 2 minutes out of the saddle. I managed the first sprint and the first single leg, then swapped legs and things started to feel odd. The power went out of my leg and it got a lot harder very quickly. I banged through the hill climb drill then back into the sprint again and my legs drained of power even faster. My heart rate wouldn't go up over 158 - usually I'd be banging around the high 170s to low 180s at this point - and it was clear something was not right. My legs were burning and lacking in any power and I just couldn't get my heart rate any higher, then suddenly I felt like I was going to throw up. So we stopped.

Turns out that with a proper deep tissue massage, you can end up shunting a whole bunch of crap out of your muscles and into your blood stream and if you try to push it hard with all of that going 'round before it's processed out properly, stuff Doesn't Work.

So there we are. From now on, no deep tissue massages within 24 hours before a training session of any kind. Ideally I'd have it right after a training session on the day before a rest day, but that may not be do-able as I want Mondays to be my rest day. We'll see.

Thank you

2012-01-01T19:47:00.000Z

I'd like to thank a few people today:-

The Parkrun volunteers. Every single person who got up on New Year's Day to help with a Parkrun. Thank you for making a bunch of nutters very happy!
Riddlesdown Parkrun team. Thank you so much for the warm welcome and the chocolate cake. It really picked me up after all the physical stress of the morning.
My mother. For helping me see perspective this afternoon. I never did intend to do all 3 Parkruns today with cycling as transport. Given how slow I am at running, it was not realistic. Thank you for reminding me I'd only intended to do two and two I did.
My dear, beloved MrTOTKat. For telling me he'd let me have the bath first and make me tea when we got home. And then doing it. <3

You're all great. Thank you very very much.

Parkrun Triple - I got lost!

2012-01-01T17:47:00.002Z

It was always going to be hard... 9am Bushy Park, 10am Nonsuch Park, 11am Riddlesdown Park. They're 13km and 16.3km apart. And Riddlesdown is up a hill (the clue is in the name; it's a Down). We had a 12km ride to get to Bushy and 19.5km to get home as well. Top it off with 3x 5km runs, one at each Park and that's quite a challenge at this point in the year.

I saved the route as a course to upload to my Garmin 200 so I'd not get lost on the way to each one - I know the way really well to Bushy but no idea about the other two. Thing is... the Riddlesdown Parkrun course is nowhere near where we rode to on our recce ride the other day. We checked the additional bit using Google Maps and Streetview and figured out what to change for that bit. As it turned out, I didn't remember the extra bit so well.

Having had a hearty porridge brekkie (50g oats, 20g raisins, 15g maple syrup), we toddled off just after 8am. We arrived at Bushy Park nice and early for the first Parkrun and started pretty much on the dot of 9am. I needed to not thrash it completely during the runs to stand a chance of finishing the whole thing. 26:35 was the result and thankfully as it's a very slick operation at Bushy, barcode scanning had no queueing and I skipped through, changed shoes, put helmet and gloves on, took a swig of carb drink and headed off to Nonsuch.

(cycling only)

Pretty much no traffic meant the cycle sections were much faster than during the recce, but I still didn't make it to Nonsuch by 10am, saw the runners head to the corner where the course meets the path and had to carry on to where I was going to leave my bike, change shoes, lock bike, forget to take off helmet, run back to bike to drop off helmet and then join the run course. Ohboy it was muddy. But I reeled in a few runners and made it 'round in officially 32:29, but I started 7ish minutes late, so probably a similar time to Bushy in the end. As I neared the finish line, I saw a few people trotting back to the car park so asked one of them if they were doing the triple and whether they could tell Riddlesdown I was coming 15 minutes late. I was worried I'd not find the start as they'd've packed it up by the time I got there (hah, little did I know...). Finished up, another speedy scan of the bar codes and then I forgot how to get back to my bike, cursed parking it so far from the finish as it added about another km to the run at the end to get back to it. Changed shoes, unlocked bike, helmet back on and looked at the time... 10:41. Not Good. 19 minutes to the start of Riddlesdown. I wasn't realistically going to make it to the start on time but would have been fine to start up to 20 minutes late, in my mind. 39 minutes to Riddlesdown, should be do-able, right?

My legs were quite weak by this point and I was a bit worried that the hill at Riddlesdown might be too much for me, so didn't push it too hard. I did take as much advantage as I could of the downhill sections to gain some speed, but it just wasn't enough. I got the junction where the route diverged form the tested route, let the Garmin make the nasty noise it makes when you're off course and carried on down the road, heading to my left hand turn for the park. It was now 11:10. I thought there was about 5 minutes cycling to go, so I'd be OK to get to the start a bit late but not too late. Counted the little stubby left I was due to pass, saw the second left but the road name was wrong. Cue confusion. I carried on down the road further losing confidence quite rapidly. After another 500m or so I decided I'd missed my turn, did a 360 and headed back to that turning with the wrong name, turned up it and it was a horrible gradient that I just couldn't manage so I got off and walked. As I turned at the top of the road, it became apparent that it really was the wrong turn and I'd joined up with the route we took on the test ride.

So, I decided to carry on that way, got back on my bike and rode up through Riddlesdown Park. Through the car park, on down the gravel track. I had to freewheel as it was so rough and I was worried about skidding and my wheels and tyres. The track went on and on and came to a gate. On the other side of the gate the track got rougher, muddier and steeper so I got off, changed my shoes and trotted along, wheeling my bike down the track. It went on and on some more and popped out at a timber merchant. Argh! I had to work out where the hell I was as it was Just Wrong. A quick Google Maps check on my iPhone told me I was still not far enough down the original road and had another few km to go to the left hand turn I needed At The Roundabout! Dammit! The roundabout that I'd forgotten we talked about when we checked Streetview. If I'd only remembered there was a roundabout I wouldn't have messed up, turned around and turned up the left that was waaay too early!

Carrying on to the roundabout, turning left, I was faced with That Damned Hill AGAIN. I just couldn't. I had to get off and walk again. There was no way on earth I was going to be running Riddlesdown now. It was all about just finding the damned thing now. I was tired, demoralised, angry I'd forgotten the one bit of the route the Garmin didn't know about and really quite hungry. At the top of the hill, the road kept going and I saw a sign opposite a school "run start this way" and I knew I was there. 6km further cycling than on the recce run, to the start of the race. I turned in and found a load of people crowding around a gazebo in a field. They were Parkrunners, picking up their gear after the run. It was about 11:50 and faaar too late. So I admitted defeat, changed my shoes, laid down my bike and stuffed a Soreen bar into my mouth.

(not including getting home)

Next year...

(We went to the pub, drank tea, ate chips and cake and cycled home slowly in the pouring rain. Sports gear straight into the washing machine. Us straight into the bath.)

Kneeees!

2011-12-31T20:49:00.002Z

Oh! The last few runs, shhhh!, my knees have been FINE! Even today, in the slippery mud at Parkrun. Not a peep out of them. Kinda slightly a tiny bit happy about that. Really hope they continue to behave, starting with tomorrow's Parkrun triple!

Contemplating caffeine

2011-12-30T12:07:00.000Z

I love tea. Really really love it. It's the first thing that passes my lips in the morning, it makes me feel comforted and soothed, to me it's (to use a revolting cliché) a hug in a mug. And I drink quite a lot of it. Anything from 3-4 mugs a day to sometimes clear of 10.

There's never been a reason for me to give up tea. I won't say caffeine here because the only significant source of caffeine I take in is tea. I don't drink colas and very rarely have coffee (not a great fan of the taste, though the smell can be glorious). Why should I give up tea? What measurable detrimental effect does it have on me, vs. the enjoyment I get from drinking it? I actually have no idea.

I accidentally gave up tea once, when I started at university. Moving from an environment where tea was drunk several times a day, by the pot, at home to one where it wasn't around and available and quite often made by someone else, I had to go out of my way to have tea. I'd bought bags and milk and there was a kettle in the halls kitchen, but I just didn't get around to making any. That lasted for about a week, over which I had increasing headaches, crankiness and crabbiness to the point where I was pretty much a total bitch to everyone. Then I had a cup of tea at the weekend and it all got better. The penny dropped and I got back to drinking tea several times a day.

So, back to the detrimental effects... I don't know that I'm suffering any because I've never known any differently. You know when you've been ill for a few days and then you get better and you realise how rotten you'd been feeling by how great you feel now? Well, that could be it. Maybe I could feel better than I do now. I'm not saying I don't feel good, but what if it might be that I could feel great? Wouldn't that be something? Something worth a few weeks (at least) off tea to find out?

I Have A Mad Husband, But...

2011-12-29T07:39:00.000Z

Mr TOTKat can be a bit mental sometimes. This particular time was the announcement that not only did he want to run the Parkrun triple on New Year's Day (9am Bushy Park, 10am Nonsuch Park, 11am Riddlesdown Park), but he wanted to cycle there, between and home again. 3 Parkruns in 3 hours, not so bad. Cycling around 8-10 miles in between each is going to be tough. (It's all urban cycling and subject to lots of traffic lights, traffic, people etc. The potential saver is that it will be New Year's Day morning so no shops open and not a lot going on.)

So he needed to do a recce run to see what the ride might be like and I kinda needed to get out on my bike so we went together. Boxing Day traffic was horrific. Hideous. Really. Having to go through Kinsgton town centre in both directions was some kind of purgatory and the ride back through the outskirts of Croydon to get home after Riddlesdown was bordering on suicidal with some spectacular idiocy from some drivers.

That's the mental bit.

The good bit was on the way to Riddlesdown from Nonsuch. We were coming up to a junction where we'd been before to pick up the kitties when we first got them. There's a nasty old hill that we drove up on the day we got the cats and as we rounded a gentle bend towards the junction, Mr TOTKat yelled over his shoulder, "I hope we don't have to go up _that_ hill!". Hah. Hah hah hah. Hah. We did have to go up that hill. A 1.26km long hill that was rather steep. Mr TOTKat stopped at a bend to check we were going the right way (we were) and I almost cursed a lot having lost any momentum (which I get a bit hung up on sometimes). On the way back down, it seemed a lot longer and steeper than on the way up by quite a bit. Anyhoo... having checked out the Hell Of The Ashdown course, there's only one hill that's rated harder than that one so I've got something of a confidence boost that I might be able to do it now with bugger all long rides to date, with or without hills, and 8.5 weeks to go.

The interesting bit is that I'm pretty sure he'll manage it but only if I'm not trying to keep up. So I think I'll cycle to Bushy, run Bushy, then skip Nonsuch and cycle straight to Riddlesdown, run Riddlesdown then have coffee and cake. We'll see.

Lamb Madras

2011-12-28T15:00:00.000Z

It was Christmas Eve, I had some lamb neck fillet and a hankering for curry...

(serves 4 - chills and freezes well)

Slice onions (2x medium), chop tomatoes (3x large) into small cubes. Blend tamarind with warm water (4 tbsp water or so to 1tbsp tamarind).

Toast coriander seeds (1.5tsp), cumin seeds (1.5tsp), peel garlic (1/2 bulb), cut tops off chillies (2-3 large reds), peel ginger (2-3cm cube), measure curry leaves (4 fresh or 1/2 tsp dried) and salt (1/2 tsp) and add all of that into a blender with measure oil (10ml) then blend into a paste.

Toast fennel seeds (1tsp) and keep to one side.

Cube the lamb (500-600g) and toss in turmeric (1.5tsp).

Add oil (another 10ml) into a large non-stick pan. Add sliced onions and heat until softened.

Add the curry paste and cook for a minute.

Add cubed lamb and brown.

Pour in 2/3 tin coconut milk.

Bring to a bubble and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, cracked cardamom pods (x4), toasted fennel seeds, the rest of the tin of coconut milk and a cracked cinnamon stick.

Bring to a boil, partially cover and simmer for 1.5 hours until the lamb is tender. Add a little water if it dries out too much.

Add Garam Masala (1.5tsp) and the tamarind paste and cook for another 5 minutes until the sauce thickens.

Remove the cardamom pods and cinnamon stick before serving with brown rice or naan.

Winding it back up gently

2011-12-26T17:56:00.001Z

Over the last 3 weeks I've been variously ill. 5th December I came down with a chest infection. It knocked me completely flat for 5 days. The first 4 I just slept most of the day; the first 2 I couldn't even get up the energy to read or piddle about on the Internet. On the Saturday, we were due to get up at stupid o' clock do some Parkrun tourism in Sheffield, so I gave it a go. It was icy, cold and hilly and probably the worst Parkrun time I've ever put in. But felt rather good to have done -something-.

