#Turbovember Day 3

Today was a scheduled as a run day so I was up early again for a slow run, sticking to the local trails towards Oxshott Woods in an effort to keep to a softer surface in defence of my feet. Sun shining, leaves on the ground and muddy underfoot; what's not to like? A slow 5 miles in 41 minutes and it felt a bit laboured but it's great just to be doing a bit of regular running.

In the afternoon, Wheezy Junior and I went over to Richmond Park for a steady 1 mile run on his upcoming cross country course before coming home and christening the new turbo dungeon with a steady 30 minutes on the turbo. A long (ish) ride in the hills tomorrow. Could be painful.

#Turbovember Day 2

After yesterday's fiasco, this morning had a semblance of planning about it, so it was up early to get an hour's turbo in before domestic duties kicked in. The main set was 2 x 20 mins, concentrating on maintaining smooth, powerful circles at a relatively low cadence. Found the second one pretty tough going.

Should be able to squeeze a 30 minute run in this afternoon. Feet are behaving themselves, which is nice.

#Turbovember Day 1

Much, much mucking about today. Spent most of it kitting out the new turbo dungeon at casa Wheezy before then deciding to sort out the rear deraillieur gear cable which  had stopped shifting a week ago. Found out it had frayed so went to local bike shop; got home before realising it was wrong cable; went back, got correct cable; installed cable; shifter still didn't work; spent 90 minutes trying to get shifter to work; swore a lot; lost will to live; decided to remove cable again and realised the nipple end (gyick gsnerk) had not seated itself in the shifter; 1 minute later rear deraillieur working perfectly.

There then followed an easy 45 minutes spinning the pedals. Day 1 complete. Off to bed.

Hodge - Cheers fella. :-)

The results are in

Well I've just got back from the physio with the results of my MRI scan and it seems that I have a few minor issues that are all impacting on my foot. A small fluid sack here, an even smaller ganglion there with a pinch of stressed metatarsal and an aggravated cuboid bone. She's referred me to the consultant to see if anything can be done but at the moment it's a case of continuing to manage it. I feel like I've got a handle on it a bit more. I even went out for a slow 5 mile run yesterday only 2 days after a 3 mile run with Adam while seeing friends in Manchester over the weekend. I now know that  exercise is not really causing this so I might as well run and be damned. I feel better for making that decision. I am entered into a 10km race in December just as a small goal to get me out running regularly again. I am aiming at 3 runs per week, hopefully 4.

I am also over my cold, hence the running over the weekend, but stuff at home has been rather bonkers so I have been easing back in gradually, with #Turbovember starting in earnest tomorrow. November is going to be a run and bike base block. Slow, easy miles at a low intensity just to get my legs used to doing some daily work again. And stretching again. Lots of stretching continuing to focus on my hams, lower back and calves. That will probably continue to be the most important bit of training that I do.

The deed is done

So I have finally entered another triathlon, the Dambuster Tri on the 22nd June, which is a World and European Age Group qualifier. The last time I did an olympic race was in 1997 (London, first one. :-)  It seems that to even remotely stand a chance of qualifying for the World Champs I would need to get down to <2.05. Oh bloody hell, that's a very, very fast time, but hey, you gotta set the bar high sometimes. :-/  I am goingto need to enter a couple of tris beforehand to get some much needed race practice in and maybe a duathlon or two.

In terms of my training, nothing has happened this week. Not the start I wanted but I am still coughing my lungs up. I did have a short ride on the Langster this evening to start sorting out my position on it and other than mudguards it's all set up for a lot of winter commuting. I've been fiddling around with the Van Nic and I have bolted it to the turbo ready for #Turbovember. A group of peeps from Tritalk, including yours truly are going to attempt to do a turbo session everyday in November as a way of kickstarting some bike base fitness. I quite enjoy these motivational sets as the banter and group mentality helps me to get the work done. Turboing is pretty dull but I am going to need to do some big intervals to get my 40km bike split down.


My top athletic moment of the week was watching Wheezy Junior compete in his first cross country race. He did great, coming 5th and he qualified for the Borough Champs despite him sprinting like a loon and then stopping now and again. He could teach the Kenyans a thing or two about surging tactics. He was in fourth almost the whole way and got dipped on the line so there were a few tears  at the end but I was really proud of him. I wish I could run with that kind of freedom at the moment.

New wheels

I've been using the Van Nic for everything over the last 6 months and while I love riding it, I've regretted getting rid of my old trek which was my trusty commuter hack and winter trainer. When the Ranger was sold my plan was to use it to fund a new winter / commuter bike and use the Van Nic on the turbo and Sunday rides. After doing some research I fancied entering the mysterious world of single speed / fixed hub riding, so decided on trying to get myself either a steel framed Pompino or a Specialised Langster. I missed out on a Pompino but I managed to get my hands on this little beauty yesterday; a 56cm Langster in matt black.



