Idling over

Long time no blog. Sorry. Training has had to take a necessary back seat over the last month. I won't bore you with why but I have had the kind of month where I wish that I had the talent and time to be a pro athlete instead of my actual day job, which most of the time I love but has given me a fair few headaches.

The main casualty has been swimming which had started to click recently but as I can only get along to the pool in the evenings I just have not been able to get the sessions ticked off. Of the three disciplines this is the one that requires most planning and organisation to get to and the slightest spanner in the works tends to end up with me missing my session.

Running. I am actually running again which is a good thing. Only 40 minutes at the moment and it's only a controlled shuffle but it is a start. Once again, I seem to be getting back to running Again just as the race that I was going to work up to comes into view. The Bournemouth Marathon is next week and I withdrew a couple of weeks ago when walking downstairs was proving achy. I think I would like to work up to running a couple of half marathons over the winter which should give me a good balance of stamina and speed and get down to sub 1:25.

Cycling has been in tickover with quite a bit of commuting to and from work forming the bulk of my work. I have been getting back into Strava and enjoyed hitting some of the segments hard and the work that I have put in over the last six months has seen me achieve some top 10 positions in some quite big segments. It's a nice vindication of the work that I have put in and while it doesn't count for anything it's nice to see a little gold cup next to my name.

I have been paddling taking some kids on their BCU 1 star award and as a result I have paddled a tor for the first time. I even stayed upright and yesterday we took some tubs out and did some weir
shoots. A big wobble on the last drop but I just about kept it the right way up. It's the Liffey Descent today so maybe I need to give that a go in a year or two. ;-)
So things are in bit of transition at the moment as I head towards the off season.