The following week, I still had the remnants of the chest infection early in the week, so sacked off planned sessions until the Thursday swim, did a nice strength session that killed my legs, arms and back for 4 days afterwards(!) and a long, slow run on Saturday.

Last week, I've had a horrible crampy stomach on a couple of the days, and been pushing to complete a critical project at work which needed 100% focus from me. That said, I got more sessions completed and had a good upper body strength workout with Jez.

This week... well it's only just started and I'm hoping this cramping nonsense will bugger off, but I've got today's swim in already so that's promising.

Aspire

2011-12-22T06:30:00.000Z

It's a drink.

And the manufacturers claim that when you drink it, it could cause you to burn up to 200-odd calories without lifting a finger.

The idea is that there are ingredients in it that have a high metabolic cost to process. It's the same idea as Weight Watchers focused on in their new Pro Points scheme. Everything you eat has a metabolic cost. Some things are simpler/easier to convert into energy and building blocks than others; some things require more energy spent by your systems to perform that conversion than others. And there's been a (fairly limited and not statistically significant) study carried out by Leeds Metropolitan University which seems to show that resting energy expenditure could well be appreciably elevated for a period of time due to drinking Aspire.

I'm not the biggest fan of cranberry, but the taste is actually quite pleasant. This is mostly because it's not overly sweet. There's a hint of the "seltzer" to it and I guess that's down to the added vitamins etc. As a soft drink goes, I think it's one I'd think about buying to keep the variety up (especially while I'm Not Drinking). And with talk of there being a new flavour launched in March, it's a real candidate to add into the variety rotation of drinkies to stave off the taste boredom.

If there really is an effect, it might be a nice little helping hand to general calorie expenditure, but even if not it's quite a nice drink.

I knew it'd be difficult

2011-12-18T10:18:00.002Z

This "not drinking" thing. I knew it'd be difficult (but at the same time, easy, when I'm doing it), but I didn't realise how hard it would be before it started. 13 days to go before the cessation of alcohol and I'm finding myself sabotaging normal days because of it now. Because I'm not going to be doing it fairly soon, I make excuses do to it way more than normal now. Normally I'd have a drink 1-2 days a week. This week, so far, it's been 3 days and I find myself thinking about it quite a lot.

Partly, I'm thinking to go down the route of least stress, i.e. stop worrying about it, go with the flow. Stress is worse (to me) than "bad" nutrition - mostly because we eat a hugely abnormal proportion of unprocessed food compared with most of the population (almost none, in practical terms) - I'm less worried about nutrition than I might be. Partly, I'm getting wound up by what the scales say - which I need to get a grip on mentally as I've been ill and not exercising and eating odd amounts of food and being in varying states of hydration so it's not a useful measure at the moment.

13 days isn't all that long, so maybe the easiest thing is to take each day one at a time and accept what the scales say. Then when the new year comes, be happy in the fact that life is easier, schedules are easier to follow, nutrition is easier to deal with...

Remember the Olympic Ball?

2011-12-14T20:30:00.000Z

We went to the British Olympic Ball in October 2011 and there was a silent charity auction.

We bid on The Brownlees, given we're slightly fannish and... come on, it's the Brownlee brothers! When the price went over a certain amount, cut our losses and stopped bidding. Then in a fit of slight drunkenness on the way out to go home a final bid went in. Given the guests at the ball that night, we thought we'd not win the lot in a million years...

Well, it turns out we did.

So, on 13th January 2012, we will be spending the day with Alastair and Jonathan Brownlee, the 2011 ITU World Champions (1st and 2nd place at Olympic distance and 3rd and 1st place at Sprint distance). We'll head up north and have lunch with the boys, then a bike ride and a run then dinner.

Excited? Absolutely! Scared witless I won't be able to get up the hills? Ohgodyes! Happy at least in some part to be supporting British athletes for the Olympics in 2012 in more ways than just sitting on the sofa and cheering, or even lining the cycle route, by donating a reasonable sum of money to the Olympic charity organisation? Yeah. Actually, I am.

22 days to 9 months of teetotalism

2011-12-09T12:47:00.000Z

From 1st January 2012 to when Ironman Wales 2012 is over, I will not be drinking any alcohol. (There may be 2 nominated exception days - the day after Ironman UK 70.3 and perhaps 13th January - I've not yet decided whether I will do that or not.)

It's just going to be easier that way. Easier to keep to my planned nutrition - alcohol tends to lead to eating more than required/planned. Easier to keep to my planned training schedule - alcohol leads to poor quality sleep, lack of enthusiasm the next day and is pretty poor nutritionally. It'll just be easier all 'round if I don't drink at all. Drinking a bit, setting a weekly/monthly limit isn't going to work. It's all or nothing 'cause that's how I am. I'll miss the wine, for sure, but some things are worth quite a bit of sacrifice.

Stopping right now isn't something I need to do, nor is it all that practical when there's wine in the house ready for Christmas, so the date is set for 1st January.

Some perspective

2011-12-09T10:00:00.000Z

Sometimes I need a bit of perspective. I need to remember where I've come from. I learned to ride a bike pretty much 3 years ago and then didn't do much cycling until this year. I learned to run 2 years ago - honestly! - and did very little running until this year. OK, I swam a LOT from the age of 3 to 11, but then stopped until I was 23, did it for a year, then stopped again until 18 months ago. And I had a bike crash that messed up some of this year's season...

Come September next year, I'll have gone from not being able to run to an Ironman in just over 3 years. From being completely and utterly unfit to Ironman in 3 and a bit years.

2011 - the year of too many races

2011-12-08T18:54:00.001Z

2011 was the year of too many races randomly sprinkled through the year, no actual training, too much annoying knee injury, but lots of fun:-

(our wall of races, needs to come down now)

5x Sprint Triathlons
2x Olympic Distance Triathlons
2x Half Marathons
1x Thames swim
1x London to Brighton
3x 10Ks
And a bunch of Parkruns, but they don't reaaaally count.

2012 looks like this:-

1x Sportive (February)
5x Sprint Triathlons (April to August)
1x Olympic Distance (May)
1x Half Ironman (June)
1x Ironman (September)
(and a bunch of Parkruns, most likely)

NO ENTERING ANY MORE RACES BEFORE THE END OF SEPTEMBER! (Long running events, sportives and century rides are allowed -if- they fit with my training schedule and are treated as training sessions, but otherwise, NO!)

Learning some more

2011-12-06T16:51:00.001Z

Whacked out, flattened, laid low and all that... I have a chest infection and it's knackering. Short of breath sitting down doing nothing is pretty demoralising. I napped twice yesterday, woke up dribbling. Snored all night last night and woke up with a cardboard tongue. My chest aches and coughing is quite violent when it happens.

Still.

I have been doing a lot of lying on the sofa, reading books in between napping and reading articles on training, rest and recovery. It's hard to be not training, but I fully understand that starting training too soon is actively counter-productive. Yes, I'll be losing endurance, muscle mass, general fitness etc. while I'm ill but a lot of that is a direct result of the illness itself rather than the lack of exercise. There is nothing that can be done about it in the slightest. Training while ill can cause all sorts of problems, right up to and including dropping dead while training due to myocarditis. So it's pointless. Better to rest, recover relatively quickly (pushing yourself while ill can prolong recovery) and get back on track later when you're well again.

Hard for me to deal with, mentally, while there's events looming on the horizon; 13th January and 26th February aren't that far away and they both involve things I'm really not very good at... hills. Tough poop though. Gotta stack me some more Zs and stay out of the trainers/cycling shoes for a couple more days yet at least.

Runner's trots?

2011-12-05T08:01:00.001Z

I think I had my first real case of runner's trots on Sunday. Sparing the vile details, I just about made it to the loos on the Common in time, seconds from a horrible clean up operation and a curtailed run. On the up side, my new Nike running tights (Nike Tech Tights) are lovely; soft, warm, easy on the waist and grippy at the ankles.

Today I are be mostly hiding under a duvet on the sofa, coughing, blowing my nose, trying not to eat my own bodyweight in analgesics for the headaches due to sniffling pretty much all day for the last two days. *wheeze*

Zzzz...

2011-12-03T19:37:00.001Z

I could -kill- a nap right now. 90km cycle ride today on a gorgeous bowl of porridge with raisins, banana and maple syrup, with a double chocolate brownie half-way around. Sliiiightly under fuelled, but I didn't bonk. It was colder than I expected (forecast said 12C, it was definitely not that warm as I needed to keep my long sleeved top on over the short-sleeved one, over my long bib tights) and windier too. Not as windy as last week, but still a bit tricky on a few sections of the route.

For simplicity and lack of hills while I start to try to build endurance; keep HR as low as I can, ideally 135 or so on the flat when I'm properly trained; I cycled out to the Thames Turbo sprint bike leg route, went 'round it three times and then home again. 90km in 03:54 at an average HR of 153.. If you remove the hills, the average would be a bit lower, so I'm reasonably pleased with that. It will come down over time. Secondary learning was getting back used to riding again and more comfortable on the bike. I still can't get down onto the tri-bars or drink on the bike (i.e. get the bottle out of the cage, drink and put the bottle back again) and I need to be able to do both of those.

I've been inhaling food since I got home around 4pm (started out a lot later than intended); a bacon and cheese bagel, a huge chicken salad (with more bacon in it!) and I've got my eye on something involving Marmite later. I'll be a good 1400kcals under maintenance for the day most likely but seeing as I had a bit, fat pizza and potato wedges last night that's not going to be a problem. I just want to sleep now that I've had dinner and a nice, hot bath.

The bottom step

2011-12-02T15:10:00.001Z

Apparently I can swim now, so now the actual training can begin. I can't wait! How perverse is it to have done a load of work and be so pleased to be at the start of the actual work? :oD

Fuelling within the day

2011-11-30T10:15:00.001Z

Today I have a couple of training sessions scheduled in; spin session and a swim session. The challenge is to not leave the majority of the kcals for the day's efforts right to the end. So, I need to eat more, earlier in the day. Obvious innit?

Thing is... unless I'm ill, recovering from a massive effort the day before, hung over or $other, I don't get all that hungry in the mornings so it's quite an effort. Today, I shall be mostly doing this:-

06:30 - Greek yogurt with protein and fruit compote
09:15 - Muller Vitality cherry yogurt
09:45 - Graze, black pepper crackers and mango dip
10:15 - Banana
11:00 - spin session
12:15 - Protein shake
13:15 - Chicken and black olive salad (with lettuce and sweet pepper)
14:30 - Broccoli, cauliflower and cream cheese soup
15:30 - Spelt and seed crisp bread and cream cheese
17:15 - Graze, fruit and seed flapjack
18:00 - swimming session
19:15 - Graze, almonds, cranberries and sultanas
20:00 - Venison steak with mashed potato and acorn squash, and peas

Calories (kcal)	2075
Protein (g)	185
Carbohydrate (g)	211
Fat (g)	57
Fibre (g)	30
Fruit & Veg	10

As you can see, it's a lot of little snacks and for the kcal total vs cardio work, the carb level is too low and protein a bit high. So I'm looking at trying to move my during-the-day training session to the afternoon and get some couscous or pasta into my lunch to up the kcals and carbs before that session. Perhaps replace the yogurty breakfast with a porridgey one on cardio heavier days. For some reason, weekends are easier to figure out, nutrition-wise and I think it's because (at the moment) I can get going and out running/cycling/whatever first thing rather than going to work and sitting down for hours before any training.

Lickle bit of rest and a lovely ride

2011-11-27T17:46:00.001Z

"Only" 7.5 hours training this week. But I did have two full rest days and a nice, gentle-ish ride today. Went up to the Thames Turbo race route and went around the bike leg a couple of times. No hills at all but it was a bit blowy. Really really enjoyed it.

(red means I did 0 - 50% of the planned session, yellow is 51 - 80%, green is over 80%)

Need to try to keep it sensible next week, so planning to commute only once to keep the bike hours at a reasonable level.

Learning the hard way - Part I

2011-11-23T09:33:00.001Z

Some lessons I seem to learn only if I learn the hard way. This is one of them. Or, in fact, three of them.

Having undertaken very very low levels of training all year, in fact ever, I raced a few races and didn't do terribly badly. Fared well in my age category, improved a little and then the season ended. My pathetic levels of training dropped off to pretty much nothing at all. I went on holiday and got a bit tubby. I came back.

With no races to keep me interested, no goals in place, no plans or thoughts other than the distant mountains next year, I was in a wilderness. So I forgot how little I'd been doing before, forgot that I'd been doing almost nothing for a couple of months and threw myself into an ill-considered 'base training' plan. I forgot that my endurance levels were never really that great and that my power wasn't ever that great and my technique is nowhere (though improving significantly in swimming over the last couple of months). For example, I worked out that I'd run six times in August, the last month of the racing season for me; then twice in September - and one of those was a half marathon; and once in October. This is really bad.

