Christmas Week

Hello Bloggers. Well, I am back home from Stoke. Overall, we had a good Christmas. Watching my daughters falling about whilst playing on the new Wii was most amusing! The mood was upbeat, despite Ron, Julie's Dad going into hospital a couple of days before Christmas for Chemotherapy. He is doing ok and has finished his first bout of the treatment. However, the worst bit is the body's reaction to the very powerful drugs and he has started to feel rough today. Julie has come home with me but will return to Stoke on Sunday to help raise her Dad's spirits.

I managed to get some training in whilst away; the highlight was a long ride with Jase Walkley. He took me on a very well known route across the peak District National Park and the famous Cat and Fiddle climb (named after the pub at the summit). There are numerous other climbs on the route, which is a shade under 60 miles I think. However, the Cat and Fiddle is by far the longest at 6 miles. It is steep in places but not outrageously so - BUT! the wind was blowing a hooly and it was smack in our faces for most of the climb. It made progress very slow and Jase registered that we hit 5mph at one point! I still enjoyed the ride immensely and so want to go and ride some big alpine routes now! After the first hour or so I felt quite strong. This is normal for me as it takes a while to get the aging legs working well!

The Tea Shop near the summit is REALLY nice! Turbo Man would just love it! I even sampled the home made cake (Turbo man will tell you that that is not like me!). Here are some pics of the lovely scenery and a smiley Jase (still smiling even grinding away on his 39/23 whilst I tootled along on my granny ring):

I have not managed much swimming as the pool here is closed for Christmas. But I had an excellent Swim Shack session on the 22 Dec. Boy, am I excited about swimming faster in 2009!

Must dash. More news soon!

Bad News

Hello Bloggers. A few days ago my family had some bad news. Julie's father has been diagnosed withe a very aggressive form of Leukaemia. Hence for the last few days I have been juggling trips between my home in Cambridgeshire and Stoke-on-Trent, where Julie's parents live. Today, Ron went into hospital to commence 6 weeks of chemotherapy - not a great Christmas present for him. It was hoped that he could keep his Christmas plans of coming to stay with us at Wyton and go into hospital in the new year; however, treatment was needed immediately.

Julie is up in Stoke at the moment and I will join her tomorrow. I have not got access to the internet in Stoke so there will be a few blank days in this blog. That said, Jase Walkley lives near Julie's parents and I plan to get some training completed with him. Maybe he will let me use his computer to blog. Anyway, training has taken a back seat for a while whilst we all try and support Ron - your prayers for his recovery would be most welcome, thank you.

On the training front, I did manage to squeeze my next Swimshack coaching session in today. It was a good one, and we took another big step into changing my swim stroke entirely. I now have a 2 month period to work on some key aspects. I am very pleased with the progress so far but I am now working on changing my arm recovery. Changing an established muscle memory can be harder than learning a new technique so I must focus hard on the drills and continue to limit my full stroke swimming. The quest for fishlike swimming continues!

I doubt that I will get a blog completed prior to Christmas; so, everyone out there have a very merry Christmas. Train hard and recover well. Can't wait for the 2009 race season to get going.

Do we Really Need Skin?

Training update: Completed conditioning session on Monday with Paul Fullalove. I enjoyed this session and it was nice to have company. I substituted tabata intervals after the squats for low cadence hill simulations on the turbo. This meant that the session was not quite as intense! With a cross country race on Wednesday ahead of me I didn't want to burn myself out . . . again! That said, I was very stiff and sore on Tuesday. Come Wednesday's cross country race I did not feel that much better. However, I have accepted that I will be arriving at the cross country races tired; hence I do not expect any great performances.




I ran with Nige Porter (fellow RAF Triathlete) for much of the race. Nige's running has improved immensely and he was going well on the hills. On the 3rd lap of 3 I put a dig in to try and catch Clive Wintrip ahead of me. By doing this I managed to drop Nige, but it won't be long before he is leaving me behind. I did catch Clive just before the finish line but I had to work for it!



When I had finished I felt a stinging sensation on my heel. Mmmmm, I thought. i may have a little blister there. Upon looking down, this is what I saw. . . .


So bloggers, do we really need skin?!

I managed to get my bike shoes on today but will I be able to run tomorrow?


I have my 5th swim session at swimshack on Monday. I am looking forward to this as my drills have been going really well. The anticipation of getting faster in the H2O is something that I have not really experienced before. Full report to follow.

