Friday Fear

I was supposed to ride today... 1.5hours with the middle 30mins ever so slightly at "wahhhhh" pace....

But then I was supposed to do something else today... well try to anyhow...... something I was scared of... trepedation set in...

So I woke up and thought I'd actually get the second task done before work and see how things went... By the time I got home from work tonight it was gone 7pm and was cold (huh nearly may and it was cold), and wet (blur).... I was tired and have a busy weekend of training and socials... so decided to bin the ride and tidy the house instead (whilst waiting for the takeaway to arrive!!)....

As a picture paints a thousand words (so they say), well maybe a graph does a job.... then you can guess what I tried this morning... yep people I stepped outside in the blissful morning air.....

Yep - -that would be a 10min walk, 20min jog and 10min walk down.... YEAH! I ran I ran I ran... first time since 19th Feb, not that I'm counting.. that's like my second run since I turned 40!! Perceived exersion was HIGH, despite that HR was in easy zone and surprisingly my pace was ok. Had a complete case of jelly legs after... which was entertaining.... I've been waiting all day for a reaction. Kind of got one but nothing serious.... Tomorrow I have a 3hour steady ride with 30mins cross trainer off it followed by a trip to the physio in the afternoon so she can assess what's gone on after the run.... Fingers crossed nothing seizes up overnight!

... and WHOOOOOPPPPPP for the run!

Thursday Thoughts

Four in four

So four thoughts seem appropriate

1. Recovery day today - yippeeeeeeeeeee as well cos the weekend looks a little "eeekish".....

2. Bigot?.... If you don't know what I'm referring to, possibly one of the biggest election gaffs E.V.E.R then just google or youtube "gordon brown + bigot".... talk about WHooops! I've not laughed so much at a politician for a long time!... either way it was clearly "Sue's fault", which probably includes the banking crisis I guess...

3. I got me a new bikey.... Ummmm... a cross bikey (so I may give the racing of that a go in the autumn), but got me the bikey so I can commute without having to get my roadie bashed about... Bike is a Genisis "Vapour"... is red, is very shiney, is called ROVER.. WOOF!

4. Why is facebook not working tonight.... Oh that would be the election debate on clogging up things I guess.... Speaking of which... I'm glad we only have 4 weeks of election fever in the UK... it's almost enough already..... just need to decide which way I'm going to vote.... ummmmmmm.

DONE!

Wednesday Workouts...

I know... three in three I'm getting a bit blogtastically carried away aren't I?

So Wednesday is a double day! Yeah for that (or just ha ha ha!)

I got up, sorted myself out, think I fed the cat (did I, actually maybe I didn't.... surely I did....? He's got fresh biscuits now.... where was I..)... so I left the house pretty early fairly organised so I could leave straight from the gym and head to work. Wednesday mornings at the moment require me, the non-runner that I currently am, to endure some time on the rower (evil on my butt cheeks) and the cross trainer (so I can pretend that I did indeed run!).... So today's receipe for morning interest was 23mins XT, 15mins rower (all my butt can take), 22mins XT so that's a nice round hour of aerobic "stuff" and I managed to be good and follow this with 5-10mins of s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g before heading for a shower, change and work!

Yawn... exactly.... I was tired before the day really got underway...

A day or work ensued... I always get hungry early when I've done a morning workout. Lucky then it was someone's birthday so the customary cakes came out... NICE!... and clearly cake's not cake without COFFEE so I loaded myself up with a proper one from the filter pot.

Left work at 6pm and headed straight for the torture chamber, commonly known as a "sports" massage... like stick a needle in my eye (or rather stick your forearm up my ITB)... I think my pain threshold is increasing what with the physio on the foot and sports massage on the rest of me...

