Play to my strengths

My rubbish couple of weeks on the domestic and work fronts reached a zenith yesterday, but I've just kept telling myself, 'It could be worse; I could be Lance.' What a dick. Anyway, that's my thoughts on him and I'll leave it there. The big news this week is that I went back to the tri club on Monday night for the first time in 2 years. The club was more busy than I'd ever seen it but I skulked back into my usual swim lane which was more empty than the others. The 3 guys welcomed me back with a 'Where have you been?' A brief explanation about the DW only for Louise, who's feet I used to just about hang onto, to exclaim that she's just started paddling and thinking about doing the 4 day race. FFS, I Can't get away from it. :-0 Thankfully, it was a technique session so I didn't suffer too much, although I couldn't remember how to scull and my swim trunks seemed a little tighter than they used to be.

Unfortunately the day after I came down with a really sore throat which has hung on for the rest of the week and is now developing nicely into a chesty cough. I was meant to be doing a 2up TT with Simon tomorrow but I 've had to cancel which is a rubbish way to end the season. I suppose it's best that I get it out the way now before I get myself started into some winter training.

So, what of next year? I seem to have manged to get myself a London Marathon place so that's going to be an early season focus and use the marathon training as a way of laying some run base fitness. I will sort out my foot and I will make the start line and I intend to aim for sub 3.10. In terms of tri training I've had an idea. I don't want to tackle another ironman at the moment and the thought of training hard for only one race does not appeal. It also just doesn't fit in with what's going on at home. But most importantly, I don't think it's playing to my strengths. For a middle aged bloke I'm still relatively quick over 5 and 10 kilometres (when I can string some run training together, admittedly) and I love doing speedwork and higher intensity training, so Olympic distance triathlon is the way to go. And I've given myself a race to go for. It just so happens that  the ITU Age Group World Championships will be held in London next year, and the Dambuster Triathlon is a qualification event for it, so why not give it a really good go and see if I can have the honour of wearing a GB tri suit  with my name on it? It's a big ask, a very big ask and I am sure that every triathlete in this country and their mother will be giving this a go with the World Champs on their doorstep, but if I don't try I'll never know.  At the very least it'll make me work hard towards an Oly pb.

For any of this to happen I have to bomb-proof my legs over the next couple of months so I am going to re-new my effort with my stretches and work on my lower back and hip flexibility. Thankfully, I can do that even with a cold.