My favourite race of all; it's Blenheim!

In the journey through the various races I've done while learning about and enjoying triathlon, there are some races I just love.  Blenheim Sprint Triathlon is one of them and probably at the top of the list.

The first time I raced at Blenheim, I'd only done a few sprints before (at Thames Turbo) and this was my first big, commercial race.  And it was amazing!  Even though I DNFed due to an ongoing knee injury I really really enjoyed it.  The grounds are beautiful,  the lake is clear and still, the course is gently undulating on the bike and run and the support is warm.

"For me, the swim was glorious. An utter breeze. It felt easy, smooth and I went a little off course a couple of times but was way ahead of the majority of our wave by the turn buoy. I wasn't entirely sure where the end of them swim was, but carried on feeling fantastic and quick until I finally worked out where the finish was.
Again, still well at the front of the wave, I was helped out onto the pontoon with little trouble and squeaked in surprise as one of the support volunteers unzipped my wetsuit for me when I really wasn't expecting that. Very helpful! Thanking them both and tearing off the arms and top part, I ran up the hideous slope towards transition - really steep! Glancing down at my watch, my heart rate was 184! I rounded the corner at the top of one of the slopes into transition, pulling off my swimming caps (mine plus the race one on top) and goggles, and a huge grin spread across my face as the crowd were clapping and cheering for everyone and as I was still near the front of the wave and the competitors were relatively spread out, it meant that they were cheering for me! Yes, me!"

Looong slope up to transition 

The next time, I raced under odd conditions due to work troubles, but I loved it again.

"I got overtaken by a little blonde girl about 750m from the end, which made me kick up two gears and then curse the fact that I'd had those two gears and not used them - and there was plenty left to hold that pace -and- put in a sprint finish. I got overtaken again by two more girls, who I hung on to, hoping they were only on their first lap of the run. When they peeled off left to do their second lap when I was finishing my second, I laughed out loud because I hadn't been racing them, had a huge grin and sprinted to the finish."

I did grin, honest! It was just a bit after this was taken.

I missed it last year due to the bridge problem they had (what a stroppy I was about it too!), but I'm back again for a 3rd time at Blenheim on Sunday this coming weekend and I know it'll be an awfully slow swim compared with the last two, the bike could be excitingly quick and I'll take whatever comes on the run.  I'm extremely rusty on racing sprints, so I'm sure I'll be hilariously slow in the transitions, but it's going to be lovely!

I have a confession...

I've not been enjoying triathlon at all this year.  Not that I've actually raced any yet, having bashed my knee the day before Mallorca 70.3.  But I'm just not enjoying the training.  It has felt like a dirty secret for a while, but now I've made a choice, it's out now and I feel so much better for it.

Getting to the pool has been getting mentally harder and harder over the last 12 months; partly to do with the current and previous job being nowhere near a pool at all, not even a 17m one (I trained successfully for the bonkers year of Ironman in 2012 in a 17m pool), so I couldn't swim at lunch time.  Part of it is that I've got way out of the habit of swimming (see point 1).  I've also been feeling more and more down about a training plan that I'm not only shuffling around during the week (which is mostly fine to do and I've been doing that for a few years), but I'm missing or short-changing most of the sessions and then feeling bad about that.  And then realising the lack of work put in means that it'd be either very miserable to grind through a hilly 70.3 or perhaps full distance Ironman, or just plain out of the question to complete it.

So I've decided to stop doing triathlons for now.  There's no point in dragging yourself through weekly cycles of rage and blues for something you're supposed to be doing for fun.  I'll see how I feel up until the morning of the UK 70.3 in 2 weeks time; I'll race at Blenheim (it's "only" a sprint and a flat one at that) this weekend, and just train how I feel after that for a while.  But Ironman Wales is off the cards (and I can only get, at most, 25% of the cost of that back now *sigh*)

Commuting by bike and on foot to work is much more accessible now we have lockers and showers at work, so I can get a lot of useful exercise in during the week and really clock up some run miles if I so choose.  And then there's parkrun, the common and the Surrey hills at the weekends where I can just go out and have some fun and even socialise!  I feel a lot better about things now I've made this (fairly temporary) choice and it really opens things up to getting a whole bunch of things more fluidly in the calendar - off-road running races rarely fill up months in advance :o)

So. Boring.