From my hour of torture I headed straight to club swim night... wait do I count sports massage in my totals - by jove I think I do...., in which case maybe today is a triple day??... anyway I'm rambling..... Swim was actually quite fun... and it helps I'm feeling stronger then I have before... I think my winter swimming has seen me in a better place then I'd normally be (just as well as like I'm going to be swimming twice as far, right... LOL!).... anyway, for a change I'm finding I'm the one still able to do the lengths come the end of the session. Today was a good swim night, all felt pretty comfortable... YEAH!... even the 5*100s we did whilst wearing t-shirts (for extra drag!!)... very happy with it, which compared to where I was with my swim last week (=major sulk!) is, well, like a million miles apart!

Rounded the day by popping over to see my folks before they disappeared on ANOTHER holiday ;o) .... not that they could remember me saying I'd pop over (tusk!), but still they stayed up for me and we had a nice natter!

S'all for now... tomorrow is... RECOVERY THURSDAY! YEAH TO THAT!

Tuesday trepediation....

Oh My....

So I decided today was the day for...

No, not a run... (but that will be soon... oh soo soon)

BUT .... an open water swim!

Yes the season is open, so apparently the lakes are warm enough... .A HA HA HA! They're so funny!

So I arrived at the lake after work (it's great only a couple of miles from where I now work!)... and approached the water with some trepediation.. exactly how cold is it? I enquired.... "positively warm" came the reply with a mumbled "for this time of year" after..... ummmm so I put the wetsuit on and opted for some booties too.... and got in....

OH MY... there were some channel (mad people) swimmers in there with no wetsuit... but it was a tropical 15degrees.... the advice from one swimmer as I got in was... "'don't hang about or you're get cold"... like no shit sherlock.....

Anyways... It was cold... I was kinda thinking I'd do a session based on estimated swim times and do sets... but it was too cold for that... So I did one lap (between 750 and 800m)... did a second lap... and chilled on to my third. Still felt good after the three laps from a fatigue point of view but frankly was FROZEN (note the capitals and blue coloured font!)... I really was that cold... shaked my way to the shower and shivered my way into my cloths.... even a hot chocolate barely stopped me from being a shivering, shaking, wreck.... BUT HEY.. I got the swim in and felt good with it. Three laps in 46mins will do me for right now!

I just hope it wasn't a foolish thing to do so soon after a lergy!! Tomorrow will tell on that front....

:o)

Gotta get on... my oven is beeping at me which means my fish and chips are nearly done! Ummmmm

Monday Mumblings

The good, the bad and the ugly from the weekend.....

Well before I start let me remind you all that it was RECOVERY week last week ‘k?! Now I’ve learnt my lesson that this probably doesn’t mean an excuse to take the foot off the pedal and completely let your hair down. Well I’ve learnt it now after last week... but still....


So starting with Friday... the good....

Got up early for a 1hour spin on my turbo. This is what the program asked for and this is what I did. Well done me! Packed up as after work I was heading north to Leicestershire to see old uni pals Hellen and Ben and their lovely children. Managed to escape work at 5.30pm (miracle), but the traffic was a nightmare so my journey still took the best part of 2.5hours. Fortunately Mum and Dad were being generous to the boys and letting them stay up till I got there... so having arrived I was immediately whisked upstairs for BATH TIME! What fun! I’ve not seen Kit (8) and Felix (4) since Christmas time and all I can say is Felix has certainly discovered his dangly bits between the legs! LOL! If he wasn’t showing them off he was hitting himself (like ouch!).... I did point out he wouldn’t want to do that for too much longer!! Still we had a fun night. Felix went to bed and Kit was allowed to stay up a bit with us whilst we had dinner. It was a lovely evening, finally moving into the Living room for a spot of what Hellen and I do best – Gossip!


The Bad....

Woke up Saturday morning feeling really jaded – could this be a monster hangover?! Not like I had that much to drink but still. Coffee and toasted myself up then we took the boys for a walk around the playground and park before hitting the garden for a spot of action with the toy guns! Does that count as training, thought not. We sat around the garden table to consume a mountain of ham sandwiches then I set on the road for home. Theory being I’d get home for 4pm, head out on my bike for a couple of hours before heading out for pie night with some hockey mates (who were in the national final the next day.. .and WHOOP!). As the journey back progressed I continued to feel really lowsy and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was sleep. Now there is something SERIOUSLY wrong (believe me) when I decline a pie night. But decline it I did, stayed in with the cat and had some food and went to bed early. UG! My 2 hour recovery week Saturday ride binned.