Last week, I did 2x runs, 2x swims, 2x strength sessions and a cross-training session with Jez. I had one rest day. 6 hours training from pretty much nothing.

This week, I started back cycling to work again... Monday 30km, Tuesday 30km and a planned swimming session with Jez. Wednesday strength session, Thursday cycle and swim. Friday strength session. Saturday rest/Parkrun/ Sunday long slow run.

Monday felt great. Tuesday morning was a less pleasant ride to work and then I got to my session with Jez. I was mentally already not feeling very up for it and, thinking about it, I was already about 1200kcals in deficit for the day (how I got there I'll explain later) and with a hormonally abnormal state (for me) due to trying out being on the pill again (another post for another day). And I did a few lengths to warm up before the session. Felt OKish, a bit more whacked after each pair of lengths than usual but nothing to make me really worried. Then we started training. And I was increasingly getting wound up about how out of breath(!) and prickly (you know that hot, prickling sensation you get in your muscles when you do a lot of low weight repetitions for a while... that) I was feeling after each drill. Eventually Jez stopped the session and we chatted a bit. He basically said 'Stop getting so wound up about going so hard with cardio now. It's wrecking your training and it's achieving nothing. Now is not the time for this stuff, now is the time for strength and conditioning. Rest at the weekend. Stay in Zone 1 otherwise. Now it the time for catching Zs as much as you can." So I ate my banana and cycled home. I tried to keep it trundly, but I got angry a couple of times as car drivers tried to kill me and/or got stroppy that a bicycle dared be on the road and that ended up with a bit of high heart rate towards the end. I got in to the house and fell apart a bit.

We were supposed to be having cottage pie for dinner, but ohgod I didn't feel like it by the time I got in, plus MrTOTKat was working late and not back yet. So I got pizza in. *ding* once the potato wedges had hit my stomach, I started to feel a whole lot better. Slowing down to munch through the pizza, I did the calorie calculations for the day and it turned out that by the time I hit my swimming session, I had about 1200kcals to take in to maintain the activity I'd already done that day. The banana I had afterwards just about put back what I'd taken out during the swim and by the time I got home on my bike, I was another 400 under where I should be for the day. 1600kcals in deficit by the time I got home and -of course- I was going to be feeling awful! I don't deal with deficit very well (cranky, tired, wobbly and if I don't make up most of the deficit I start to lay down fat and put on weight!).

So there we are. Three enormous mistakes. Three lessons to learn, not just one.

A - too much too soon from nothing is BAD
B - underfuelling within a day is BAD (physically AND MENTALLY)
C - now is the time for long, boring, gentle cardio, not thrashing it on the commute to work

A and B are quite easy to deal with, C... less so if I want to cycle to work.

That wasn't so bad

2011-11-21T08:34:00.001Z

I've not been cycling on the road more than up to the common for Parkrun in... around 2.5 months. I lost the love. That and the miserable state of the traffic on the route to work; so many other bikes, so many of them being assholes (running red lights, cutting people up, being wobbly etc.), it just meant I really didn't want to get to work that way.

I finally found enough love to get back on the commuter bike and do it this morning. And it was great! Because we're getting up early anyway at the moment, leaving the house at 06:45 wasn't hard. The traffic on CS7 is not too bad at all at that time and, more importantly, there are far fewer cyclists and those that are out are the more confident and experienced ones (easy way to determine that is to do a cleat count at traffic lights, 4/16 at the last set were not wearing clips of some sort). 45 minutes in, which is pretty zippy for a first time in ages and not putting in masses of effort, and no rage at all. Score one!

(the down side was that my wash bag as work was 1/2 full of shampoo where the bottle cap had been leaking for weeks...)

Back to it

2011-11-15T08:26:00.001Z

What's the best thing to do after 14 days doing very little exercise (OK, 1 5km run and 3 trips to the gym)? I know! Let's go gung ho back into things and lack any sensibility!

Since we got back on Thursday night last week:-

Friday - rest
Saturday - 10km run, 4.5 hours hard gardening
Sunday - 2 hour bike ride, 4 hours hard gardening
Monday - swim session

and then

Tuesday - gym session
Wednesday - swim lesson/training session
Thursday - tri training session
Friday - depends what we did on Thursday (so, choice of gym or spin bike)
Saturday - Parkrun
Sunday - long slow run

Hmm... not -exactly- easing back into things when I never did have a particularly high training load anyway. Time to start gently laying out a rough idea of a training plan. Not specific sessions just yet, but an idea of how much I'll be doing, what intensities and durations and when I'll start the actual Ironman trainnig schedule itself.

There are a few events in next year's calendar already, starting with the shorter Hell of the Ashdown bike ride in February (it's a tiny bit hilly), which doesn't give me long to get my cycling legs up to spec. I've not really even done hills as such (London to Brighton a couple of times doesn't count) and my cycling endurance is through the floor, having done bugger all cycling the last 4 months or so. And I'm not feeling the cycling commute love still (mostly around not wanting to play with cars so much), so we'll see how long that lasts before I either feel like doing it again or end up having to force myself.

Swim session with Jez tomorrow and a tri session on Thursday... and hopefully a bit of a read and a play with training plans over the next few days.

Heavenly soup!

2011-11-11T15:09:00.001Z

I had a load of cauliflower and broccoli hanging about in the fridge just before we went on holiday, so I decided to do the usual of making a soup and freezing that in portions, so it wouldn't go to waste. And this one is a total and utter bowl of heaven:-

Broccoli and cauliflower soup

Ingredients - makes 4 servings

2 vegetable stock cubes (I used Knorr organic ones)
1 medium head of broccoli (about 250g)
Most of a small tub of soft cheese (I used 180g Philadelphia extra light)
1 Romanesco cauliflower (about 400g)
1 large onion (about 275g)
10ml mild olive oil

Finely chop the onion. Break the cauliflower and broccoli into florets, discard the leaves and cut the stalk into chunks.

Sweat the onion in a pan with the oil, until the onion is soft and translucent - do not brown the onion. Add the stock cubes so they dissolve/melt in with the onion pieces and coat them. Add the cauliflower florets and chopped stalks and toss with the onions for a couple of minutes. Add enough boiling water to just cover the vegetables - don't worry if a few bits stick out - and simmer for 10-20 minutes until the cauliflower and broccoli are tender.

Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool a little. Once the liquid is cool enough not to burn if you are splashed by it, add the soft cheese to the pan and blend everything to a smooth, creamy soup with a hand blender. If it is too thick, add a little more water. If it is too thin, blend thoroughly and then return to the heat and simmer off a bit more of the water.

Divide into portions and chill/freeze to reheat later.

Nutrition Data Per Serving
Calories (kcal)	157.4
Carbohydrate (g)	11.5
Protein (g)	12.0
Fat (g)	7.1
Fibre (g)	4.2
Fruit & Veg	3.0

Back

2011-11-11T09:26:00.001Z

Back from hols. Got a couple of extra pounds, unsurprisingly despite the gymmage and Parkrun tribute that happened while we were away, though I was already a bit lardy before we went. Feeling quite spaced. Few days ramping down but eating little and often to get my stomach back to normal again. And a good week of no drinking.

Photos in processing... didn't take that many really. Too busy doing naff all and snorkelling a lot.

4 years

2011-10-27T06:07:00.000+01:00

Longest I've stayed with one company... 4 years. It's hard, it's exhausting, it's changed so much over the last 4 years, but... it's great, you could -never- say it's boring, what we're doing is cool and clever. Yup. Gonna take some cake in to celebrate the 4 years.

Yep, I like me a Mule

2011-10-26T21:33:00.001+01:00

Those little Mule MegaBites really are the trick. I've had to buy a load more. They're just great; a perfect little ~100kcal boost before or after a training session. Just keeps the wolf from the door and the mental frame a bit more even. Even at 99p a bar from Evans, I'm not bothered about trying to make my own version. Life's too short.

I give up

2011-10-25T07:56:00.001+01:00

Right knee naffed and no good reason for it; 1km into the parkrun on Saturday "ow". *sigh* Will have to see about a physio appointment this week - not many days left for it!

Running flats...

2011-10-17T10:13:00.003+01:00

I -think-. These running flats make something for a difference.

With no training (honestly, I've done bugger all running), I've pulled 30s off my 5K and 120s off my 10K PBs and the only real difference is the shoes. They're last season (SS11)'s Saucony A3...

...and they weigh nothing at all. That's not where the big win comes from (for me, for now), though. It's the lack of hugely built-up heel, which forces me to strike mid-foot to front-foot and not with my heel. You just can't heel strike in these 'cause it jars your foot, ankle and knee and there's instant feedback of "Bad" to your brain so you stop it pretty quickly.

The really good thing was that because they were last season's design, they cost a princely sum of £29.99 (list price £72).

Mule bars - review

2011-10-12T15:13:00.000+01:00

Mule Bars... their idea is natural, wholesome fuel for active/sporting people - "Natural Tasty Energy". Kinda like 9 Bars, they're made from fruit, nuts and seeds and a bit of something to help stick it together (e.g. honey, or rice syrup).

With 3 options for fuel and one for refuel and a large range of flavours across the board, they look like a great choice for vegetarians (and the gels are all vegan happy too) and those who want a nutritionally balanced, natural fuel which is organic, Fairtrade, top award winning across the sports press and endorsed and used by top athletes ("Tour de France winners, World champion Ultraman racers, Ironman competitors and triathletes, footballers, World Cup winning rugby players, surfers, sailors, kite surfers, kayakers, downhill (and uphill) Mountainbikers, High altitude mountaineers, free climbers, slackliners, rollers skaters, bladers, boarders and skiers, frisbee players, sculptors, winemakers and dairy farmers (yes really), golfers, gymnasts and yes, last but not least, even crossword setters.").

I got a taster pack with some of each to try. Though I'm now out of race season (got a 10km in a week and then an offroad run in December, but nothing longer than an hour's activity), some of these will be tryable in training and to help me get through some of the long days at work.

I packed a few in my bag for work, for emergencies, and sure enough I ended up needing to use one to get me going for a training session with Jez. We've been doing a few swim technique sessions and a couple of tests to sort out HR zones, and last week we finally did a speed work session to get started on the more general triathlon training. It was a 60 minute session of multiple T2 bricks; bike, run, bike, run, bike, run, bike, run, bike, run. All at pretty high intensity. I'd had a hard, intense day at work and not really had enough to eat by the time it was an hour before my training session, so I chomped on one of the MegaBite (30g) fuel bars. I'd packed the "Hunza Nut" (apricot and walnut) flavoured bar and it was really rather nice. A neat, small, manageable 105kcal boost of energy and pretty tasty. I couldn't really get much of the individual flavours, but it was neither sickly sweet or too crunchy or sticky. And it perked me up a good deal for my training session.

Usually during a session with Jez in the gym I feel pretty cruddy and underfuelled. I don't like training at the end of a work day for this very reason. I don't like races that start much after 11am for the same reason; I'm not confident with the fuelling after I've had part of a day. No idea how my body uses fuel through a "normal" (no exercise) day, so come 6pm I have no bloody idea how much I've used, how much I need still and how much extra I need to be not in deficit at the start of a training session. Having had that pick-me-up Mule Bars, I felt a -lot- better this time. No sicky feeling during the session (having tried a banana to get me through a session before a couple of times, I had some unpleasant acidic feeling and general nausea). Thumbs up for the MegaBite there. Very good indeed!

A couple of days later, I had a long slow run in the schedule and I was utterly starving afterwards, so it was a good opportunity to try one of the Refuel bars. I thought the banana chocolate one would be a good mix of flavours as I generally like those two together. However, I was quite disappointed. There was almost no chocolate flavour and the banana tasted like a slightly unripe banana that had been squashed - you know the ones that have greenish skin with black marks and black squashy bits of flesh inside though they're not quite ripe. Not horrible by any means, but not all that nice either. It did fill a gap but I needed a lot of liquid with it too as it was also a bit drier than I was expecting.

More tastings to come when I move through the other bars and the gels...

Cooking up batches

2011-10-11T12:37:00.000+01:00

Even without masses of training, there's often not a lot of time to cook on a work day and it just gets stressy and mentally tricky when you come home and need to think about making a meal. And given that I prioritise home made meals (mostly because I can control the ingredients and proportions of things to my needs and tastes) I don't want to be buying ready meals, no matter how well-balanced and carefully sourced they are. So I do try to cook up batches of meals at the weekend and chill or freeze them for re-heating. The easiest things are chilli, stew, soup, curry, casserole etc. and you can cook up bases of things to add other ingredients when re-heating. A couple of hours of preparation work at the weekend avoids a lot more during the week and really reduces the stress levels.