It's hardly been used and is in a very good condition. Even better, it was for sale in the same county and country as where I live, so I didn't need to drive the length of the country to collect it. I am going to turn it into my commuter hack, so mudguards, lights and spd pedals need to go on. I'll get used to it for a bit and then have a go at turning the flip-flop hub around and  trying it fixed. Boxhill might be interesting in one gear but I need to work on my leg strength anyway. happy days.

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.

Pack it up, pack it in..

This week has been monumentally crap and so my training took a bit of a hit. A truly rubbish day at work on Tuesday meant that I had to scrub the commute rides for the rest of the week in favour of lugging work stuff to and fro, which with the best will in the world is hard to do, even if it is a titanium framed beauty. On Thursday evening I got my dull ache behind my second toe on my right foot again; the ominous sign that I was going to get another foot swelling episode, and sure enough on Friday my foot had begun to lump up again. The one silver lining in this episode was that I immediately put my trainers on and instead of spending 4 days in limping hell, the swelling started to abate a lot quicker and it's been a lot less painful. So, two things I have got from this. One, exercise seems to have less to do with this than I thought and two, I can control it to a certain degree. Another small victory in getting my running shoes back on.

OK, so big decision time. It's time to stop paddling. I said at the beginning of the summer that I would try to get to grips with the Ranger and hopefully get to paddle it to Hampton Court and back. I'm not even close and realistically I don't have the talent or perseverance to want to make it work. Allied to that, I just cannot see myself getting back into a boat to do the DW again. Some of my fingers and toes are still slightly numb and I am convinced that sitting on a hard plastic seat for 28 hours has made my foot problem worse. The DW and marathon paddling requires commitment and I am just not prepared to spend another winter doing stupidly late paddles to get the miles in. So today, a young man came down to the Royal and bought my boat off me and I was not sorry to see it go.  Easter will forever hold very special memories. I will never look at a hot cross bun in the same way again and when I wake up on future Easter Sundays I will wish all DW competitors luck, knowing that they are on the last leg of a fabulous journey.  But for me, it's over.  Time to concentrate fully on getting my running legs back and becoming a triathlete again.

Some great memories

So, what to do next?

That is the question. Normally at this time of year I'll be setting myself a target event or race for next year and I would love to, but prudence is key at the moment. My main focus over the next few months is to get running again. It's as simple as that. I've been doing some gentle running over the last weeks but I have made a few ammendments to my shoes, including some orthotics to bring the overly concave part of my foot up and give it some support. I tend to tie my shoes very tight so I am also tying them more loosely and I have changed the lace pattern. Small and probably trivial changes but hopefully the British Cycling 'aggregation of marginal gains' approach might also apply to my feet. I ran for 30 minutes today. The first 20 minutes were really hard work; blowing hard, legs tight and lower back aching but the last 10 minutes were sublime and it felt really good to be running. I have no plans to commit to any form of marathon training, yet ;-)  What I am going to do is get myself back along to the running club and do a bit of cross country and have some fun. If I can get up to running for an hour and incorporate some speed, so much the better. But at the moment, it's just some gentle base.

The same will be on the bike. I'm going to keep the commuting and Strava segment hunting going, but it'll all be about base training and cake rides for a few weeks and then try to keep the cycling going through the winter, which is always a challenge.

Replies- Cheers Lee.

The best and worst of cycling

What with life proving hectic again, training has been commuting. This week just gone, I ended up cycling to work 4 days out of 5 and I have been finding that I have been tiring myself out because of it. I find I slip into the habit of battering myself at every opportunity when probably I need to take it easy, but towards the end of this week I was forced to slow down. Sheer weight of traffic made it almost impossible to attack any Strava segments so I settled for spining home instead. I had the unfortunate experience of witnessing a nasty motorbike accident on the way to work on Thursday. The rider was being attended to but looked in a bad way and it was a sobering experience. I pride myself on the fact that I am a defensive rider; I don't take stupid risks. No Strava segment is worth a trip to A & E. It just felt pretty dangerous out there. The next day, only a few hundered metres from where I had seen the accident the day before, there was another motorcyclist lying in the road after hitting a van. It genuinely shook me up. I really enjoy commuting on my bike but at some times the risk:reward balance seems rather imbalanced. :-(

The good news is that the regular cycling that I've been doing over the last few months has begun to pay off, despite it being fairly low in quality. This morning was the last tt of the season, the Consolation 25. Apparently, the handicap is closely guarded but the handicapper goes around asking, 'Have you won anything this season?' and those who answer 'no' stand a much better chance in the handicap prize. :-)Anyway, after warming up by spinning the 10 miles from Simon's house I was off at 9am. I planned to rein it in for the first part as I was unsure of what my endurance would be like, but I was hoping to keep Simon at bay for at least the first half, as he would be starting 2 minutes after me. The first few miles on the A24 went fine, catching my minute man, then it was a hard left turn onto the A29 Ockley Road. It was along here that I had detonated quite spectacularly in my first 10 this year but this time I felt much better; normal even.