This up and down feeling gets really very tedious.  So goes the cycle:-

• Yay! Enthusiasm for a training programme!
• Following it quite well under controlled circumstances.
• YAY! Feeling really good about it all!
• Following it quite well under controlled circumstances.
• Being convinced you're slower and less fit than $time_period_of_choice.  Boo!
• Feeling really down because you thought you were doing well, but you're not (well, you probably are, but are choosing the wrong metrics at the wrong time). Booo!
• Circumstances changing outside your control.
• Failing to follow the training plan very well. BOO!
• Feeling devastated as everything is clearly doomed. BOOO!
• Shuffling the plan to fit better with new circumstances.
• Feeling a bit better about it all. Yay!
• Failing to follow the modified plan.
• Feeling devastated and convinced everything will be disastrous. Boo!
• Being 2 weeks out from a serious undertaking.
• Frantically trying to find ways to recover any fitness/speed. Booo!
• Knowing it's far too late for that. BOO!
• Feeling like a total failure. BOOO!

...and back to the start again.

I'm at the final two points on the last 13 days into Country to Capital.

yay

*sigh*

It's *such* a *tedious* cycle and it gets *so* *boring*.

2012 weekly training hours

It wasn't like this last year right up until I smashed up my collar bone.  I was averaging 11 hours a week from December 2011 to September 2012.  Since then, I've averaged 5-6 hours a week and it's mostly down to new job in March, then not cycling much in the last few months (which hammers my base fitness something rotten, plus chips away at my cycling handling and hill climbing/descending capability) and being in an awkward and unfamiliar location.  Depressing.  And it'd be nice to say it's on the mend in a week's time when we're properly back home again, but I can't do a whole lot that week as it'll only knacker me out for said Country to Capital and that wouldn't help the state of my brain.  And then I need a good few days easing very gently back into things as I will have toasted my leg muscles and engine a bit.  So it's more like 2-3 weeks before I can really get back into things.

2013 weekly training hours

And there's another new job.  But there could be a great up-side to that in the possibility of commuting by bike opens up (thanks also to Vulpine's marvellous merino and nice, smart clothing for cycling in).  And there's a few months before the first proper triathlon of the season... 130 days to Mallorca 70.3

Mallorca 70.3 bike route & profile

So.

We'll see.

For now, I fight the positivity battle to get me to 11th January and through Country to Capital inside the cut-off time. (which really should be possible, given my Rotherham time for a longer, lumpier course)

"withdrawn"

Despite feeling really great (but with an irritated right ITB) after a 50 minute hard turbo session this afternoon, I will not be riding Hell of The Ashdown tomorrow.  My legs will not have recovered enough from the London Ultra last week to be able to tackle the hills; both climbs (not recovered legs) and descents (not practiced enough on the roads since September) would make me too miserable.

And there's no point doing an event if you're only going to be miserable.

So I'm not.

Discretion... valour... etc.

Peak training session

After the hill reps on the familiarisation day, I had the hardest, longest training session ever.  A 6 and a half hour brick; 5 hour bike, 1.5 hour run.  And it turned out to be a tiny bit longer as you can never be -quite- sure about traffic and pace...

I was due to do 3 sets of over-gearing for 15 minutes but it got difficult due to the terrain.  Firstly, due to the awful road surface around East Clandon, I was just chowing down on a particularly tasty Mule bar, when I hit a bump and 90% of the bar (I'd just had one bite) slid out of the wrapper and bounced down the road, leaving me holding an empty wrapper and a grouchy expression.  Then as I decided to use the first hill to start an over-geared section, it was too high a gradient descent to carry on putting in any effort at all so I ended up with not even 10 minutes for the first repetition.  The second one I started before my favourite hill - Crocknorth.  I think I got about 12ish minutes in to the over-gearing repetition and then hit the hill itself which needed no over-gearing whatsoever.  The third go was coming in to Box Hill and included Box Hill itself, which I left myself in 4th gear for just to make it a bit harder.  Interestingly, I was a bit tired going up Box Hill and actually fancied leaning on my tri-bars, so I did that almost all the way up and it was fine.  In fact, it was really rather comfy.