However, at the weekend, this can result in quite some chaos in our tiny kitchen...

That was ingredients and preparation for three meals; beef and ale casserole (with braising beef, pearl barley, chioggia beetroot, red carrots, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, red onion and Guinness)

Lamb Rogan Josh (lamb neck fillet, home made rogan josh paste (Jamie Oliver recipe), onion, chilli peppers and tinned tomatoes)

And butternut and chick pea curry (courgette, butternut squash, chilli pepper, chard, chick peas, onion and home made curry paste (my own recipe))

The kitchen smells incredible when curry is on the go, so it can be quite hungry work. But worth it for 16 individual meals ready for heating and eating.

You do need a lot of plastic tubs and freezer space (that's my current limitation). And a better labelling system than post it notes as they tend to fall off in the freezer!

So, on an average week, our evening meals would look a bit like this:-

Monday - grilled salmon fillets with cous cous, sweetcorn and peas (prep 2 mins, cooking time 6-7 mins)
Tuesday - re-heated lamb curry, wholegrain rice (25 mins rice cooking time)
Wednesday - re-heated chilli, cous cous, sweetcorn and peas (prep 5-6 mins)
Thursday - frittata (prep 5 mins, cooking time 30mins)
Friday - re-heated vegetable curry with added chicken breast, wholegrain rice (prep 5-6 mins)
Saturday - fillet steak, new potatoes, salad (prep 15 mins, cooking time 5 mins)
Sunday - roast chicken, roasted sweet potato wedges, peas, cauliflower, gravy (prep 15 mins, cooking time 70mins)

I been and gone and done it

2011-10-10T06:32:00.000+01:00

When I grow up, I want to be like Chrissie...

2011-10-09T17:28:00.001+01:00

Chrissie Wellington is my hero.

I already did have a huge amount of respect and admiration for Chrissie Wellington and then there was Ironman Hawaii, the Ironman World Championships 2011 yesterday. A couple of weeks out from the race, she had a bit of a crash and banged up the majority of the left side of her body; massive bruises, abrasions, the press was full of photos of the road rash.

In her own words... "Not once did I equate a triathlon race to armed conflict. That was until i crashed the bike last weekend, and ended up battered, bruised and yes, covered in sore, bleeding ‘war wounds’. Asphalt 1 = Chrissie 0. Long story short. I had a flat front tyre, didn’t realise, took a corner relatively fast, the wheel slipped from under me, skin hit tarmac. Or more accurately my left elbow (taking the epidermis off ones funny bone is decidedly unfunny), my hip (a bit of padding would have been nice – should have eaten more donuts), and all of the skin on my left leg ended up covering the tarmac. (Unfortunately i also took out Drew Scott, who also suffered the consequences of the crash – for which i am hugely hugely sorry).

Yes, i have some nasty wounds. That day i lost the battle with the bike, lost a whole heap of bodily fluids and a considerable amount of skin, but I didn’t lose my fight."

It would have had quite an impact on training and mental state on the lead up to the race. You can read the race reports elsewhere, but there was a lot of worry that Chrissie wasn't doing so well as she dropped further and further back on the bike leg, ending up 21 minutes behind the female leader. It didn't look good at all.

Then on the run leg, she started to really reel them in. One by one she passed athletes to come in the World Champion for a fourth time. Through pain, the grind, the aching injury, the heat and the ground she needed to make up. She did it. She won and she showed the world that she is a one in a generation phenomenal athlete who is master of her own mind and body like nobody else. And she came to professional sport late in life, to dominate the world of long course triathlon, showing us all that it's never, ever too late.

From Twitter...

chrissiesmiles Chrissie Wellington

i defied what i thought was possible. This is a dream come true.

chrissiesmiles Chrissie Wellington

But I hurt like i never have before, and had to dig into the depths of my body and soul. I think i need a plate of chips

CompressportUK CompressportUK

by chrissiesmiles

Post race press conf: 'I left every ounce of my heart and soul on the race course today' @chrissiesmiles

When I grow up, I want to be like Chrissie. Only it probably is a teensy bit too late for me to win at Kona ;o)

British Olympic Ball (2012)

2011-10-08T15:06:00.001+01:00

How lucky am I?

I got tickets to go to the British Olympic Ball, 294 days out from the 2012 Olympics. A charity dinner, hosted by BT, at the Grand Hall at Olympia, with 140 British Olympic medal winners (83 golds) in attendance and a great show.

We arrived on a "red"(gold) carpet with god knows how many Olympians and other assorted famous people in a media circus...

(shoulda ditched the bunny... I had glorious collarbone in that outfit, dammit!)

...and headed in to an impressive sight of the Grand Hall set out with 179 tables and a huge runway stage for the displays and show later on.

Chinawhites provided the bars and lounge area in front of the dining area and we mingled around a bit before spotting a few people we recognised... Denise Lewis (looking strong and beautiful in a flowing, black, backless dress that showed off her gorgeous back), Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, Tessa Sanderson and then... Alistair Brownlee (squee!), followed by Jonathan. Gah! They were standing a few feet away from us so we finally gave in, did the shameless thing and asked for a photo with them.

Had a bit of a chat with Jonathan more than Alistair and he was a sweet guy, very down to earth and un-fussed by the media attention. We quickly ran out of time and had to find our table for the start of the proceedings. Our table turned out to be right in front of the stage where Stephen Fry and Miranda Hart were leading the proceedings and introducing the various speakers. After the initial fun and games with the autocue having been set up more for people of Colin Moynihan's height than these two, there was much self-deprecation in the presence of quite so many of the best athletes in the world. You could hardly blame them for using their physical differences for humour at such an event; one of the things that struck me most about the Brownlees was how tiny they are. I knew they were light and lean, but crikeybobs it's a different matter close up than it is on the telly. Miranda looked stunning in a simple black outfit, lovely golden skin and make-up. Wish there was more of her on the telly!

After the initial display from various athletes (BMXers, trampolinists, gymnasts, judo players, break dancers, Tinchy Stryder...) we were treated to speeches from various members of the British Olympics organisations, from the Princess Royal, to Sir Clive Woodward, Colin Moynihan, Denise Lewis and a couple of others. It didn't take long to settle into paying attention, despite the next table along being oh so star studded (Mark Cavendish - who seems to be really quite shy, but was immensely gracious about having his photo taken with us, Ed Moses, Clare Balding, Katie Melua, Peta Todd, Alice Arnold, James Toseland...)

Food came and went and was, as you'd expect in such a huge venue, tepid and forgettable (due to it being tepid, I'm sure it would have been fabulous if it'd been hot. Sorry Tom Aikens, but the venue was against you there). Wine was plentiful and resulted in things getting a bit fuzzy from here on in. We had some fun bidding on one of the charity auction items (we were never going to win it, given the sort of people in the room)...

And then danced about a bit to Tom Jones' hour-long set (yes, we saw you Denise Lewis, boogieing away to Mr Jones!) before deciding to call it a night.

There were so many more huge names of sport there that we didn't see. Like, seriously, Bradley Wiggins, -how- did we not see him? And loads of others. All in all, a great night. We're both really fired up about the impending Olympics. It's a real shame we don't have tickets for any of the events, but damned sure we'll be rocking up to watch the non-ticket bits of the triathlon and road cycling events. 2012 is the Year of Sport and I can't wait!

Back in the gym

2011-10-08T13:08:00.001+01:00

Finally! A week where I went to the gym three times! And I already feel loads better for it. My core supporting bits and bobs are feeling so much more -there- and useful. OK, so I didn't get my planned swim in (as wasn't well early in the week) and due to busyness at work I didn't get to get a run in either (though I'm planning to get out tomorrow), but THREE gym sessions! Woooo!

It's now that I need to get the base levels of strength and endurance on the increase; start to get some longer and longer bikes and runs in. And that's where I run into some difficulties...

The "easiest" way to get a long run in, given time constraints, is to get on the treadmill at the gym in a lunch break at work. But I can't use treadmills. I can't run on them at any decent speed and feel seasick when I get off the damned things. So. Sod that. It will have to be the old trick of using my commute to get a run in. Start off by getting on the tube and going part way home before getting out and running the rest of the way. Gradually making the tube journey shorter and shorter until I'm not using it at all and just running all the way home. I can make that a 15km run if I start from the door of the office and finish at the front door at home, which is good enough for me for now.

Thankfully, cycling on a turbo trainer is actually not difficult (in terms of getting used to the sensation). Plus, it gives the chance to get long, constant power output stints in. That's something you can't do on the roads around here as there are so many interruptions (remember, 75 traffic lights from home to office... that's a lot of stop start if even only 15% of those lights require a full stop). So, when we get back from holiday later on in the year, I'll be cutting back the bushes in the garden and erecting a gazebo (kindly lent to us by my parents), so the turbo trainer can be set up in the garden (we don't have anywhere in the house with a large enough expanse of concrete floor to put it on to absorb the anti-socially loud vibrations which make it sound like a jet turbine) underneath it for lots of sitting and grinding through turbo sessions and not getting too cold or wet.

I've not got a plan laid out yet as I've not sat down and thought it through and done all of the research around building a base level of fitness just yet. I'm thinking November, December and part of January should be a good start to that before the real training plan begins 16 weeks out from Wimbleball. Some re-reading and thinking to be done, then I can lay out a plan that's achievable rather than too difficult to fit in and resulting in huge amounts of stress.

Half arsed half (or not)

2011-09-27T14:01:00.000+01:00

We signed up for the Nike+ Run to the Beat half marathon a while back... can't even remember why now. But it must have seemed a good idea at the time. As it got closer and closer I got more and more worried that due to all sorts of reasons, I'd done bugger all running. The most running I'd done was in triathlon events themselves and a very very occasional Parkrun. Hardly training for 13.1 miles of running, is it?

Come the morning of the event, to say I was not confident would have been quite an understatement. A 7am start, big bowl of porridge with maple syrup, raisins and banana and off we went to the O2 to the start. Warm, sunny and a light breeze... a perfect day one would say but all I could think about was the talk of hills, the lack of training and the worry it was going to get really warm.

We'd agreed to run at under my lactate threshold so I could get to the end without dying, which gave me some confidence and it worked really really well. Chatting all the way 'round, getting the odd cup of water at stations, loving the fact that there were pretty much no walkers, the lack of actual music (compare with the British 10K for example) marvelling at the seemingly random placing of timing mats and taking the piss out of my, well, need to piss within 5 minutes of starting (resulting in a 1 minute pee stop in the first 10 minutes), we were feeling really rather chipper by 15km in. Having decided that if we were feeling strong by 16km, we'd turn up the wick and see how that went, the 16km point came and we did.

And it was good. In fact, so good that we spent the next 3-4km overtaking each other again and again until it got really rather silly. At that point there were more than a few runners down, passed out, throwing up and weaving about like drunks. We felt strong still and powered on to the finish, to cross it holding hands (*vomit*) and see a good 6-7 people being loaded onto gurneys to be taken away for medical attention. 02:06:38 after what was effectively a long, slow run. No training. A bit of fun at the end. Reckon we could easily have cracked 2 hours if we'd turned it up earlier and gone for good negative splits all the way through rather than just the last sector. But that wasn't the point of that run.

Very pleased. Very pleased indeed. But only with the performance on the day. Lack of training for these things really has to be the exception.

Sports photos I don't hate

2011-09-22T23:20:00.001+01:00

I'm too mean to pay money for them and the triathlon they're from wasn't my finest performance, but the shorts and top are the most comfortable ever ever ever and they look good too! (and, yes, two plaits really is the most practical long hair strategy for a triathlon - keeps the hair off your neck and fits under a cycling helmet as well as a swimming cap)

Ironman Wales - race report (non-competing)

2011-09-22T23:05:00.000+01:00

It's the race of choice for next year and, on the advice of a former newbie Ironman, we wanted to get an idea of what an Ironman race is all about without having to actually do one yet so we volunteered to help out for the event.

I've not really got the energy for a full and detailed report, so...

We arrived on Friday night in Tenby and headed to the race briefing on Saturday morning having already established that there really weren't that many volunteers (from, it turned out later, one of the Ironman compère team). Briefing was mostly explaining what Ironman is to the crowd of, mostly local, volunteers which then divided up into teams for the different volunteer tasks; run and bike course marshals, and transition and finish line volunteers. We'd volunteered for transition as we were both keen to find out what that would be like.

