The Ups and Downs of training

It's been a funny 10 days or so since my last post. Quite a bit happening in the background, decisions being made and them almost as quickly being unmade. Somebody on tritalk commented on my wisdom focussing on marathon training when I have a foot injury. I had thought that I would be able to get it sorted fairly quickly, i.e. 8 week's rest and then I'd be back on the marathon trail but this foot problem is going to take longer than that, methinks. I had to cancel the podiatrist appointment as I still could not run on it for them to examine me on their treadmill by the middle of last week, so I have arranged another GP's appointment to try to get a scan and a further referral to a podiatrist. Not surprisingly, nothing showed up on the x-ray. Anyway, enough about my foot. I'm bored of talking about it, so onto other things....

Simon's six weeks out from the Outlaw and 2 club mates of his had spare entries to the Wiggle Up and Down ride starting in Dorking. Simon was going to do the 96 mile Epic route and asked me to tag along. With very few miles under my belt I was a bit nervous about it but thought 'Why not?' and it would be a good way to kick start some work on the bike and burn a few calories. (despite not doing an Ironman this year I am still eating like I am). We cycled the couple of miles to the start from Simon's house and by doing the same at the end that would bring us up to a nice century ride. My lack of fitness showed quite drastically. despite the title of the ride I didn't think that it was too hilly, but the climb out of Dorking onto Ranmoor got my heart rate up nicely. I made a conscious decision to spin as much as possible and for the first 30 miles or so I felt pretty comfortable. The ride was quite quiet; I don't know if this was because it had been rescheduled from when it was cancelled the month earlier and people had not been able to start but the feed stops were really well stocked with a good range of carbs to munch on and lots of water and maxifuel to top up on.

My ride started to unravel after the stop at approximately halfway. As we peddled out, the slightest rise began to feel like a major hill and Simon would skip away effortlessly as I hunched down on the bars trying to get out of the increasing wind. The ride flattened out between about 60-85 miles and I clung to the back of Simon's wheel along the flats taking full advantage of the draft. My bingo wings really started to ache. The Van Nic was set up in tt mode and all I had done was take the tt bars off, forgetting to put the seat and Stem back to how I normally have it set up for road use. As a result my arms were aching quite a lot and I enjoyed resting my forearms on the bars as Simon towed me along to flats. Simon would wait for me at the top of the hills but I felt bad about him having to be so slow because of me and told him to go on but he said he was happy to wait which was really good of him. The icing on the cake was Whitedown. The only thing that kept me going was seeing 2 other riders had already stopped and I really didn't want to stop as well. It was horrible but I felt pretty chuffed with myself for having got myself over the top and then able to freewheel back into Dorking. That's the thing when you do stupid stuff like Ironman and the DW; you think you can do anything.

In other news.....

I've sold my trek. :-(  The bike that got me fit again and got me back into tri. It had to go due to upcoming major renovation work at Casa Wheezy. It was like selling one of my children.

I've bought a boat! A Kirton Ranger. At wobble factor 4 it might be a bit on the tippy side, but we'll just have to see. The slight problem is that it's in Scotland so a family jaunt seems likely.