On reflection, I don't think I'm doing over-gearing right.  Or rather, making it hard enough.  I don't know.  It's hard when there's nothing to measure against and I still have relatively little experience at all of this stuff.  I was doubtful enough that I decided to do one more over-geared section while out on the Thames Turbo route towards the end, where I did manage to squeeze in another 15 minutes of it.

Garmin gets over-excited about kcals - I actually burned 2254kcals (and consumed 1387kcals, 239g carbs - needed 300g for the ride, in theory)

I thought I'd done over 125km on the bike.  Mostly because I accidentally hit the lap counter when I was trying to get the display back to cadence after moving the position of the Garmin on the bike and knocking it into a different display that I really wasn't interested in at the time.  Hey ho.  So, it's still quite a long way and the furthest in a single bike ride to date - and with only one wee stop, the longest in the saddle to date.

Hopping off the bike at home, I scampered for another wee (yeah, I think I was hydrated enough despite having not finished the two 750ml bottles on the ride), changed out of my bib-tights and cycling top into capri tights and a running t-shirt as well as out of my cycling shoes and into my favourite trainers and off out for a 90 minute run.

It took a while to settle into a stride that felt OK - I was worried that all the fatigue I accumulated on the ride and the previous two days would hit home and I'd run out of endurance.  But no, this was a really useful run to have in the mental bank as well as physical.  Once I got into my stride, I felt pretty good.  And by the time I got home, I felt like I could have carried on.  It wouldn't have been pretty and I'd've been quite knackered, but I could have gone on.

My IM run pace is around 06:12/km (I think) and, after this brick, I now think I will actually be able to sustain that over 42km on the day.  This brick session showed me a few things, one of which is that yes although there is a certain amount of background fatigue that accumulates, with the appropriate fuelling and a good taper, on the day it'll be achievable.  I was worried that I'd just be really dead in the legs, they'd feel awful throughout the whole run and I'd need to use all the psychological tricks in the book to get to the end of the run course.

These are my km splits for this brick session and remembering that there is a non-trivial hill in there, that's some quite encouraging data.  And my effort level was nicely consistent...

Got 2 streets away and turned back to get a gel to keep me going - I didn't need to find out what bonking feels like today

I must say that I didn't feel sparkling when got home, but after a Recovery XS and a chicken and avocado bagel and a 10 minute sit down, I was fine to trot out to sit in the cinema for two hours.  And 8 hours sleep later (which I really rather needed), ready to get up and go for a 2.4km swim :o)

This brick session gave me a great confidence boost.  Mostly around learning that longer races are a little bit like the shorter ones; once you get stuck into the next discipline, the previous one fades in the memory a bit and doesn't have a huge effect unless you've over-cooked it and/or not taken on board enough calories/carbohydrates.  If you have managed your effort well and fuelled well, you're in good stead for motoring on.  I did 1.38x the 70.3 bike distance (with around half of the hills) and 0.75x the run (with 1/3 the hills).  After a few days of fatiguing myself.  And I feel fine. (and when I wrote this, I'd just done a 2.4km swim and another 1.25 hours on the bike - rest day today!)

Hell of The Ashdown - Devil's DeTour

I've had... issues with cycling and hills.  So I decided to get over it and sign up for the silly annual hillfest that Mr TOTKat has done a couple of times before.  Slightly annoyingly, there is a longer and a shorter route.  And being completely lacking in perspective around hills, I decided to do the shorter route just to be safe.

The shorter of the two routes of the Catford Cycling Club annual large-sale sportive is the "Devil's deTour".  I thought I might manage 03:15:00 and did some maths on the 2011 results to see what the mean time for women over that course was and at 03:34:00 I thought top 1/3rd was a reasonable target to aim for.

