This was not part of the plan

Today I had an endurance swim and a 2 hour spin on the bike scheduled.  As I needed to change wheels, cassette and seat onto my tri bike for Sunday and it'd need testing to make sure it was all in good order, I decided to do that and then use that bike for my ride.  I took off the handle bar mounted bottle cage to clean the sticky off it from Bolton to make sure I could get bottles in and out more easily than that day when I got really peed off with it towards the end.  I'm not sure if the bottle today was slightly fatter than usual, but it was a bugger to get back into the cage.  Hm.

I headed out to Kingston and onto the well-known Thames Turbo bike course.  I can ride it in my sleep and the pot-holes would be a good test for my new Adamo seat.  Power down to the road nicely on this bike, I enjoyed a good 90 minutes well in zone one and putting out an average speed of 26.8 km/h (stopped to fiddle with gear adjustments a few times, so avg speed is different to avg moving speed).  OK, it rained about 20 minute in and it rained hard for about 10 minutes, but that was fine.  I did lose the bottle over one of the pot-holes and had to stop to get it.

Then as I was heading back towards Kingston from the Thames Turbo bike route, through Hampton Wick, I had a drink while the traffic was quite slow and tried to wedge the bottle back into the cage.  I was being a bit of a bugger and I gave it a good shove.  At that moment, the back wheel skidded out from underneath me, the front wheel glanced the kerb and the bike went over, on top of me while I slid along the pavement on my left side.  As I was going over I thought, "This is exactly the sort of thing I was worried about before the next two races.  Ohgod, please let me not break anything!  Ow.".

Wet, gritty, dirty and bloody.

Passers-by on the pavement stopped to help and a car too.  As I was checking myself out and and talking to people, I turned to prop up my bike and Police had appeared out of nowhere.  They thought the car that had stopped had hit me.  Oops!  I did hurriedly tell them it was totally my own fault.  Everything seemed OK, just a little bit of blood on my knee and lots of wet gravel everywhere else though my little finger felt numb and tingly.  Bike looked fine too, so I declined the kind offer from the passer-by to go to her house around the corner to get cleaned up and cycled on home.

As I picked up speed on the larger roads, and put more effort in to the pedals, I noticed a deep soreness and stiffness in my left hip.  Blood trickling down my left leg and a bit on my left elbow was the only really visible sign of damage, the pain was mostly in my hip and shoulder which were both covered by clothes.

When I got home, my knee had some really quite cool globs of congealed blood on it but my hip and shoulder were very very sore.  After filling a few tissues with snot (cold, wet and a bit in shock), I dared to have a look at my shoulder.












Not too bad, just an abrasion through the fabric of my cycling top.  OK, it was seeping a bit of blood and clear fluid and swelling up a bit, but really not too bad.  My hip, however, was a bit of a shock.  Although it was very sore in the joint and muscle while pedalling, I hadn't expected there to be much surface damage so the expanse of that one was surprising and it was swelling up quite impressively too.

Fuzzy!  Hard to take a shot from this angle.

Side view of the swelling :o(

My elbow... not too bad, especially considering it had no fabric covering it when it hit the ground.

 My calf; quite scraped up...

Mmm, gritty!

 And even a dink in my ankle through my sock.  Nice!

Notice the crinkly, white feet from being in soaking wet socks for an hour.

So yes, not really part of the plan.  The plan was to avoid injury between the races.  That said, I'm glad this was today and not in 2 weeks time.  The grazes are mostly tolerable and would be covered by tri-suit to protect them under a wet-suit apart from the big one on my calf.  That's a bit of a worry under a wet-suit so I may just wear calf guards to keep it away from the rubber.  The deep-bruising in my hip may well end up compromising power on the bike and maybe even the run too.  It being 4 days before a pretty flat 70.3 is a much better thing than 4 days before a bloody hilly full distance Ironman.

Ow (but it's still good!)

Had a "fun" run session today.  01:50 planned with 30 minutes warm up, 15 minutes at half-marathon pace, 3 minutes recovery, 15 minutes at half-marathon pace and then jog down for 45ish minutes.