It was at the end of the A29 after about 14 miles in that I didn't know the route, so after overtaking Ray (almost 80; legend) I then had to stop for 30 seconds to see which way to go. At the next roundabout Simon caught me and we joined a short section of dual carriageway. Knowing that it was the last stretch I put my head down and overtook him, only for him to come back at me. It was great fun and while I was feeling extended I was also feeling strong and thought I could take a significant lump of the 2 minutes back that he had put into me if I could work really hard. It was then that the route incorporates a couple of miles of significantly more lumpy hills and I had to work really hard to keep Simon in touch but gradually he  pulled away and by the time we hit the last few miles on the A24 again, he was some 200 metres ahead. Simon's always been stronger on hills than me but generally I have been stronger on rolling road and I managed to slowly reel him in towards the finish but the line came too quickly and he was still some 10 seconds ahead when we reached the finish. I celebrated by honking my breakfast up as Simon looked on. The perfect Sunday morning.

I am very pleased with it though. I was pretty strong over the the entire event and to bring Simon back in the last mile was a massive confidence boost. It's just a shame that the season's now over.

So, what to do next?

Not much to see here

It was another easy paddle in a laance mid-week with Jonesy, this time venturing a little further upstream to Raven's Ait and back. I had preceeded it by scaring myself witless in the Ranger when I took that out for 20 minutes while I waited for him to arrive. It was my first paddle in it in a fortnight so felt a bit more wobbly again and when I got to the end of the island cut I had an enormous wobble as I turned the boat round to come back. I managed to keep myself upright  with the largest and deepest brace stroke that I have ever done before tip-toeing my way back to the clubhouse. I spent another 10 minutes doing some stability exercices at the club (probably should have done those before I went out :-/  ) before settling for the relative safety of a laance. At some point I am going to just have to bit the bullet and take the ranger out onto the river proper and now the colder weather's approaching and the fishermen are retreating back indoors I 'll be able to stay a bit closer to the bank. I just need to man-up a bit.

Cycling has revolved around commuting and Strava has really come into its own. There a 3 segments on the way home that I take turns in attacking and I have managed to get myself into the top 10 for 2 of them. I am patheically pleased with myself about. :-) I must look like a complete loon to other road users as they see me gurning and dry-humping my bike in a bid to get every last bit of speed out of it in order to move up a place or 2 on that particular segment's list. I am yet to become a Strava ' King of the Mountain' but I intend to get one before the winter's out.

So, still riding my bike fairly consistently and paddling my kayak fairly infrequently.  But it's all good.

Back in a laance

Jonesy and I went for a paddle last night in some club laances. I felt a bit of a failure regressing back to one after trying to master the Ranger for the past couple of months but there's only so many lengths of the narrow cut that I can take. To be honest, it's not only been a bit stressful but also a bit boring. I needed a change so we hit the river for the first time in months. It felt like good old fashioned DW training and I loved it. We were only out for an hour or so and we didn't go very far, shuttling between Teddington lock and Kingston railway bridge, but it was so good to be back in a boat paddling without worrying about a capsize all the time. I did a few half-hearted interval efforts but mainly I was just trying to do the basics right. It made me remember what I enjoy about paddling. We need a project and I would love to have a go at the Liffey Descent race next year. Weirs, capsizes and Guiness; what's not to like?

My own worst enemy

So 14 weeks of no running and within 2 weeks of gently starting to do some light running my foot flares up again, however this time it was my right foot. :-/   I can't quite believe it. I cannot remember this happening before and it has got me really flummoxed and frankly a little bit worried. What the hell is going on inside there? It is partly my fault of course. Starting to run again, as well as beginning work again after a long summer break (which meant actually having to move off of the sofa and stand up for most of the day) and breaking in a new pair of work shoes. I don't know which of those would have been the trigger, probably partly all three, but it's hardly like I threw myself into full on marathon training and the fact that such a low level of activity should cause this to happen is the thing that concerns me most.  As I type this, I am watching an Army veteran who is a double leg amputee climbing a flagpole during the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games, so I probably need to stop my whinging. It'll all be fine eventually.

Speaking of the Paralympics, we went along to the Velodrome last weekend to watch some track cycling. It was immense. The racing, crowd, noise, atmosphere and not to mention the velodrome itself was mindblowing. We were fortunate enough to see 5 World records (3 set by GB) and another 3 Paralympic records. A brilliant morning of sport; loved every minute of it. While cheering on GB riders was thrilling, I couldn't help watching the riders who had major hurdles to overcome. The German sprinter with 1 leg doing a sub-11 second lap. Pedalling a bike that fast with 1 leg? I almost dropped my egg Mcmuffin in awe.

So I have been commuting on my bike. I was meant to do a 25 tt this morning but obviously my foot was not going to allow that, but hopefully I will be back into the swing of things by Tuesday with some gentle spinning to and from work. 

Onwards.