Transition volunteers at the briefing numbered a grand total of 14 people; an unbelievably low number for a team to support close on 1500 competitors. The transition director (one Mr Chris Tyrrell) took us through a few things and then led those of us able to help on the Saturday off to the transition area to begin the task of checking in the competitors. 5 hours of that, learning the answers to competitors' questions as we went along and we'd checked in all of the competitors and helped many of them get to grips with the logistics of the fact that the swim had had to be moved from the South to North beach. We checked out for the day and got in an early night for the horribly sharp start the next morning - getting up at 4am to get to transition before 5am when it was scheduled to open again.

Work kicked off with helping the athletes sort out last minute things with their transition bags and there just weren't enough of us at that point, which made it a bit stressy and tricky. Once that was done with, we had time to set up transition in ernest for the swimmers returning to pick up their bike bags, change out of wetsuits and head off on their bikes. Mr TOTKat headed out to the bike mount/dismount line to spend the majority of the day from then onwards marshalling the athletes to mount and dismount their bikes without breaking the "no cycling in transition" rule. Then, the elites came through T1 from the swim in ones and twos, each with time to be helped sort out their kit and changing before it just got so crazy-busy that that wasn't possible any more and the priority was getting the blue bags out of the way safely until the athletes were all through T1. I ended up spending a lot of time hurling bags into a big pile outside the transition tent, out of the way of the flow of athletes, and making sure they didn't lose anything out of them. Once T1 was over, all of the volunteers in transition had to begin the task of sorting and re-racking the blue bags before re-arranging the transition area for the start of T2.

Given that there was a good while before the first athletes would be back off the bike leg, we got a short break to cram in a burger from the food tent and lie down for half an hour. Then it was back to transition for Mr TOTKat to marshal the bike dismount line again and for the rest of us to help the athletes change from bike to run gear. By this time the competitors were a lot better spaced out, so we got to help the majority of them individually; each one finding a seat in the transition area and we'd empty out their red run bag for them, spread out their stuff so they could easily find things, pack up their helmet, bike shoes and anything they didn't want with them on the run, handing things to them like sunglasses, running hats, helping fill their pockets with gels, bars etc. and sorting out their empty wrappers out of the way etc. Early on in the T2 phase, a couple of athletes came back quite a bit earlier than they'd expected... they'd run into some local dissatisfaction with the event that resulted in someone throwing tacks out onto the road. One guy spent half an hour fixing his bike only to have to give up and come back in the sweeper van. Another came back successfully from the tacks incident having had 8 punctures, shredded his front tyre, borrowed 6 inner tubes, 4 gas cartridges and a tyre from other competitors. Great that the other athletes helped, not so great that someone felt it was an appropriate action to express their unhappiness by ruining things for people they didn't even know who had spent months working hard to take part in this event.

Everyone I sat with pretty much had lots to talk about, how harsh the bike course was, a bit about their history and background, who they are and what they're about... I had the great pleasure of helping so many dedicated people who have trained hard to get to where they were, including Luis Alvarez (the guy the compères had been telling us about who was on his 77th Ironman and aiming to complete 100 by Kona next year) who had quite a patch of frostbite on his face from the week before when he'd been mountain climbing. Including an RAF officer who carefully and painstakingly looked after his feet by putting on blister plasters and surgical tape to be sure that by the end of the run he wouldn't just have finished, but finished in good shape to walk the next day. Including a lovely Spanish guy who was OK and was happy not to have help with his bag (I think he was just super polite and felt taking help was placing an imposition on the volunteers) and then raced over to me in a panic because he had a saddle-bag wedged in his back pocket and couldn't get it out. Things were so smooth during T2 that the bags were being re-racked during the whole T2 flow and there was no need to make a huge pile to sort later. It went so so well it felt great.

With the T2 work all done, bags all re-racked nicely and the lost property laid out neatly, I ended up out with the bikes filling in surveys for the Ironman organisation. I got through about 90 of them and ran out of steam. It was 7pm and we'd been up a looong time. Mr TOTKat had marshalled all the bikes out and all of those who made it through the bike leg back again. He'd seen the three guys who missed the bike cutoff time by 5 seconds... two of whom just couldn't take it in and stood still for ages before moving on and the third just broke down and cried. All that training and effort and their race was over before the run. Poor Garth, the 75 year old athlete who went the wrong way on the second bike lap and ended up also missing the bike cutoff. Utterly exhausted, we called it a day and went to get some food to perk up a bit before heading to the finish line. Shortly after 10pm we got down to the finish line to watch the last few competitors cross the line and we found the party down at the sea front... tunes, cowbell and the celebrations peaked just before midnight with the last couple of guys crossing the line including one who took part in the first ever Ironman race.

This here post really doesn't do the weekend any justice. It was knackering, great fun, brilliant experience. Probably made all the better by the small community feel of the volunteer group as there were so few of us.

We've signed up to help out again at Bolton next year :o)

...and I'm still finding bruises in all sorts of places.

Part of an answer...

2011-09-19T10:53:00.001+01:00

I had a terrible race yesterday. Nothing spectacular, didn't feel particularly awful but couldn't get going after the swim at all. For a flat race with only 4km longer in the bike, I put in a really bad time. The swim was marginally faster than at London, the bike was 11 minutes slower! And the run 2 minutes slower. I just couldn't really put the hammer down in the bike, with no hills at all there were no downhills to really push through and get some good momentum to sweep up the next rise. The run... felt sluggish and tricky and I was trying to get my legs moving quicker but it just wouldn't go.

And the below graphs show something interesting... the first was the Virgin triathlon and the second one was yesterday's HSBC one.

I just couldn't get my heart rate up; most of the Virgin one I was over my lactate threshold quite 'happily', but yesterday I was under it and quite miserably. I've done some testing with a trainer around endurance and cardio fitness and my cardio fitness is so there, but the endurance is missing. It is, more than likely, a complete lack of training. I don't train for endurance on the bike at all. I barely do any cycling at all really. The odd commute to work here and there and the odd sprint triathlon. It just doesn't get the long, consistent pushing happening. Commuting involves faaaar too many traffic lights to really get going.

There may have also been a bit of fuelling wrongness, but I'm pretty sure the majority is lack of training.

Doing something the average person doesn't do.

2011-09-04T23:32:00.000+01:00

I wanted to complete an Ironman in the year I turned forty. Initially I intended to do it when I had actually turned forty, but once I was bitten by the idea I didn't want to wait that long. It's a compelling need to do Ironman.

I started triathlon in 2010 when, as a former swimmer who had recently taking up cycling and running, Mr TOTKat said he wanted to do another triathlon after doing one a few years back and I looked around online. I found a "civilised" one where the swim was in a pool and it wasn't that far from where we live so would be quite easy to get to.

The Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon races are held at Bushy Park/Hampton Open Air Pool - a half hour drive from our house. Thames Turbo Triathlon club is one of the oldest and largest triathlon clubs in the UK and "...can count three World Champions and other elite athletes amongst our alumni: Stuart Hayes, Spencer Smith, Richard Stannard and current World Champion Tim Don have all been Turbos on their way to the top!" Their sprint series is geared towards introducing people to the sport of triathlon and every race the question is asked "how many people are here for their first race?" and so many people raise their hands... the races are excellently run and marshalled, with firm but fair application of the rules.

In 2010, we entered the whole race series and I ended up having to miss the first one having injured myself skiing earlier in the year and was signed off from running by the physio. I cheered Mr TOTKat on at the first one, while freezing in insufficient clothing on a cold Easter Monday morning that started as the alarm went off at 04:45. All of the races are on bank holiday mondays and for the first three races of the series in 2010, it was utterly freezing cold and we suffered horribly with the temperature both when waiting and when spectating. We made a lot of mistakes in the first couple of races, but learned and got better, stripping down the equipment in transition to just bike shoes, running shoes, bike helmet, race belt and sunglasses. Makes for nippy transitions (and oh boy was I glad of that at the British Super Series race at Blenheim - I was way up the field in the fourth discipline there thanks to that learning at the Thames Turbo races).

The field of competitors at the Thames Turbo sprint races is asked to estimate their overall race time and their 400m swim time. The field is then split, roughly at the 01:20:00 mark and those who estimate over that time for the whole race go in the first half, and those who estimate a faster overall time go in the second half. Those halves are then seeded by swim time to determine the order in which you start in the pool. This stops a lot of congestion in the pool and works really well, it also means that the slower athletes aren't the last to start in the morning and left to finish last, extending the race duration out for a very long time. As a former swimmer, it's my strongest natural discipline and I seed early in the swim starts, but until 2011 I was in the first half of the field of competitors. There's a great advantage to that on a bank holiday monday morning in that there's almost no traffic on the roads, and that's a big plus for a race where the roads aren't closed.

Over the Thames Turbo races in 2010, we improved and we did a couple of 10K races too. Come Christmas 2010 we were sure we wanted to do more and, in a night of tipsy foolishness, we registered for all of the Thames Turbo races for 2011, all of the British Super Series races (some of which had a choice of sprint distance or Olympic distance and I decided to take the plunge and sign up for one Olympic one), most of the Clapham Common 10K races and the Speedo Hampton Court Thames swim. And over 2011 we started working through the races, having the odd injury niggle, missing the odd race because of it, signing up for a couple more races here and there, a half marathon, a 5km swim... and then someone started me thinking. I can't remember how Paul seeded the idea into my head, but he did. And it sat in the back of my head.

I bought a few books, read them, looked at all of the courses and decided that heat was a bigger enemy than hills. And the decision was made. I'd wanted to do an Ironman race when I got to forty, but the race calendar was against me for the end of 2012 and I didn't want to wait any longer. MrTOTKat asked whether I'd be OK with him doing this too. So. Wales is the choice at the moment and we're signed up for Wimbleball Half Ironman already, which is at a good time in relation to when Wales will most likely be scheduled in 2012. We're volunteering at the first Ironman Wales to get an idea of what the event will be like, and the course and the area. If all goes well, we'll register for Wales Ironman 2012 while we're there.

There are two hard things at the moment... not getting over-excited and starting a training schedule too soon, and getting my head around how I'm going to fit all of that training that will be required into my life. There will probably have to be changes and sacrifices made. Ironman isn't a walk in the park, it isn't easy, it's not called "ironman" for nothing. Otherwise everybody would be able to do it. But. It's not something the average person does.

Disappointed

2011-08-31T11:29:00.001+01:00

I didn't break 01:20:00.

The race entry list was FULL. And I was in the second (fast) wave. Having missed the deadline to update my estimated swim time ( I wanted to make it slower due to technique confusion at the moment), I ended up with a few faster people behind me, which meant that I had to stop once to let one person past in the pool, then again to let two past, and again once more to let one more past. I probably lost 10-15s due to that.

T1 was quick - the guy after me in the start order who overtook me in the pool was probably a bit miffed that I came and went while he was still in transition before me and trotted out behind me.

The bike... well, it's not on closed roads, so there's always the luck of the traffic lights. I was lucky and they were green and I sailed through. However, I had to come to a complete stop at two of the roundabouts, the second of which was extremely frustrating as there was a car indicating left at the head of the traffic queue who was very hesitant so I had to wait around 10-15s for them to sort themselves out and then decide not to turn left in the end. A little way after that roundabout, I was stuck behind two cars, a learner at the front who was not happy to go at more than 20kph, with traffic coming the other way on a relatively narrow road, me and another race participant had to hang way back (non-drafting race, of course) for 400-500m of faffing. I probably lost another 20-30 seconds there overall and added a bunch of rage.

T2 was very nippy as my bike was near the bike in and run out. Heavy legs weren't too much bother, but a double stitch (one upper right abdomen, the other lower left) made me slow to a walk for a few paces to try to sort it out. I still put in a run+T2 time of a minute faster than ever before.

Overall, 01:20:57. 30s slower than last time. The run was encouraging, the bike very frustrating and the swim just annoying. I coulda done it. I coulda. But it didn't happen.

Why is it only Tuesday?

2011-08-23T21:33:00.000+01:00

I'm impatient for my finger to get healing. Now I have dressings that don't stick to the end and tear it off whenever they get changed, the pain is reduced and the healing has actually started. I -need- it to have closed up properly before Monday. Monday is the last sprint triathlon in the Thames Turbo race series and I need to get to the start line, never mind actually finish. What with an open wound on one finger, one knee that works if I tape it up, the other being more than slightly unreliable regardless of what I do to it, it's going to be a tall order to finish a sprint triathlon.

It makes me sad to think I've come a long way with this new sport in a reasonably short period of time and I may end the season this year as it began, with a DNF and disappointment. I've taken 15 minutes (which also happens to be 15%) off my race time over 4 races so far and am confident I could get another minute or two off that time still, to get under 01:20:00 which would put me just about in the top 20% for my age category. I so want that this year, to end the season. And if I'm stopped from even starting the race because I have an open wound still...