The Ugly.....

Woke up Sunday after a lot of sleep feeling... better?... no... much the same.. WTF!? At this stage I thought it was dragging on a bit for a hangover I can tell you. Plan was for a easy 2 hour ride. I woke quite early (probably from the early night) and got up, despite the headache and quesy feeling I managed to have some breakfast and proceeded to stare at my bike. Still felt like crap so watched TV and continue to stare at my bike.... a call from Tri Buddy Anita who was watching the marathon waiting for inspiration for her 2hour run effort still did not stir me... well it did infact... I went back to bed at 11am (!) and slept til 1pm... this is not like me... got up... felt queasy... and repeat the morning session without the call with Anita! ... Also let the family down by not making it to a big post-golf competition dinner... but turning up looking queasy in my PJ's probably wouldn't have been the done thing.... What I did manage to do though was get myself entered for some longer distance bike rides in the May/ June time frame. Having felt like I was getting Ironman ready last weekend (although appreciating I still have a long way to go), I feel like I could barely do a sprint tri after this weekend!

Still I got into work this morning and found out I’m not the only one with a headache/ sickness lurgy... So the good news in my mind is I’m not fatigued and feeling ill from either overtraining (which would be funny given it was recovery week), from a monster hangover, or a sudden allergy to alcohol... No... Simply I have a BUG!

BAN THE BUG!

Summary for last week is really quick

Swim * 1 * 2400m
Bike * 1 * 14.5miles
"Run" * 1 * 30mins XT/ 30min Rowing

Now that's what I call recovery.... cough....

Thursday Thoughts

Today plus one more day to the weekend = YEAH!

This week = Recovery week = DOUBLE YEAH!

Although on the latter I fear I have abused the title somewhat. Monday is supposed to be recovery swim day and I ditched it because I was shattered.... could this be the effects of three weeks hard training or as a result of recovering from my long bike/ cross trainer brick on Sunday with a sandwich, apple, tub of popcorn (cinema) and three cocktails... I'll let you decide ;o)

Tuesday is then either my long swim day or a recovery day (Thursday being whatever I didn't do).... and guess what... I chose recovery!

Wednesday is a double up day; start with an hour in the morning Row-Cross Trainer-Row.... and then the evening Club Swim...... I actually did well yesterday morning and had every intention to go to club swim in the evening..... but then I looked at my watch at 7.28pm whilst at my desk speaking to my boss and realised time had slipped by and I wasn't going to make the 7.30pm meet! DOH! Still... I'm recovering right?! Long swim tonight then!

Now then - I know you'll be itching to know the status of my posterior tibularus problem.... aka the Foot.... so the good news is I'm feeling like running (YEAH).... but it's not quite there yet (BOO)... Physio has BANNED me from trying to run until the end of next week... which is good in a way. I told her if she wanted me to NOT do something she'd better say otherwise I'd do something..... So she was quite direct, having had a quick thought, she said "I'm banning you..." so I'm glad she did that...

So what does this mean to my half ironman in 4 weeks?!.... Well it's not looking like a 1/3 ironman with a swim and a bike and a DNF. It's a long way to go (it's in Barcelona) for that but I'm going with friends who will be racing the whole lot and so should be fun anyhow. Got to remember, for this year... it's all about the IM!.... and don't worry I do have a back up plan if this problem persists!

OK - enough for now. Work is calling me!

Weekend Recap

Yawn! Monday already!

Must get more regular on the blogging front.,.... but first all I'm going to say is this

VOLCANIC ASH

You must have been on a different planet to not know we have a complete air-space shut down since Thursday.... talk about clear blue skies... not a vapour trail in sight.

