Retribution

Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!

Q: What do you get if you have a 4 day weekend in Spain with friends?

A:A jolly big hangover, 2kilo's extra weight and a general feeling of tiredness and blouting for having only trained the right arm (lifting drinks I hasten to add)

...back late last night.... and then it was Monday

...RETRIBUTION MONDAY
0550: Wake up 25mins before the alarm with the triumphant meowing from the cat after a successful mouse hunt
0600: Getting up to double bag the above mentioned dead mouse
0700: Leaving for work to travel by train to London
0701: Opening the door to be greeted with a very cold blast of wind and the car covered in frost - yes it's just above freezing!
1835: Getting back into the home station, freezing cold again and having to wait 3 mins before driving off because the car is frosted up
1850 - 2000: Quick break from "payback" my having a cup of nice tea with the neighbour whilst thanking them for feeding the cat for the weekend.
2015: Venturing out (in freezing temperatures) to go for a well needed run... Talk about COLD!

But at least I was wrapped up....
Then I felt the cold icy blast of the outdoors....

The cat looked at me like I was mad!
Still 6.7km later and I felt quite saintly again - That was until I tucked into a nice bag of fish and chips I got at the chippy on the way home :o)

On a more positive note I've now read several reviews of Ironman 70.3 UK........ here's some quotes;

So the organizers tout the UK 70.3 race as the ‘Hardest half ironman in the world’. ......I thought,yeah, yeah, whatever, how hard can it be? I just finished Ironman Lanzarote for chrissakes. Well, I don’t know if it’s the hardest, but it definitely smashed me up plenty.

The run course was brutal, it dived straight down toward the lake and then turned a corner and kicked right back up again, nearly all lumpy off road, it was so tough

I raced the UK 70.3 event over the weekend in Exmoor, I think it is safe to say that it is one of the hardest, if not the hardest half Ironman course in the world. Not many first timers are put off by this fact, I am not sure of the exact figure but a large proportion of the field were doing this distance for the first time.

I knew it was going to be a tough day of racing from the end of the swim...

Oh dear!