Blown Legs and Mud

What was I saying in my last post about completing the turbo short intervals to assess my return to health? Oh dear! The session did not go well. When healthy a few weeks ago I completed the 4 x 6 mins efforts at 305W. I tried to do the same on Friday. The first set smarted but was ok. The second set my legs blew and i struggled to hold 270W. This is not good and I am obviously not firing on all cylinders. I attempted a 3rd set but the numbers were worse still, so I did not start the 4th set. I jumped off and went into my short run efforts that I normally do after the turbo. I took it easy to begin with but felt ok. I did 6 x 400m with 1 min recovery. The first rep was 1:28 and I gradually eased into the reps, getting faster with each one until I finished with 1:19. I am confused now; why was my bike so bad but run ok. It seems that the top end efforts are not possible at the moment.

Today I completed the St Ives CC club ride of about 65 miles. I felt ok but it was very muddy! I even managed to put a few digs in without blowing up. Oh well, mustn't get too hung up with this effort stuff - it is only December. I have my first cross country race on Wednesday in the Lincs Services League. I am not expecting much at this event as I intend to complete a full conditioning session either Monday or Tuesday.

Train well Bloggers

Blog Layout and Other Stuff

Does anyone know how I can embed a pdf file so bloggers can read it from my Blog? I am trying to create a link to Triangles, which is in PDF format. Try as I might I cannot sort this out. It seems that everything is web based.

So how is training going for me? I am feeling better but my training is indicating that I am not yet back to full strength. I completed my conditioning session last Tuesday and the turbo tabata intervals were much harder than pre-illness. I have some 6 min turbo efforts scheduled for tomorrow, so let's see if the strength is back! I have been building the effort intensity back slowly so I am hopeful of feeling 100% soon.

I managed to test my Endura lobster gloves out last Sunday on the Club ride. they were great. It was seriously cold with ice and frost everywhere. We still had a group of 18 heading out at 0900 on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, a couple of guys crashed on ice. The weather was warming up and that can make you think that all is ok. However, the shady parts on the road can hide some ice......wham! Down they went. They were ok but there was some bike damage - a broken rear mech meant that there had to be some chain shortening to create a single speed bike. I so hope that the roads are in a less slippy condition this Sunday!

Swimming is going very well. The balance drills feel very natural now and full stroke swimming feels smooooooooth! All I need to do is work on the swim fitness whilst not falling back into bad habits!! Easier said than done!!

Slowly Does It...

After more than 10 days mixing really light training with rest days, I am starting to feel better - still not firing on all cylinders but glad to be active again. I hope to join St Ives CC on Sunday for the weekly club ride. I could really do with some decent weather to aid my recovery; and a nice relaxed pace would go down well too.

Next week's training will be disrupted as I am away with work for the first part of the week. This is probably a good thing as I will not beast my self too much trying to make up for lost training - which is always a pointless exercise!

I managed to finalise 'Triangles' this week, the news magazine of RAF Triathlon that I now publish. It has been distributed across the RAF Triathlon community and beyond and I will try and get a link placed here on my Blog this weekend. It was great fun creating and I have already started to create the next edition. Any bloggers out there who wish to submit an article please email me at deputychairman@raftri.org.uk It would be great to receive anything! Topics such as training articles, equipment reviews, experiences...etc are all needed!

Have a great weekend training!

Still sick 8-(

Well, I didn’t make the St Ives CC Club Run on Sunday. I prepared my kit on Saturday evening whilst feeling lousy. As optimistic as ever, I thought that I would feel ok the next morning. This was not the case and I probably felt worse on the Sunday morning. Hence the past week has been a very slack week training. I know that if I pushed through the illness I would just risk totally breaking down. However, my frustration has increased!!! I completed a very light gym session yesterday and an easy swim drill session. This morning I ran with the dog for an easy 5 miles. During this run I seemed to empty the contents of my sinus tubes all over Cambridgeshire – things are not quite back to normal yet. I am delaying my planned turbo efforts until I am 100% recovered. Strange, though, how one easy week with plenty of rest makes me feel as though I have lost all fitness! No matter what I do I cannot remove this mentality from my mind-set - this is why I do not taper well! Oh well, at least I enjoy feeling wiped out from training!

All the rain we have been having has seen me create a true winter training bike for the first time. I have managed to get my Giant OCR 3 back on the road. It needed new cables, a new front ring shifter and bar tape – as well as some tlc on all moving parts! I also fitted some race blade mudguards; I am very impressed with these. The only thing I don’t like is the lack of aero bars! However, the St Ives roadies don’t like me using them, even when they suck my wheel for miles!

Christmas is coming!! What will Santa bring you bloggers? I am hoping for some nice new Endura overboots.

Train well