All I'm really worrying about is will this mean we have a sudden shortage of bananas?!? I guess that depends if they usually come by boat or plane! To be honest though, it kinds of feels mother nature is giving us a little "Woohoaaa there... slow down!" as it just feels that everything is a little more chilled out... or that could just be me!

Anyway - a brief recap of the weekend.

So got up for early bike ride with clubmate on Saturday morning.... got up and felt, for the first time since the asthma incident of last year, strangely asthmatic.... opened the curtains and immediately saw why... dense fog! Talk about strange weather.... freezing fog.... whether this was partly due to the VA too my chest was just nasty.... anyway... I headed out in full WINTER gear (minus the head cap thingy) and met up with Stella (that's her name rather then a cold pint of beer)..... anyhow, lucky she wasn't feeling too tip top either ... so my 3 hours incl middle our of 15min interval, 5 in recovery... changed to 3 hours easy with efforts up hills only. Gradually after about an hour an a half the fog finally lifted and the day morphed into a beautiful spring day, clear blue skies... beautiful... apart from the fact, with the fog lifting and sun coming out it began to heat up... with little ol me in spring jacket, winter thermal, gloves and overboots!.... Lucky I was home by about 1130 so wasn't too hot, just got a few odd looks (by the bold looking shorts and t-shirt clad people!)

The rest of Saturday comprised of meeting up with some clubmates for their post-ride coffee and over to Henley for more coffee and chinwag (oh and some retail therapy) with my mately Leanne!

On to Sunday the program called for 4.5hours steady riding with 30mins cross trainer... I clearly prepared well the night before with a chinese takeaway for dinner.... ek... did however manage to clean down and set up max the carbon stead for serious first ride of the season (the other training rides have been done on Biancha)...... Forgot how "twitchy" the carbon is ... so light it's a dream! So hooved it over to Leanne's pdq, her hubby Dan refused the challenge of coming out with the ladies... who by chance happened to be wearing matching bike gear, on matching bikes.... I think we looked pretty sad! Anyway... it was a glorious day, and leaving at 9 o'clock meant I braved the morning chill and wore bike shorts and a couple of layers only! It was a FABULOUS ride with plenty of other cyclists out in the country lanes..... I'm looking forward to the bluebells coming out in the next week or two followed by the rapeseed fields turning yellow.... truly one of the loveliest times of the year :)

Made it back to my local gym (where i had dumped the car)... quickly put the bike in the boot, got changed and on to the cross trainer...... (still no running for me)...... it took a while (about 15mins) for my legs to stop feeling like lead.... but I got it done! Really pleased with that.

Finished, pooped... and did the decent thing,.... headed into Reading (my local metropolis) met up with another friend (this time Popey the Pop-tart) for a quick B52, cinema (The Writer = v disappointing) and then a thai and a italian martini... YUM! Got to bed, having recovered on no more then a protein shake, sandwich, apple, a box of popcorn, 3 cocktails and 4 slices of toast..... I think I need to work on my recovery!

That's all for now.... have a blogtastic week everyone!

The weekend

The last few weekends have gone something like this;

Saturday bike 3 hours
Sunday bike 4 hours, 30mins XT Brick
Saturday bike 3 hours, middle hour 3*(15mins hard, 5mins recovery)
Sunday bike 4.5hours, 30mins XT Brick
Saturday bike 3 hours
Sunday bike Sportive (this was 60miles and took 4hours)


Clearly I'm the non-runner at the moment, hence so much biking

This time last week I was toast. I think the interval session on the Saturday followed by the Sunday wiped my arse.

Today however, although tired, I feel strangely OK with it all. I wouldn't say fresh. But I certainly am not feeling beaten up as I did last week. Granted this weekend has been a bit "easier" but I think what I'm feeling is ADAPTATION.... At the end of the 60miles today, whilst I didn't think I could do another 52 and then a marathon... I did think I could cycle more... and believe me I've not felt like that the other weekends....