So, I jogged up to the common; there's a known 15ish minute circuit I could use and it takes about 30 minutes to get there.  Perfect!  There were a few frustrations around Garmin having a fit with pacing and being a bit random in the trees, but it settled and the pacing was pretty consistent throughout and I hit my half-marathon pace nicely, but over-cooked the recovery and jog down a bit.  Still some learning to do on that for sure.

At the start of the jog down, I hit a really muddy bridleway that was peppered with horse crap.  There was a moment where I pitched into some nasty brambles, tried to jump through to save myself but ended up sliced up on my legs.  I carried on for the last 40 minutes or so, thinking it was probably just a couple of tiny prickles, and it stung a bit, but when I got home...

 
And these are the thorns I pulled out of the wounds...

Looks a bit less bad cleaned up, but sore nonetheless.

The other leg wasn't so bad as the thorns hit lower down and on the front of my leg where I had long socks on.

So I'll be in shorts for the rest of today while those close up and scab over properly.  But I was proud that I achieved the goals of today's sessions and didn't stop and have a moment when I got injured (and that it wasn't serious at all - to be fair there were a lot of trees I could have ended up head-first into rather than just sliced by some brambles).  Good run!

Brave or silly

My calves are in paaaaaaaain still!  From Saturday's session with Geoff!  I can't work out what exactly killed them, but Oh Boy!  So the really clever thing to do, quite clearly, was to cycle to work and back yesterday and have a fun session in the gym today doing some of the things from Saturday's session (with no harness, no Bulgarian bags and a much smaller gym during the week, it cramps the style somewhat with some of the more flamboyant things Geoff gets me doing).

Tell you what, my shoulders look silly in the mirror when I'm doing those kettlebell squats.  And I managed to do 10, 8, 7 nose-to-floor pressups on my feet rather than knees :o)  I'm pretty sure those "Perfect Pushup" handle things are why I couldn't do them on Saturday.

I found some time

Or rather, I made some time today.  I've not been to the gym during the week for a few weeks due to illness, injury and phenomenal busyness but today I made the time to take a break in the day (my nominal "lunch break" which oh so often doesn't happen) and went to the nice gym near work.  And I had a go with the kettlebells.  On the way in I bought a pair of gym gloves.  I'm just fed up with picking off the callouses that form and flake away almost immediately every time I go to the gym and do anything with anything heavy.  But, of course, gloves don't protect your arms even a centimetre above the wrist.  The squat and snatch with kettlebells results in the kettlebell swinging into my arm just above the wrist and -oh- -boy- are they bruised and the bruises came up in under an hour after my gym session. 

So.  I'm clearly Not Doing It Right.

And I've Googled it and to be honest I've not come up with anything helpful.  So I'm grateful that I'm back to the trainer pretty soon so hopefully he can help me get it right.

That aside, I felt a lot better this time going through some of the exercises today.   No sign of dizziness or nausea so I'm clearly better than I was on Sunday and better fuelled as well.  Hoorah!

I shouldn't be allowed!

Mad busy week again (and will be again next week too due to impending intergalactic deadline of the century being next weekend) so not been around online a great deal and won't be again next week and certainly not over the weekend.

Anyhoo, we went for a run today - a tentative 10K around the area and the aim was to just not stop.  The upshot was that about 1km from home, I tripped on a manhole cover and went flying.  Left knee has a hole in my running tights and a small graze, right knee is pretty impressively skinned and sporting two large lumps.   Can't wait for the bruise to come up!  Same bloody knee I bruised quite spectacularly when I hit that car last Friday.  I really shouldn't be allowed to do anything physical out in the wild ;o)  Still. Even though I tried to throw myself face-first into the concrete, we finished in 56:33, a whole minute faster than my 10K race in November 2009.  A new personal best!  *pleased*

My knee really hurts though.  Lots of tea, leftover Christmas cake and sympathy might help.

What to do.

Warning: graphic description of minor wound below.


