Back on line!

Hurrah! My new shiney yellow Dell laptop has arrived early. I'm very pleased with it - although I forget to ask how much it weighed before I got it... so it's a little on the heavy side but overall I'm very happy!

So I've managed to download my Garmin (at last) and thought I'd share with you some pretty pictures from October.....

First - here is the elevation over distance chart for Henley half marathon - I did mention that hill didn't I!!! ;o)
... What I'm pleased with though is the HR throughout the race. You can see the dip for each rest period but pretty consistent HR throughout, despite the gradient - which I think, from what I've read, bodes well for HIM next year as you need to be having a steady HR. The final surge for home pushed my HR up - in fact my Garmin said max was 186 - never knew my HR max was that high! So I guess I'll have to reset my training zones accordingly! Also hit the caffeine gel around mile 6.5 - and think my average goes up as a result - will see in later experiments I think!


I've also played a little bit of hockey these last couple of weeks, and we know the pretty patterns that creates with Garmin.....


This weekend I've had a most excellent adventure down in Devon. Weather has been beautiful, clear skies with a little bit of Autumn chill. I went down to take a look at the UK 70.3 bike course... two laps of what appears to be a giant hill! I drove it first, although missed the transition exit onto the lap. The start of it come race day is at the "top" of the hill which means down hill for the first half then back up again;

Looks really pretty though on a map;

The lake you can see in the middle is where the swim and run parts take place. A lovely part of the country (if a little hilly!). Having seen the hills I decided that doing a lap probably wasn't the sensiblest option given I've not been out on Biancha since the epic bike ride in Sept. So decided to do the top section of the hill, out 45mins and back. It was a really really nice ride. So nice that when I got back to my car I put the bike back inside and headed down to the lake for a quick 4k... so having not done any tri specific training since oh... quite sometime I ended up doing just under a 2hr brick!

Here's some pretty picture around the lake I took, first from up by the car park and then down by the lake whilst out on the run -I needed the odd rest from running ;o)



I stayed down in Exeter as the hockey girls were down playing a cup game today and I said I'd give them some support and encouragement from the sidelines. Unfortunately their squad was somewhat depleted and I ended up being the 12th player and so the only sub. I say sub in the loosest possible form as I've not played that level for best part of 3 years and am not anywhere near being able to now. So I gave the team explicit instructions that no-one was to get injured or decide they needed a rest as I had no intention of going on. Unfortunately they didn't entirely listen so I came on for a cameo performance (for want of a better word) for about 10-15mins of the second half. Hate to say it but I did enjoy my little run out but I think that is it it again for hockey though. I love playing but unfortunately my back doesn't really (didn't play yesterday because my back was so sore from last week), and besides I'm really keen on the 70.3 next year and I'm a bit fearful if I carry on my back will get worse and it'll hinder my kick off for training in December.

It's a new month and now time to get planning for next year.... hurrah for that ... and thoughts on that a bit later!

Oh and one last thing... Congratulations to Paula Radcliffe on her win in the NY Marathon today... I mean wow... the woman only gave birth in January of this year!! She is a running machine!!