R/L/SO	'Devil's deTour' Challenge '50K' (53.5K) Route	Route	Kilo	Mile
START	Biggin Hill, Kent - H.Q. Charles Darwin School, Jail Lane		00.0	00.0
L	Leaving HQ - Jail Lane - Bear R - Down Berrys Hill - Climb Church Hill
R	'Cudham Test Hill' (Church Hill) - At Top Dismount - CARE turning R	(M)	2.1	1.3
	Cudham - Cudham Lane - The Nower
R	Onto Hogtrough - DANGER steep descent - CARE hidden side roads		5.6	3.5
L	Brasted - CARE turning L into High St.	(M)	8.3	5.3
1st R	Chart Lane - Brasted Chart - Toys Hill(long/steady ascent)		11.7	7.3
	Toys Hill - DANGER steep descent		12.4	7.7
R	Into Green Lane - CARE at junction	B2042 (M)	14.8	9.2
L	Four Elms X roads L Into Clinton Lane	B2027	15.6	9.7
2nd R	Into How Green Lane	B2027	16.9	10.5
	In How Green Lane bear left at bend and follow road
L	L at Fork (110k route goes R)	(M)	18.7	11.6
L	L at T junction into Hever Rd	(M)	18.7	11.6
R	Bough Beech At T junction CARE turning R onto B2027	B2027(M)	20.3	12.6
1st L	Towards Blore Place - S/O at next junction (NOT to Ide Hill)		22.3	13.9
L	At junction keep bearing L into Bowzell Road		26.8	16.7
R	Bayley's Hill (long/steep ascent) At top of hill turn R into White House Lane		29.4	18.3
1st L	Into ? Gracious Lane		30.0	18.6
L	At B2042 onto Wheatsheaf Hill		32.3	21.1
1st R	At Car Park/ Toilets CHECK / Feed then L towards Ide Hill Village	CHECK	32.7	20.3
R	Ide Hill Village - R at Green/Roundabout		33.1	20.6
R	Fork R towards Sundridge - Church Rd		43.2	21.3
SO	Sundridge Straight over Traffic Lights into Chevening Road	B2211	36.8	22.9
Exit 1	At Roundabout turn L into Star Hill Road		40.6	25.2
	Climb Star Hill (long/steep ascent)		41.9	26.0
1st L	At 'The Harrow'		43.2	26.8
1st L	Knockholt Pound L at the village green into Main Road		43.5	27.0
L	At Scotts Lodge t junction L into Cudham Lane		46.6	29.0
1st R	Into Grays Road		46.8	29.1
R	At Hawley's Corner ('Spinning Wheel') extreme R into Buckhurst Rd		49.6	30.8
1st L	Into Berry's Green Road (care Potholes!)		50.8	31.6
1st L	At T junction then bear left at top of hill into Jail Lane		52.2	32.4
FINISH	HQ - Charles Darwin School on R in Jail Lane	Distance	53.5	33.2

Mr TOTKat was down for an 09:02 start for the 100K route, me 10:22 for the 50K route, so I had over an hour to kill after he and Mupps headed off for some hill-related fun.  Luckily, my overshoe decided to have a zip failure, so I spent a good 20 minutes looking for ways to stop it from flapping about and unravelling.  It was cold enough that not wearing them would have been probably a bad idea.  A cable tie was the first option, but I didn't like the fact that I couldn't get it off in a hurry, so I ended up with two elastic bands knotted together and threaded through the loop on the back of my cycling shoe to help it stay in place.

I ran into a Thames Turbo member and had a bit of a chat before a group of us headed off for the 10:22 start time slot.  Thankfully for me, I was pre-warned about the first hill being utterly ridiculous; "Major Climbs Cudham Test Hill – New in 2009, this literally gives a short sharp shock in the first mile or so. Don’t worry if you have to walk the 1 in 4 stretch at the top because in any case we ask you to dismount to turn right at the T junction."  That and the words of warning from Mr TOTKat prepared me for the silliness that was the first hill.  4 of the others in the same starting group, however, had no idea what was in store for them, so when they rounded the bend and started up the incline, three of them wobbled into the middle of the road, one of those fell sideways and got off, the other two zig-zagged in front of me a bit until I passed them in the first couple of metres and the last one disappeared behind me in a fit of giggles.

I powered up really very slowly, but knowing that was the worst of the steepness over, got to the junction at the top in one piece and only had to unclip at the top briefly before turning right and getting on with the ride.  Very pleased with the steepest bit over with in the first few minutes, I wasn't sure if that hill counted as one of the four main ones on the shorter route nor how the others would compare.

Annoyingly, MapMyRide doesn't consider the whole of Star Hill due to a plateau before the summit...