My thumb is really rather sore.  I'm dosing up on ibuprofen a few times a day and making sure it's not going black/green/purple once a day so far.  It hurts all down the inside of my thumb, up into the knuckles at the base of my index and middle fingers and up the inside of my index finger.  Pressure on the back of the nail, or near the tip on the soft side, is a big no-no.  So I'm pretty much keeping it straight and not using it for anything.  Which means that many day-to-day tasks are annoying and fiddly, but it also means I have no grip in my left hand.  Which means that cycling will be tricky, never mind the fact that changing down on the chain ring uses a thumb operated trigger that's as stiff as all hell even with a fully functional thumb.  And gripping anything in the gym... also a problem.  I can't grip a bar or a handle with any meaningful strength, even pulling up my tracksuit bottoms is difficult!

So, if it's still not great tomorrow, I should probably take it down to the minor injuries clinic near work to see if there's anything can be done to help it heal more quickly.  When I was picking the seed out of the flap of skin on the soft side of my thumb, I did notice that it looks like the knife blade sliced through the thumb nail at the back at a quite shallow angle, through the skin and flesh on the tip of my thumb to just below where the nail and skin part at the tip of my thumb for about 2/3rds the width of my thumb.  The flap of skin glued itself with blood, up onto the inside of my nail so I had to peel it off the inside of my nail (after picking out the chilli seed with a needle) and push it back down to join the flesh where it should be before dressing the wound.  It bled an awful lot once I'd taken the pressure off the flap, so I'm pretty sure that if there was no nail covering it, I'd be looking at a few stitches for sure, but due to the nail you can't really see the damage very well and the rest of the nail, along with some tightly wrapped zinc oxide tape, is holding most of it in place.

Thumbs.  Quite important to most stuff we humans do, it turns out.

I think I need some more tea and Christmas cake.

Stomach in revolt

I have no idea what's causing it, but I'm feeling pretty vile in the guts and have done for about 3 days now.  So this morning I'm having a nice bowl of fruity porridge with Total 2% stirred in.  Morrissons are doing a nice frozen mix of berries at the moment with cherries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries and cranberries in it so that went in along with the raisins and a little squirt of agave nectar.  It's so pretty as well as comforting and tasty.  Hopefully it'll help soothe my poor belly.  And I should probably give the gym a miss today; I've been twice this week and cycled 120km, so I think that's probably enough (4,700kcals!)

*whinge*

Why can't blogs do notifications to commenters? (partly rhetorical question as I can see how complex it would be to make it work without annoying people)

I've started to follow a few more blogs and I do post the odd comment from time to time (not really one for posting comments for the sake of it).   The thing is, I like to see what people say in response to, or to follow up on my comments.  This means I have to rememebr which blogs I commented on, which posts on those blogs and check each one for any updates.  And I really suck at remembering.  WLR forums have the exact same problem (and that's a forum so it really should do that kind of notification, dammit!).

So, if you post something in response to a comment I've made somewhere, don't be offended if I don't follow up.  It's not personal, I probably haven't even seen your response either 'cause I suck!  (OK, so some web journal providers give the journaller the option for notifications like that, but not all and the method is clunky too)

Also... (mm, whinge-tastic today!) My quads, palms and ankles huuuuuurt.  *pathetic*  We put in a reasonable time for the journey Northwards (3 hours 30 for 74km partly urban, partly undulating countryside [600m of climb in total]  and unsurprisingly a bit longer on the way back - 3 hours 50 for the reverse route).  I clocked up 7,200kcals for last week's exercise total and went over 650km so far on my new bike.  This week is taper week.  Today is a rest day.  I need it!

It was bound to happen at some point

I came off my bike this morning.  Or, rather, my bike fell over reasonably slowly with me still on it.  Coming up to some red traffic lights, I was slowing for them and I must have blinked slowly or something because suddenly, while still a bit away from the lights, the bike in front of me was almost stopped and I was still going a lot faster than that.  Yelling "shiiIIIIIII-i-I-i-I-iIIiiit!" I pulled on the brakes and, realising that wasn't going to be enough not to hit the other bike, swerved to the right of it, pulled myself off balance at about 5mph and toppled my bike to one side into the middle of the road with me still on it.  Meanwhile, the lights had changed to green and there was a bus bearing down on me.  The driver was great and rather than being a total twat, like a lot of bus drivers are it seems, he stopped well away from me rather than looming up close, and gave me the time to pick myself and my bike up and get out of the way a bit.  No horn honking, or engine revving at all.