Thursday this week I have a session with my tri trainer and he's going to do fitness assessments and general base-lining and I'm going to have to tell him I've done nothing of the plan he left me two weeks ago, because my knee hasn't been up to it. And that I can't swim at the moment either. It's just a catalogue of mishaps and makes me feel like a disaster area of self-inflicted (in one way or another) physical damage.

I can't work out how/where to get into Pose running. The support in the UK is quite limited and the web site is awful. I just want to find someone who can assess whether it might help/it's suitable for me. Every lead on making running less stressful and worrying for the longer distances next year has to be followed up.

I can't give up on long course.

I won't.

Not for the sqeamish

2011-08-20T12:23:00.000+01:00

Sorry if you came here through a feed that gives you the images whether you want them or not. But here's where my finger is at...

I'm not sure how this is supposed to heal, it's just raw flesh exposed. I have the missing piece but it's too dead to be put back, plus the NHS won't bother with it being so small.

Not swimming

2011-08-19T23:33:00.000+01:00

There will be no long, boring swim tomorrow as I've succeeded in hacking a chunk of the tip of my finger off. No matter how clean Dorney Lake is, it's really not a good idea for me to be swimming right now. 10 days to the last Thames Turbo race of the year and I -should- be OK for that. The only worry is around handlebar grip for that. I'm sure I can take 40 or so minutes of discomfort if I have to, though.

Long, boring Saturday morning

2011-08-19T12:05:00.003+01:00

I've got a 5km swim tomorrow. *yawn* It is going to be... SO. BORING. The main reason for doing it was to regain some pride after the Thames swim a while back, and to check out what Dorney lake is like for the HSBC triathlon in September. Now Mr TOTKat isn't swimming tomorrow, I've got nothing there around the pride regain. Conversely, I couldn't be humiliated again by him beating me again as he's not swimming.

I've been quiet on the race training front recetly. Mostly because I've done no cycling and very little running. Since the Virgin Triathlon, I've done two long runs to extend my distance in the lead up to Nike+ Run To The Beat in a few weeks' time. The first was two weekends ago and we did a long, slow run around the Wimbledon Common Parkrun route of about 9.5km. As usual, I strapped up my left knee and that felt lovely. Confident and comfortable, all went well until about 6-7km in when my right knee started to niggle... and niggle.. and get worse and worse. I pushed through as it didn't feel the same as my left knee does and I was keen not to give in to anything that really wasn't a proper problem. Which was a mistake. 5 days of ow followed.

The following weekend we extended the distance to 13.9km. Again my left knee strapped up and fine and I strapped the right to see what might happen. Same as the previous week. Not good. So, a trip back to the physio on Wednesday this week and he was unimpressed. He can't really work out why/what is going on and is a bit peeved by it all. A supposition now is that perhaps, as I've not been doing a lot of running in the grand scheme of things and I've not been doing running for very long (around 2 years), I'm actually just really bad at running. Not just slow and crap (he laughed at my 10km time in the last triathlon, bastard), but slow and damaging and crap.

The current idea is to foam roll my awfully tight quads a bit, try a quick (deliberately a bit faster than usual) run to see if speed makes it worse/brings it on earlier, and try not strapping the left one to see how that is getting on. In parallel, he's suggested I look at Pose method running. Which is interesting in that when I started to learn to run, I did run very much like falling fowards and nowadays I run very upright so there may be something in the method change.

Anyone got any thoughts/ideas/experience with Pose? I've read a bit and it seems logical in some ways, but...

Makey-uppy

2011-08-16T13:49:00.000+01:00

I ran out of routine again so had to cobble something together. I can't really afford to have two trainers at the moment and while I'm trying out a swimming coach I can't therefore have a gym trainer too.

warm up on the cross-trainer
weighted Bulgarian split squats
kettlebell swings - superset A
pressups - superset A
jerks - superset B
leg raises and lowers - superset B
assisted pull-ups - 3 grips; wide over, narrow under, ring
squats

My arms and shoulders are pretty knackered, so I'm expecting some good ol' DOMS tomorrow.

I really wanted to do one of those Bodyrock.tv routines, but they look rather like I would want to try them somewhere private once or twice before prancing about in public...

Veatables

2011-08-11T13:08:00.010+01:00

I'm really rather sick of all the "healthy" and healthy sweet snacky bars you can get. I don't have a sweet tooth, they're usually far too sweet for me and I usually crave savoury snacks when I'm hungry. And look what I found the other day...

Fresh, soft, tasty vegetable-based snack bars. They come in three flavours; "Tomato Pizza", "Thai Sweetcorn" and "Sweet Roast Vegetable" and are made from between 50% and 64% fresh vegetables, 34% - 38% dried vegetables and then flavour enhancers such as Gruyere cheese, chickpea flour, salt, seeds etc.

Because they contain fresh vegetables and some cheese, they do need chilling...

"To make each bar we take fresh vegetables (some pureed, some roasted) and mix them with ingredients such as Gruyere cheese, sweet chilli sauce and fresh herbs. We combine these with dried vegetables to make sure that each 45g bar contains the equivalent of 80g of vegetables.

Once mixed the ingredients are moulded into bars and are transferred to trays to be baked. After cooling we wrap them and then they’re ready to go.

Each bar contains only natural ingredients and is a combination of fresh cooked vegetables with some dried and concentrated vegetables.

Because they are so fresh and natural they need to be stored in a fridge until they are eaten. However, it is absolutely fine to pop one in your child’s lunch box as it will last perfectly well up until lunchtime and beyond."

As soon as my sample pack arrived (one of each flavour) I scoffed one, the "Sweet Roast Vegetable" flavour one. When you open the packet, the smell is really quite amazing; like pizza or a vegetable pasta sauce with cheese on top. The texture is soft and crumbly like a really soft, fine-textured flapjack. And it tastes so tangy with a reasonably strong Gruyere twang to it and a definite strong butternut squash flavour. Half an hour after I finished the bar and my mouth was still watering from the flavour. At 99kcals and 1 portion of fruit and veg, they're satisfying on the belly, but moreish on the flavour. I might just have to grab another one out of the fridge...

("Thai Sweetcorn" tastes a bit curryish... hints of chilli and spices as well as the cheese).

Bitten

2011-08-10T20:43:00.000+01:00

We appear to have signed up for another Olympic distance triathlon. In a month's time. See youse at the HSBC one in Eton!

(shame I'll have yet again bugger all training as I've pinched something in the other knee now!)

Virgin Active London Triathlon - Smashed, Wrecked, Gone!

2011-08-04T22:21:00.007+01:00

Target A - finish (in under 03:15:00)
Target B - finish under 03:00:00 (based on rough estimates of individual discipline times)

As we were racing on Sunday afternoon, we had to rack our bikes in transition on Saturday. 4 hours of travel on Saturday, plus 30 minutes getting race packs, timing chips, racking bikes and checking out the place, and then come home again; that made for being already quite knackered on Saturday evening.

Sunday morning, we had to get up reasonably early to be sure of getting to ExCel in good time for my race assembly at 12:05 for a 12:25 start with the other Olympic Female Age Group competitors. Traffic is pretty unpredictable on the route to ExCel and with road closures in place for the triathlon it could be lots worse. We arrived back at the exhibition centre at around 10:45 and parked up, got settled and put the rest of our race kit in transition. We made sure of where our bikes were for T1 and T2 (me, the second row B after row A and in front of the huge number "8" on the wall, about 15 bikes in from the opposite end to the swim "in".) and I went and bought a baseball cap to run in as it was pretty hot and likely that the sun would be out for much of the afternoon.

The time came for me to suit up and get ready for my race start and I'd pretty much missed the race briefing so skipped ahead, pulled on my wetsuit, Mr TOTKat applied the bodyglide on my neck to avoid any chafing from the wet-suit and I toddled in to the swim assembly for my pink swim cap and a breifing from the same race official as gave the briefing at Blenheim (a charismatic Welsh elf). The swim start had a nice twist in allowing those who wanted to get off smartly to head down to the water and swim out to the start area first, then the rest followed. The shame was that those who followed were not held back for a couple of minutes the same as with the men's wave so it got all close and jostly anyway.

12:25 and the start hooter went off, after having been treading water for about 5 minutes or so. You know the stories about swims in triathlon being a bit brutal? Well... it happens. Ohyes. You might think that ladies would be a bit more timid and polite and not mash people up in the water, but they do. We are just as competitive as the men and don't stand on ceremony when choosing our racing line and sticking to it. I gave as good as I got and only almost lost my goggles once.

I don't know what made me think that Victoria Dock would be fresh water. I guess it just didn't even cross my mind. It's salty, brown and smells like wet dogs. Really not pleasant. But in the already growing heat, it was pleasantly cool. I'd joked with someone at the start that it'd be great to do the whole race in the water as it was forecast to be 24ºC or so and I really don't get on at all well with heat when I'm running. Once I'd got over the surprise that the water was salty, and the few stonking smacks I got on the head and shoulders shortly after the start, I fell into a rhythm and worked out where we were all headed for the long leg of the swim.

The race pack said that there was one turn in the swim. Slightly misleading even when you look at the course map in that there are two turns on the course; one after a long leg and one after an even longer one to turn back to the start again. Thing is, it wasn't even that straight forward either. The swim course was in fact a rectangle with two long sides, two short sides and the start/finish about 1/4 the way down one of the long sides of the rectangle. What was worse was that there was a buoy left out from the sprints on Saturday that confused people on the really long leg of the rectangle and cause a few people to turn too soon, only to be shoved back by safety marshals in canoes and told to keep going straight for longer. Sliiiiightly annoying, but I only lost a few seconds to people cutting across me for that.

I really didn't put a lot of effort into the swim. As I've never done an Olympic distance triathlon before and done absolutely no training for this event (I've run about 5 times since my bike accident in March, swum a few times and cycled to work a few times) I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish without reining in the effort and saving myself for the run at the end. I also wasn't sure about race nutrition, but as it's "only" going to be 3 hours of effort, maximum, it wasn't too much of a worry. So anyway, not the fastest swim of 1500m I've ever done and I didn't feel like I'd used up much oomph.

The ramp out of the water was a welcome exit compared with the Thames swim ones and the open water swim session we'd done earlier in the year, scrambling out knee-deep in mud. No helping hands unzipping the wet-suit this time, but we were handed big plastic bags to dump our wet-suits into and had to completely remove them before the swim end line. I was worried about getting my wet-suit off after the trouble I'd had after the Thames swim where my entire body seemed to have swollen up a bit and it took a good 5 minutes to get the damned thing off! No such trouble this time and I slipped out of it like a greased pig (er!) then trotted off to transition to find my bike.

Horror of horrors! With wet feet, dripping and dangling a bag of crap in one hand we had to run up some stairs - plastic coated ones - to transition. That was a bit scary and I was worried about slipping and bashing my teeth out on the stairs. That didn't happen (of course) and I pegged it along the subsequent sisal matting on the next floor up and into transition. Where I found the right row (second row B after row A, next to the big number 8) about 10 bikes in from the end. Of course, I was coming at it from the opposite end to how we approached to rack up in transition and I'd thought I was 10 bikes in, not 15. So I was looking on the wrong side of the row, not far enough in from the end. I couldn't see my bike. Or the towel I'd left out to dry my feet while taking a gel and a swig of drink. Or my helmet, or anything I recognised. For about a minute, I cast my eyes about looking for my damned bike. Then I started to wonder what I would do if it took me 5 minutes to find it; give up? Discount transition time from my overall race time afterwards? No matter as I spotted my baby boy bike and shot towards it. Someone else had dumped their towel and wet-suit bag over my stuff so I moved it, got chomping on a gel, put on glasses, helmet and decided against socks to keep cooler on the bike and save a bit of time in transition (I could always decide to put some on when changing shoes for the run later anyway), took a swig of drink and then trotted off to the bike "out" to hop on my bike and pedal off.

I hadn't looked at my watch and had no idea how I was doing for time and was still thinking not to over-cook the bike to leave something in the tank for the run. The bike stage was... relatively uneventful. I took it pretty easy, did let go a bit in the down hill sections and re-discovered that yes, I am awful at cornering. There were several times where I'd overtaken someone pretty comprehensively and was pulling away from them and then would get to a roundabout, or turn at one end of the stage or the other, only to be overtaken back by those people only having to overtake them back again... several times in a row. By the end I felt pretty fresh and only got a bit cross that the final few metres were up quite a ramp to get back into the exhibition centre. Best bit was the people with cow-bells near the end of the bike laps; absolutely loved that!