Long story short, I didn't hold back like I have been on my long rides.  I chased down two guys who were ahead of me and descended better than me, but I caught them on every ascent; the big hills and the rolling rises too.  I gritted my teeth through the big ascents and hung in there, was a bit cautious on the descents due mostly to worrying about oncoming traffic and the narrowness of some of the roads.  Next time I'll know better.  Also, I stopped a bit long at the feed station and ended up chatting to a guy who is to my right in this photo and making me grin like an idiot... (note the elastic band around my left ankle ;o))

I didn't intend to spend long at the feed station, but ended up there for over 5 and a half minutes mostly due to chatting.  If I'd just crammed in the two gels and swigs of water I'd've been out in a minute or two, tops.  And at the end, I really wish I had!

I don't remember this hill/photo point... but it looks pretty steep to me.  Note the guys behind me, out of the saddle.  I still can't do that on hills; fine on the flat though.  More bike skills practice please!

And here I am, giving out to the photographers part-way up Star Hill...  I was pretty chuffed at this point having spent a good few km chasing down a slightly large bloke all in Castelli gear with red pants underneath that were grinning through the black of his tights.  He'd passed me at a point after I'd messed up my gearing and was slower than I should have been, with a cheery "well done!".  I wasn't having any of that, sorted my gears out and proceeded to have him up the next hill.  Then he beat me down the next one.  So I beat him up the next.  Repeat for 3 hills and then I lost him, or he lost me I can't remember which now.

4km from the end, I was pumping down a gentle descent, really picking up speed, passed the first of a pair of cyclists, slowed a bit for a bend and then hit something big in the road.  I didn't see what it was but I yelled out "shiiii-i-i--i-i-iiit!", almost lost the back end of the bike, veered across the road and fought the bike back vertical underneath me.  Poor bugger behind was worried he was going to hit me, the guy in front yelled out to check I was OK.  I quickly made it known I was fine and carried on sawing at the pedals to get my speed back as I was almost at the finish and really wanted to get a decent time.

Round the final few bends, up the tiny little hill to the finish and I stormed over the finish line to the squealing of the timing mat.  Starving hungry at this point, I forgot about the planned recovery meal in the car and headed straight for the cafe for a sausage and bacon baguette and two teas, via picking up my finisher's certificate hot off the press.  02:26:14 - little did I know at that point it was only 00:01:47 behind the first woman!

Once I'd stuffed a ton of food in and cooled down a bit, I nipped back to the car to pick up Mr TOTKat's trainers as he was due to do a 15 minute run at the end of the ride.  There were loads of sociable people chatting away so I ended up talking to two guys who were quite half-decent cyclists with lots of stories. Mr TOTKat and Mupps turned up and Mr TOTKat changed into trainers for a quick trot around the block before coming back to a sausage and bacon baguette.  I scoffed another two teas and a hunk of carrot cake before we packed up to go home.

As we drove home, I thought more and more about last year's results for this event and the fact that the first woman over the line for the short route did it in 02:20:xx.  I thought I was in with a shot of placing top three... and had to wait for hours for the results to go up.  Hitting refresh over and over until I got bored, and was eating dinner when an SMS came in from Mupps that I might want to hit refresh again.

4th place overall for the shorter route and 2nd woman by 1 minute and 47 seconds.  If only I'd yapped less at the feed station!

Good week, great ride!

Sunday's long ride (with short run afterwards) was a bit on the scary side, thinking about it beforehand, what with all the snow that's going on and the ice warnings...

Still, I set off a bit later than planned but with a belly full of porridge and tea, with Percy Pigs, a cereal bar, my phone, an extra thermal top and a flask of hot tea in my rucksack,  a bottle of water on my bike, and a decent length route plumbed into the Garmin.

The route was a good idea. A really nice change from the usual tedious routes and a few hills in it for good measure.  In theory, looking at the profile and the description, there were 3 hills on the route.  One and two were un-named but number 3 was Box Hill.  Demonised and scare-mongered that hill is, but I decided to stop being a wuss and go for it anyway.

Having trundled in to Kingston and taken a left where we normally turn right to go to the Thames Turbo races, I ended up on a long, straight, quiet road by the side of the river for quite some time.  This is where I hit the only patch of black ice I've ever come across and in the first split second, I had no idea what was going on, almost lost the back end of the bike, felt a weird gyroscopic effect and the struggle of my feet trying to fly away from the pedals but being clasped firmly in place by my cleats.  Not fun. but I didn't go over and it was finished in less than a couple of seconds.