I was a bit wobbly for a few minutes and needed a rest while the pain in my finger started to make itself known and I checked over for any cuts.  No bleeding, just a bit of scuffing on one elbow and a skinned, bruised and swollen finger, which still looks a bit on the deformed side 12 hours later.  My bike time to work was a healthy 42 minutes even including falling off and dusting down for a bit, so no worries there either.

It was bound to happen at some point, and in the grand scheme of things it was pretty innocuous.  Yes, I'm a bit tired after the extra adrenaline rush and following wobbliness and ohboy did I need lots of tea when I got to work, but a bumped finger and lightly scraped elbow is a good get-away.  Oh and my bike seat got knocked out of alignment, which took 15 seconds and a couple of twists with an Allen key to fix.  No harm done at all.

I'd like to thank the bus driver for being a gentleman and Mr TOTKat for dusting me down and making sure I was OK.

Otherwise, today was pretty uneventful so I decided to tack an extra 5km onto the journey home as the weather was nice...

B - MP Total Breakfast with frozen blueberries and skimmed milk
*cycle*
S - greek yogurt with strawberries and Dorset Cereals muesli
S - banana
L - lettuce, sweet pepper, cherry tomatoes, celery, chicken breast and avocado with lemon juice and black pepper
S -Starbucks skinny Caramel Macchiato
S - cottage cheese with Dr Karg crispbread
D - beef chilli with baked beans and a couple of glasses of wine

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	2250 2634]
Protein (g)	175.7 (32.9%)
Carbohydrate (g)	214.4 (37.7%)
Fat (g)	44.8 (18.9%)
Fibre (g)	27.8
Fruit & Veg	13.2

This is taking the doodah

I had DOMS yesterday, thanks very much.  No need for them to continue today and be worse!  Seriously!  I don't think I've ever had them this badly before.  My thighs are so sore!  So.  No gym today as they obviously need more rest.  And my abs and triceps and shoulders.

Mr TOTKat made an absolutely delicious dinner tonight; the best omelette I've had since ever:-

B - greek yogurt with 1 scoop, fruit compote, Grape Nuts and maca root
S - Starbucks Skinny Latte
L - salad; lettuce, celery, cherry tomatoes, capers, Food Doctor Salad Herb Boost, chicken breast
S - Nutberry's yogurt coated banana chips
S - carrot and Waitrose houmous
S - MP beef jerky
D -2 egg omlette with bacon, gruyere, onion and mushrooms
S - a teaspoon of peanut butter

Exercise - rest

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1748 1790]
Protein (g)	153.2 (34.7%)
Carbohydrate (g)	122.2 (25.9%)
Fat (g)	77.2 (39.3%)
Fruit & Veg	9.7

OMG DOMS WTFBBQ!

Ow.

Blimey.

2 months off weight training and I knew there'd be a bit of payback the day after my first session back, but... OW!  My thighs are horrible today!  And my abs a bit.  And shoulders.  And triceps.  Still.  At least it won't be this bad after the next session.

Thanks to a tipoff from someone at work, I'm signed up for some Thames swimming fun in August.  From Hampton Court to Raven's Ait (3,218m), there will be 1000 swimmers thrashing about for an hour or so each, in waves of 100 setting off every 10 minutes in the Nokia Thames Swim.

B - Fage greek yogurt with 1 scoop, blueberries, flaked almonds and maca root
S - banana and Oatland nut, seed and raisin clusters
L - salad; lettuce, sweet pepper, cherry tomatoes, celery, capers, pomegranate seeds and chicken breast
S - carrot and Waitrose houmous
S - MP beef jerky
D - Waitrose pork and plum tomato sausages with mashed butternut squash

Exercise - rest day

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1660 1792]
Protein (g)	142.2 (35.2%)
Carbohydrate (g)	141.4 (32.8%)
Fat (g)	57.5 (32%)
Fruit & Veg	11.8

Niggly leg

After the surprise high kcal burn during yesterday's run through, my leg started to feel niggly last night and this morning it was definitely sore at the back, but so is the right one now, only less so. I'm hoping it's "just" DOMS and as such I've planned a gentle run tomorrow to kill half an hour while hubby is doing the The HELL of the Ashdown ride. Tell you what, finding a 5ish km running route around there that has any less than a total climb of about 100m is not easy! I've had to find a flattish bit with a loop I'll have to do twice and that'll give me a total climb of around 45m. Not quite the gentle run I was looking for, but given that Mr TOTKat will be cycling for 4 hours or so I've got to find -something- to keep me occupied while I wait.