Feeling awfully good and having done a load of maths in my head while on the bike, I was hoping that my watch would say I'd been going for just under 2 hours when I got to my spot in transition. When I'd got over the fact that I couldn't find my place (again!) mostly because there were no other bikes back (which worried me at first, but then made me think I must have been quite quick), I whipped off my helmet and bike shoes and pulled on my running shoes, my new baseball cap, squirted two gels into my mouth in quick succession and grabbed my bottle of Gatorade to take out for the first bit of the run. I dared to look at my watch. It said 01:47:xx and I started to giggle. It was apparent immediately that not only was I going to beat 03:15:00, but also 03:00:00 quite easily even if the 10K took an hour (which I didn't think was going to be the case unless my knee gave up at a late stage of the run).

The first run lap was not exactly nice. It was pretty warm, I felt quite sick, the water and feed stations were plentiful, the water spray was heavenly, but some of the terrain was horrible (plastic flooring made from inter-linked plates, probably designed to go over mud and other uneven stuff) and the course a little narrow in places. 4 laps with a couple of tight turns, some indoors in the ExCel centre where it was dark and cool and the crowds were even more encouraging and you could see the finish, however far out of reach it felt on the first couple of laps of the run course. It was pretty warm, as I said, and at each water station after the first one I took two cups, drank some of one and threw the rest of the water over myself. It ran down my neck, front and the backs of my legs and into my shoes so pretty soon I was aware of my feet rubbing quite a bit in the arches but I paid little attention to that as the coolness of the water was more important than a little pain in my feet and a good finish time more important than a few days pain after the race. Around half way through lap 2, I noticed a bit of pain around the skin of my inner upper arms and the sides of my torso. It reminded my of how my legs used to feel when I wore a skirt with bare legs when I was carrying a bit more weight than I do these days. That would result in excruciating pain and rawness in the skin on my inner thighs and a need to wear soft trousers for days afterwards. So I resolved never to mock marathon runners who look like chickens when they run - I get it now.

And, you'd think you'd be able to count up to 4, right? Hah. Lap 3, I lost it a bit and had no idea if it was lap 2, 3 or 4. So I had to work out what time each of those laps would give me on my watch and I was pretty convinced it was the 3rd lap and if my watch said something in the 02:3x:xx that would confirm it. And I looked down. And my watch said 02:3x:xx! Last lap the next one! I knew that if I'd got it wrong I'd end up disqualified anyway as there were a gazillion timing mats all over the course so the timing would show whether you'd missed a lap (also that you could see your splits). I put a bit of effort in to the last lap, started to feel a bit emotional that I was going to utterly smash my targets and felt the emotion welling up. It had to be pushed down a good few times as I still had to get to the finish and not collapse just short of it. I felt tired, drained and sure that if I'd had to do another lap I'd've been too tired for it, but I was happy enough that when my name was called out going over the penultimate timing mat I waved a bit and then threw myself up the ramp and across the finish line.

A vision of loveliness, an angel in green, she handed me a bag of ice. I almost told her that I loved her. I immediately shoved it under my arms alternately to cool off the burning pain in the skin, sat down and had a bit of a panic attack. Then remembered to turn my watch off. I wheezed and groaned like a donkey and sat down on the steps right next to the finish to calm down and get control of my breathing. It took a couple of minutes, but was easily done and I leapt up onto the podium for my finisher's photo and off to get my stuff from transition and some food as I was feeling both pretty sick and hungry at the same time. My feet were utterly ruined and had enormous blisters from the run. The next few days would involve hobbling about in trainers, wearing blister plasters.

To cut the rest short, I dumped my stuff in the car, found the magic timing printing machine and squealed (02:45:01! 00:31:11 swim, 00:03:55 T1, 01:09:56 bike, 00:03:07 T2, 00:56:49 run) and waited for Mr TOTKat (his race start was at 14:30 so a whole 2 hours after me so he watched me start and was about to get into the water when I came back from the bike stage), who had a horrible time in the run, and then fretted over him as he was in a bit of a state afterwards and quite dehydrated. 13 hours after we left the house we got home, had showers and headed out for food - a huge burger and chips and a couple of pints of defective beer (2 pints and we were just full rather than squiffy).

Overall, I'm really pleased. Bitten by the Olympic distance bug and confident I can achieve a sub 02:30:00 time with some putting some effort into each of the disciplines instead of worrying about finishing, actual training and familiarity for sure. (Slightly annoyed that the official time has 1s added to the swim time. Bah!)

Brick this!

2011-07-24T15:18:00.000+01:00

I think I might get 'round next weekend. If I can work out how to get the k-tape to stay on through the swim, it's going to work.

T2 brick test today; 31km bike followed immediately by a 7.8km run. The secondary tests were, some race fuel (High5 EnergySource) to see if my stomach is OK with it, and drinking on the bike.

Apart from being yelled at by a twat in a Chelsea Tractor at Wimbledon Common (dude, if you had a less stupid car and a bit less of a vein sticking out on your forehead, you'll probably live longer), the bike was good. I'm still completely useless at using a bottle on the bike - seriously, if you've never tried it, it's a lot harder than it looks. I can get the bottle out of the rack relatively OK as long as I'm free-wheeling, but drinking is really difficult and getting it back in the rack again is pretty stressful. I ended up with sticky drink on my hands, handlebars and down my leg a bit and some of it in my mouth. My heart rate monitor hadn't worked for the cycle, so fuelling was really going to be a bit off as I'd got no idea of the amount I'd burned through.

31.16km in 01:11:04 including slowing down for traffic lights, being a total useless goit with the drinks bottle several times etc., so I'm hoping that will translate to 01:32 - 01:35 next weekend over the 40km race route.

I chugged the remainder of the fuel drink and the run started off pretty nicely. As usual between bike and run, my legs felt a bit heavy at the start but I went off at a reasonable pace and the route was a loop of around 2.5km which allowed for stuff going wrong and being not too far from home if it did.

Pace-wise, that's around my usual fastest 10km pace -without- having cycled 31km first. So I'm quite encouraged by that. That sort of pace should give me a 10km run time of around 55:00 - 56:00, hopefully. My knee stayed quiet throughout and the only indication of anything not being perfectly fine was a tight hamstring into the back of the knee and that was it.

So, I'm pretty sure I'll get 'round next weekend. No idea what transition times will look like, but with a 30:00 swim, a 01:35 bike and a 56:00 run I'm looking at an overall race time of 03:01:00 plus transition, so a target of 03:10:00 seems reasonable.

Kinda sorta rather promising

2011-07-23T20:33:00.001+01:00

We pootled up to the common for a run on the Parkrun course; a 2.25 km loop, so if my knee went pop it was never far to hobble back to the car. I was all strapped up with the K-tape and ready for a slow trot.

Given that at the British 10K 2 weekends ago my knee got angry around the 7km mark I had to go at least that far to see what happened. We set off at a very gentle pace, really very very gentle and kept it steady for the first few km. At 4km, everything was feeling fine so we agreed to turn up the gas at 7km to try to force something to happen if it hadn't already.

7km we took it up a notch and again at 8.5km and my knee was not only feeling OK, but it actually felt -better- than the other one. It felt like a smooth, well-oiled joint; noticeably more comfortable and 'right' feeling than usual. I tried to keep up with Mr TOTKat when he kicked off at 8.5km and almost sort of did then decided I was too under-fuelled to go on past 9km so we stopped there and had a gentle jog to cool down a bit before a stretch, drink and back home again.

So. Without wanting to get too excited, I think the K-taping may have made some sort of difference. How much of a difference will only become apparent with a brick session. So I'm planning to do one tomorrow (and combine it with testing some race fuel for next weekend - OMG LONDON IS NEXT WEEKEND! *cough* With all the injury mess, I've done no training and it's my first Olympic distance triathlon! Halp!)

K-tape

2011-07-21T13:16:00.001+01:00

Physio visit involved a recap of the MRI results (mild ITB irritation, fat pad inflammation and mild fraying of the cartilege - perhaps related to the syringing many years ago) and a bit of a trot with physio in tow, assessing my gait. Apparently my back is very rigid, my hips do something weird and one foot does a floppy thing every 5-6 steps at slow speed but at fast speed my gait becomes much better. He prodded my hips and glutes and did some deep-tissue work on those (OW!) to loosen things up a bit.

Current thinking is to tape my patella to encourage it to move a bit differently, to see what effect that has on the pain:-

Will go for a decent run at the weekend to see how that works out. And in the mean time physio is drawing some pictures and having a think about what's going on with my hip movement to see what's going on there. With 1 week left to London thereafter there may be some other interim management required to get me through that before the more long-term management strategy.

Thames Swim

2011-07-18T20:46:00.000+01:00

I didn't die.

I did get a good two mouthfuls of Thames water, but I seem to be not ill (yet - bit of a sore throat, but hey). No training, due to general arseness of lack of faith in being able to push my body at the moment. So.

We were hit by different organisation this year and, quite frankly, not so good. Queueing was a farce and lots of people almost (and probably did) miss their wave. We almost did, after queueing for registration and finding the timing chip queue was massive... I just queue jumped the entire chip queue as I found someone had been fast-tracked in front of me in the registration queue only to find out had the same start time as us.

I lost Mr TOTKat at registration and panicked that I had no money to pay for the bag transport, but it turned out it was included in entry anyway. Dumping my bag off, I realised I'd not lubricated the neck of my wet-suit so was going to have to take the hit of a potential awful neck rawness at the end. I trotted off to the start, to find there was only 7-8 minutes to the wave kick-off and I was still not completely in my wet suit. Thankfully the guy who was fast tracked offered and helped me zip up and I reciprocated.

We'd both missed race briefing and having heard race organisation grumblings, were given a re-run of the briefing and Mr TOTKat showed up with seconds to spare before we plopped in to the water to paddle to the start. I was rude and shoved my way to the front and waited for the hooter to start us off.

Long and boring swimming happened. With a bit of a melee at the start, I had no problem holding my position and not wavering from it whether it meant getting a smack on the head/arm/back/face/legs/body or giving one. Breathing every two and cursing the race briefing that said the yellow buoys were every 800m (there were 5 in a 3.65km race, none at the start and an orange one at the end, go figure) it was basically extremely boring this time around. Visibility was rubbish, but then it's a silty river, so what do you expect? Put on a bit of a spurt of speed once at about 2.25km in and then again at about 3.2km and was helped out onto the ramp at the end. Wobbled up the ramp and then cursed that the timing mat for the end of the race was quite a way along from where you get out. Cursed even more when I saw Mr TOTKat picking up his bag, 45s ahead of me.

To be fair, he's trained for this event and I haven't. So well done him. A whole 10 minutes quicker than he was last year, which is 12.5% faster! (me, I was 3 minutes faster than last year, which isn't awful but not unexpected due to being generally fitter anyway)

No sore neck, no chafing at all from the wetsuit. AND my lovely 2XU swimming compression top did a fabulous job as I'm not utterly crippled today and can easily raise my arms above my head. Result!

British 10K

2011-07-15T23:55:00.001+01:00

Having specifically asked the orthopaedic surgeon whether I could safely train/exercise and not been told it was a bad idea, I decided to run the British 10K last weekend.

Having not run at all for a month (the last run was 4 weeks earlier and only 5km) and done naff all running at all in the last 4 months, it was always a bit of a stretch to consider even finishing a 10km run in any reasonable time (or, if you're being sensible about it, to go that far one one go). But I'm nothing if not bloody-minded and pretty fed up about not being able to compete in sports events properly/at all at the moment.

It was an earlyish start and the tubes were quiet. A good bowl of porridge in our bellies, we made our way in to town for the run. There were a few runners on the tube, but nothing that gave any idea of the scale of this event even slightly. It was only really apparent when we were lined up, queueing up the road to cross the start line. We weren't all that far from the front and turning around to look behind us, the number behind us was phenomenal. Around 25,000 people ran the British 10K - I say "ran", there were an awful lot of walkers. People who walked from start to finish and never had intended to run (it's called the "British 10K run", the clue is in the title!), people who were just doing it for charity and that's where I went wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people raising money for charity. But I think it absolutely ruins a lot of sport events; the London marathon is two events now, the elite runners and then people who raise money for charity by titting about in a banana costume. It's not a sport event for anyone who isn't an elite because it's so hard to get a place without raising money for charity. And, to be honest, I think that really really sucks. Yes, there are people who are trying really hard, for them. And there are people who simply can't run 10km. But it's just frustrating for people who actually just want to enter a 10km running race and not be made to feel guilty for not raising money for charity. Seriously, if I had to raise money for every race I entered I'd only be able to enter one per year because, you know what, people get charity fatigue and you can't just keep asking for sponsorship all of the time. It's a sad state of affairs that a large proportion of the population equates "normal" people doing sporting events with raising money for charity and that there's no other reason you'd be doing it. Oh I'm not sure where I'm going with this, it's just frustrating.