The route carried on into villages, past a church where, at the one hour mark, I stopped for a minute to cram in the first five Percy Pigs.  They are great.  Seriously.  Then came the first hill.  It was a bit hard, but nothing terrible, nothing more than Wimbledon Hill which isn't so bad really.  Then came the second hill, which was a bit harder than the first.  Really quite a bit and I was slogging very slowly in the lowest gear, getting a bit worried about falling off due to moving so slowly and the piled up snow at the sides of the road forcing me more into the middle of the road with there being a couple of blind dips for oncoming vehicles.  It got so steep at one point that I was properly worried that I might go over into the road with no way for a car to see me, so I got off and walked up a little bit, before getting back on at a shallower section and finishing the climb.  Having passed through a few places where there were National Trust car parks and other sites, I decided to stop at the next one as that'd be 2 hours in to the ride and I wanted to have some tea and a cereal bar and hopefully a wee stop.  I got the tea and the cereal bar, plus some more Percy Pigs, but I'm afraid I had to make some yellow snow as there were no loos.  Two hills down, one to go.

Having got up the first two hills, I was genuinely worried about what Box Hill had in store for me especially having had to walk up a section of one of them.  If these hills were not named or publicly feared, how was I going to get up the one people talk about?  The tens of metres passed on and on with no sign of another hill...

Then I came to the first road that was coned off and  marked as "CLOSED", I trundled through, thinking "naaah, they don't really mean that, it looks fine to me.  It was a gentle downhill to a hair-pin bend at which point I was faced with this:-

And a lady out for a walk in the snow with her walking stick.  We chatted for a bit about the state of the road.  I think she thought I was crazy.  We headed off on our separate ways and then the road got worse and became this:-

The difference is subtle, but enough that the bike was going sideways and over bumps and even after I'd got off to walk, I fell over while wheeling my bike along.

Thankfully it cleared quite quickly and I was back on the wheels again and off for a lot more km before I came to the dreaded, revered, much-famed Box Hill.  I took the turning to the bottom of Box Hill, found the right hand turn that starts the climb to find, yet again, "ROAD CLOSED" and, just for fun on a hill, speed bumps.

Box Hill.  What a let down!  I was expecting some monster of a steep hill that would put the burn into my thighs and lungs, but nothing of the sort.  It's a set of fairly pedestrian switchbacks at a civilised gradient and even with speed bumps added in, it's just a very long, very shallow climb.  Unfortunately for me on Sunday, the reason for the road closure became apparent as I neared the top it got icy like that last photo again.  This time I didn't get off and walk up the last little bit, I just cycled purposefully onwards.  Easy on the handlebars, not fighting the bike and not putting a whole lot of power into the pedals.  And I almost got to the top, before I skittered sideways over a particularly lumpy, rutted patch of ice and lost the back end, ending up lying on my side, pedals still clipped in due to the low speed with my bike flapping between my legs. Ohboy did I feel silly in that position.  As I was just getting back on again I was passed by someone on a (far more appropriate for the condition of that road) mountain bike who said "that was fun wasn't it?" to which, the only appropriate response was "not really, no".  I now have a mahousive bruise on my right hip.

At the top of Box Hill, there's a National Trust cafe thing with benches outside where I decided to have more tea and Percy Pigs.  My poor bike was a teensy bit snow-bound from the trip up the hill...

...but the tea was still hot and the last 5 Percy Pigs a bit sweaty and sticky from being in my back pocket so long.

With a bit of help from a friendly mountain biker from Wimbledon, the packed-in ice in my cleats was dug out with a stick so I could get back on my bike for the last stretch home.  To be honest I was a bit naughty and turned up the gas a bit much for the final stretch.  This was supposed to be an easy ride, and it was apart from the scary bit up the earlier hill where I had to get off and walk, but the call of the home stretch often proves a bit much for me to resist.

Last week was a good un' and the ride at the end was just great.  I loved it, despite falling over a couple of times. Again! Again!

Good route, bad route signage

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.

Parkrun Triple - I got lost!

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.)

I Have A Mad Husband, But...

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.

Remember the Olympic Ball?

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.

That wasn't so bad

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...)

Brick this!

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.

Ohyay! L2B photo!

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!)

London to Brighton

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!

Din' walk :o)