Brekkie today was scrambled egg and egg whites on a toasted High Bran and Seed bagel, with Marmite. Lunch, mmmmlunch... one of my favourites, though it is quite low protein so I sneaked in some extra in a scoop of unflavoured whey powder - roasted, spiced butternut squash soup with a slice of unfruited malt loaf:-



After fighting with the garden for all of about 20 minutes before deciding that it was way too cold and my fingers hurt too much from the cold (couldn't wear gloves to do weeding as it requires too much fine-grained finger control) we sat down for an afternoon snack of more of that heavenly banana and raisin malt loaf (with an apple on the side for me 'cause they're really nice and we have loads at the moment):-



I've been wanting to try out Clearspring's buckwheat soba noodles for a while as they're a "healthier" alternative to the Amoy Straight to Wok ones we usually use; they're higher in fibre, have no added oil to keep them moist etc.; so it was a fabulous excuse for a (chicken) BEEP:-


Exercise - rest day

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1640 1797]
Protein (g)	113.1 (28.4%)
Carbohydrate (g)	203.4 (47.9%)
Fat (g)	42.0 (23.7%)
Fruit & Veg	8.7

Hamstring twang

Damn. So the pain down the back of my left thigh appears to be a hamstring strain. So, in order to make sure I don't do myself any long-term damage -and- I've got a fighting change of training properly soon, I'm laying off running and weight training for a good few days.

Bit of a bugger as it means I get to eat less and it throws out my eating plan for the rest of this week at least. And I've had to reschedule my first PT session with my new trainer for next Friday rather than this Friday. Bah.

I am consoling myself with a skinny caramel macchiato and will aim just to stay within maintenance kcals for the rest of the week rather than any deficit. And this afternoon, I'm booked in for a deep tissue massage to help things on their way to mending. (expect whining about how much that hurts later ;o))

Thighs of burning fire

Well, lesson learned there I'd say. Full body weights on Friday, mad cross-trainer intervals on Saturday followed by the first run in ages on Sunday, equals thighs of burning fire. Ohyes. They hurt. All along the front and on the back of the left one. Walking up stairs is fun. As is using my legs with no assistance to get up from seated, especially when carrying things. Ow.

And I was gonna run part-way home after work. Hah! Decided to swim after work with hubby instead :o)

Brekkie was utterly delicious this morning. I used a sample sachet of the cookies and cream flavour and ohboy is it nice! Gotta work through the vanilla first before I'm allowed to buy any though:-


Lunch was lacking in bulk. I generally need lunch to at least look substantial and though it tasted good, it looked a bit pathetic in the lunch box:-


Which meant that come 2nd afternoon snack, I was about to tear arms off and chew at them, but managed to stick to the carrots and houmous I'd packed, except the houmous was a bit mouldy and I ate it anyway.

The salmon fillets we get from Ocado are fabulously tasty, "lightly smoked" makes them salty and smokey and just really strongly flavoured so they need nothing doing to them at all. So, so, sooo nice:-


Exercise - 48 minutes weights (HRmax 179, HRavg 166) and 33 minutes swim (HRmax 172, HRavg 163)

B - greek yogurt with 1 scoop cookies and cream whey, fruit compote and Grape Nuts
S - Dorset Cereals; 3 berries and cherries bar
*gym*
S - 1 scoop chocolate in semi-skimmed milk (no bloody skimmed. again.)
L - salad; spinach, sweet peppers, capers, roasted chicken breast, honey, mustard and lemon juice
S - tangerines
S - carrot and houmous
S - banana
*swim*
D - salmon fillets with couscous, peas and sweetcorn
S - 1 scoop strawberry delight in semi-skimmed milk

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise) 1894 2467] Protein (g) 171.0 (36.9%) Carbohydrate (g) 190.3 (38.5%) Fat (g) 50.8 (24.6%) Fruit & Veg 7.1