Anyway. Race started, we ran. We ran around everyone who was walking, and by god there were a -lot- of those all through the race. I needed a wee from about 20 minutes before the start (yes there were loos but we were "kettled" for over 40 minutes before the start and I needed to go again) so spent a lot of time considering exactly how endurance runners deal with this sort of thing until the 4.5km mark where there were loos - yay! I stopped my watch while I queued and weed and started it up again when I was done. And it was rather warm. I don't deal with warm very well. Felt a lot better after the comfort break, but not long after that (around 7km) my knee decided to say something. And it got noisier and noisier, but there was no point in not finishing, so I did. 57:something on the watch. And then we went to find food and instant ice-packs. And accidentally had awful burger and chips and beer...

...followed by a total fail when we got home when we ended up having takeaway pizza. *sigh*

OK, so I managed to finish a 10km run, but I'm not feeling enthusiasm or a sense of achievement. Mostly because my knee is still in indeterminate state, but that aside, the time was cack and the official time awful due to the pee stop (01:04! Yes, the loo queue was looooong!). How can that be something to even be OK about, never mind proud?

clonk

2011-07-12T21:59:00.000+01:00

The good: After a good few calls, I think I may finally have got my MRI results and notes sent to the physio.

The bad: I have discovered a new symptom and I don't like it. The knee, under load, now has an abnormal feeling movement when squatting (*clonk*). Where load may be simply body-weight. It feels Wrong.

I really don't like it. And I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm hoping that I get an appointment with my physio again soon with the MRI results notes through from the hospital and I can discuss it with him so I'll call the physio at lunch time tomorrow to see if the notes have arrived yet.

Somethingsomethingpinchedsomething

2011-07-09T12:47:00.001+01:00

I was at work and in the middle of something when the surgeon phoned with my MRI results. I caught something about "he (the sports physician who did the MRI) made a very bold statement and said it's definitely not the IT band" and "knee tracking" and "pinching the fat pad". I asked if I need to lay off exercise and training and he said some stuff about being OK to do things that don't hurt. It was all a bit too much of a context switch from what I was doing at work at the time to follow in any detail. The important bits that I did take in were that I need a set of sessions with the physio, 6 to 8 of those, and that it's OK to do stuff. To be honest, I really don't care any more what the diagnosis is, given most of the treatments/rehabilitations are exactly the same for an awful lot of knee-based injury. As long as there's nothing that's going to get worse over time if we don't do something with it and given there's nothing going on with bones or cartilage, risk there is extremely low.

So I did a quick trot around the block a couple of times this morning. Average pace 08:12, peak 06:17, only over 2.5km but I've not run in 4 weeks, so best not to go nuts. (so, er, I'll be doing, or at least starting, the London 10K tomorrow *cough*)

Still no news really

2011-07-07T20:15:00.000+01:00

Saw the sports physician yesterday. He prodded a bit and took history and decided it's probably an insertion of the ham string tendon. He wanted to prove it's not a cartilage problem for sure, given it's all very close together around that area, so booked me in for an MRI. The MRI was later in the day and I got to stick my leg inside a 1.5 Tesla magnet. Noisy thing!

I should get a call from the orthopaedic surgeon with the results tomorrow (as the sports physician is on holiday now). So, hopefully I'll actually have a concrete diagnosis by the end of the day.

Funny how we started with a suspected insertion a few weeks back, went through the possibly hysterical break and/or dislocation, through cartilage damage and back to an insertion again.

No real update yet

2011-07-05T21:04:00.000+01:00

But I have an appointment tomorrow to see a sports physician with a bunch of diagnostic toys. What's been nice over the last couple of days is a call from my physio, following up where I'd got to with getting a referral to someone with some cool diagnostic toys and then a call today from my GP to follow up from his side. Well, he's not my assigned GP, but he's the doctor at the surgery I've been seeing for my knee wonkiness.

Current suspect between the physio and GP is now cartilage, but we'll see tomorrow.

Sod.

2011-07-01T20:08:00.002+01:00

So I'd been sort of doing my physio instructed exercises for my knee but there was still a niggling wrongness going on and I'd not had a follow-up appointment so I arranged an appointment this evening in advance of the weekend's races, in case a quick bit of acupuncture might be in order to help get through them.

Bloody good thing I did.

The nerve inflammation is lesser and the stiffness is gone compared with 2.5 weeks ago, but what it has shown up is a potentially serious problem. My left fibula is either broken or dislocated. Or, more likely from what we saw this evening, both. The physio had a good old poke and yank and got a second and third opinion from two others (one of whom had the decency to say "wow, that's really not right!") and then some ultrasound shows up what rather looks like a break where the outer edge of the bone has splintered in a fanned-out pattern in addition to the head of the fibula being way too far back compared with where it should be. This would explain absolutely everything with all of the symptoms (and some others I'd not mentioned because I didn't really think to). The kind of break it looks like would be as a result of a hard impact. *cough* Like a bicycle accident. *ahem*

So. I'm waiting to hear back from the physio as to what his sports doctor thinks and whether I can get a scan ASAP to work out -exactly- what's going on. Best case, it's "just" dislocated and needs relocation either in the clinic or in hospital (more likely given the kind of dislocation involved). Worst case it's broken and partly healed and dislocated and a nightmare to fix. There was talk of months of pinning and fiddling about after unpinning etc.

All I can do is wait to hear back. And my default position right now is no racing this weekend until I hear that I definitely can. *twiddles thumbs and waits for the phone to ring* To be honest, I'm feeling fine about it all and I'm glad this is happening now rather than this time next year.

Two race weekend

2011-06-29T21:14:00.001+01:00

Work has been crazy. I've over-indulged and not done much (any) training.

We had an open water swim session on Sunday, set up by the Virgin Active London Triathlon organisation, but run by NOWCA (a really great organisation who have noticed that open water swimming is really taking off but there are problems around it in terms of finding safe places to swim and safe ways to organise swims and are looking to regulate things - founded by Martin Allen and the infamous Rick Kiddle (truly lovely guy, great coach, great athlete)). The idea with the Virgin sponsorship of the triathlon is to expand the sport even more, bring it to more first timers and these open water swim training sessions are designed to help people get to grips with the differences and techniques associated and gain confidence in open water.

I don't pretend to be an expert at open water swimming, but I do (so far) seem to be not totally shite at it and I've had no problems with confidence or the rather physical nature of the mass starts you often hear about. So I was there mostly to pick up any tips and keep Mr TOTKat company. I enjoyed myself, got a little bit competitive and the group we were in weren't shrinking violets (though all rather British about physical contact in the water - heh, they'll learn soon enough :o)) which added to my enjoyment. The end of the session was a bit of fun as we all raced to the bank to get out and strip off our wetsuits first, as was the challenge, to find when we decided to stand in the water to wade the last few feet, we were all more than waist deep in a soup of thick silt and mud and needed to get a lot closer to the bank before really trying to stand up and wade out. Mmmm, sludgey!

Then on Sunday I had a hard session with Geoff the Awesome, who gave me a nicely confidence boosting workout of more old-school weight training where I still failed to really get the snatch technique even remotely right, but came away feeling worked really hard which I've really missed. After that, we had roast chicken and drank waaaaay more than is a good idea for a Sunday night.

Monday, no exercise - planned no gym as I'd gymmed the day before, but I was supposed to cycle to work and decided it was a bad idea in the morning given the amount I'd had the night before. Tuesday, no exercise - we were out for dinner, so I wasn't going to cycle in and leave my bike at work - I hate doing that. And we went for dinner. And drank waaaay too much again. Today, no exercise. I had no gym kit with me but thought I might get a swim in today; work denied me that due to being insanely busy.

So. I have a race on Saturday - Shock Absorber Women's Triathlon - and one on Sunday - Clapham Common 10K. And I really can't go to the gym on Friday as that would be foolish the day before a race. The plan is to cycle and gym tomorrow and rest on Friday before the races. Sub-optimal, but I don't want a whole 7 days with no resistance training at all.

Ohyay! L2B photo!

2011-06-23T19:31:00.000+01:00

We had a couple of photos taken at the end of London to Brighton on Sunday and they didn't appear on the photo site earlier in the week, so we thought they hadn't made it. I had a quick check for our individual ones just now and, yay, the ones of both of us were there :o) (Tell you what, that pink cycling top Mr TOTKat has on was really useful for finding him in crowds of other cyclists!)

Oops. Or, a first commitment.

2011-06-22T07:49:00.000+01:00

London to Brighton

2011-06-21T11:55:00.007+01:00

I've wanted to do this for a while; ride London to Brighton on the event day itself, on the official route, with 27,000 other cyclists. Much as I've feared cycling in large groups and hills and stuff, overall it was a resounding success for me.

The start was 06:30 and we only just got there in time, after a mahousive bowl of porridge (50g organic jumbo oats, 20g organic raisins, 1/2 banana, 10g coconut oil, splash of cream, squirt of agave nectar and water - nuked for 3 minutes in the microwave) to kick-start the fuelling. With me, I had a large bap filled with ham, chorizo, houmous and lettuce, two 500ml bottles of Powerade and a bag of Ride Shots. This was also going to be a test of fuelling for a long distance (long time period) event; the estimated ride time from me being 4.5 hours or so. Calculations would say that I'd need at least 60g x 4 for 4.5 hours of carbohydrate available to fuel through and with what I'd packed, I was quite under, but it wasn't going to be a all-out ride due to the sheer numbers of people and I'm not practised in using bottle cages, drinking or eating on the move.

One thing I think I got quite wrong was the hydration. I was well, well hydrated which meant that we had to stop for me to wee 5 times! A total of an hour stopped time for all of that, allowing for wrestling in and out of cycling gear to wee and back into it all again each time and take a good slug of drink.

The first slight hill was a bit of a shock. For me, it was a little undulation and I was pretty unimpressed by the fact that there were so many people for whom it was quite a challenge that everything ground to a halt and I almost had to get off and walk because things were moving so slowly I could barely pedal slowly enough and stay upright, clinging to the edge of the road in the horrifically potholed bit of tarmac. Still. I learned a lot from that first hill and things thinned out quite a bit on hills after that one and none were ever quite so horrid again.

Up and down the rolling undulations mostly overtaking most people up the hills in between wee stops. No stopping for food at any of the refreshment stations. We kept on trucking all the way through. Turners Hill came and went and then the lower slope upwards towards The Hill. The chattiness died down quite a bit amongst the riders and then there was The Hill. I wasn't feeling sparkling, a bit tired and probably under-fuelled at the time so I thought I was going to have to cut my losses, get off and walk.

But. I decided to just give it a go.

People were really good. Those who chose right from the start kept to the left, did so really nicely. Those who had to get off part way up were really good at getting clear to allow for those cycling up to continue. It was all quiet. So very very quiet. All I could hear was my own heavy breathing. At one point, about 1/4 way up I loudly complained "the road surface REALLY isn't helping here" and got a grunt of agreement from my left. Every time I rounded a corner after the first three of them I thought it was the last one. No. Not for very many more. Each time, thankfully, the slope levelled off a bit so I could let my thighs off a little bit and nearing the top, someone walking shouted "well done, you're almost there!" at me which was absolutely great at the time and I responded with "thanks, could do with more cowbell!" and I reached the top with burning thighs - looking back at my heart rate profile, it was an under-fuelling thing for sure, my heart rate would have gone higher 'cause I would have been able to put more into the muscles, drawing on my cardio capacity more - wondered where Mr TOTKat might have pulled over to wait for me and saw him really quite quickly. I was about 90s behind him up a hill that'd taken about 10 minutes to climb. Not too shabby at all!

More undulations and rolling into Brighton itself, with one particularly brown-trousers descent given how tired I was (mentally as well as physically), I hung onto the brakes all the way down and cursed people flying past me at over 45mph. We rounded the final corner and down the chute into the finish line. The chute was great; lined with a huge crowd of people cheering and clapping and even a hand bell; a fantastic finish to it all.

Finding a place to lean our bikes, find a seat, beer and burgers/hotdogs we had a good old sit down for an hour or so, bike spotting and counting the Specialized (by far the most common bike make on the day) before walking back down the sea front to the organised transport home (and yet another wee!).

Wins of the day:- my lovely bike (Fuji Team Pro Special Edition with Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels), Powerade, rest stop toilets, Mr TOTKat for deciding to stay with me through the ride, and meeee for getting up Ditchling Beacon without walking!