So, this evening when this came on my car stereo... I thought it kind of apt....

Thanks Freddie for this one - you were a real rock star...

Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time
I feel alive
And the world, I'll turn it inside out yeah
I'm floating around in ecstasy
So don't stop me now
Don't stop me
'cause I'm having a good time
Having a good time

I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky
Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity
I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva
I'm gonna go go go there's no stopping me
I'm burning through the sky yea
Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

Don't stop me now
I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time
Just give me a call
Don't stop me now
'cause I'm having a good time
Don't stop me now
Yes I'm having a good time
I don't wanna stop at all

I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars
On a collision course
I am a satellite
I'm out of control
I'm a sex machine ready to reload
Like an atom bomb about to oh oh oh oh oh explode!
I'm burning through the sky yeah
Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic woman of you

Don't stop me don't stop me, don't stop me hey hey hey!
Don't stop me don't stop me ooh ooh ooh
I like it
Don't stop me don't stop me
Have a good time good time
Don't stop me don't stop me
ohhhhhhh!

(guitar solo)

ohhhhhhh
Burning through the sky yeah
Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

Don't stop me now
I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time
Just give me a call
Don't stop me now
'cause I'm having a good time
Don't stop me now
Yes I'm having a good time
I don't wanna stop at all

Da da da da daaaa da da da
Ha da da ha ha ha ha
Ha da da da da

Thinking...

.... umm thinking of a change of blog name


... just thinking

... but like I'm 4 years into triathlon (nearly anyway)... so I'm not still starting

... but I am starting to tri ironman distance... so maybe I am starting...

... my replacement name?

Kind obvious isn't it... ok so it may not be if your don't realise I have a pseudo name..



"RUN DORIS RUN"...

... or should that be "Run! Doris! Run!" or "Run Doris! Run!"... or "Run! Doris run!"...

I'll think on it some more - maybe I'll change my blog after August 15th!

Uh Oh

Uh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh

No 1: Wes you were right - what happened to the scaling of those pics?! Like I did that much! Mwah!

No 2: Banned... I've banned chocolate from my diet for April... Now that is a big uh-oh.. but note chocolate drinks or chocolate protein bars (=bleah) do not count

No 3: Between Friday and Sunday I did about 10hours training.... pretty big uh oh but not as big an "UH OH" as getting up for a sprint tri this morning at 0515, leaving without my purse or triathlon id, getting lost, and still being allowed to swim/bike,..... and I knew before I started this would be my first DNF because I'm still not running on T.F. ( aka the foot)

No 4: Recover evening going well... two pints of ale to the good... UH OH!

No 5: Work tomorrow after a long weekend "off".. ha ha ha ... UH OH!!

I thank thee

A picture of Training......

 I just worked out I can copy and paste these tasty graphs from RunSaturday.... sad I know but I do like them.... 

March Summary

Well got to dash to work so this will be ubba quick (honest)

So.... March... ahem.... yes well I had great plans but as we know other things can effect great plans.... with the death of my trusty sidekick, Muffin the moo, me having a rubbish foot and a bit of travel at the start of the month led to a fairly rubbish first two weeks of March. Still I bounced back ok, running is now on XT only, swimming has been impacted as I can't push off a wall very well (and it annoys my injury, would you believe), but I have upped the bike significantly. So I'm happy with that.

Here's the stats.... quite a bit of the "other" includes physio time as well as the normal stretching and core work..... curtesy of RunSaturday - here's the totals for March;

• Run - 11 - 21.1 mi - 3.8 hrs
• Swim - 6 - 6.5 mi - 4.2 hrs
• Bike - 17 - 356.5 mi - 24.8 hrs
• Cross - 13 - 2.7 mi - 5.6 hrs
• Total - 47 - 386.8 mi - 38.4 hrs

 Running and swimming DOWN, Bikey.... UP UP UP with my biggest Bikey month E-V-E-R!

Right - time for work already... I GOTTA Go

... and please NOTE I resisted the temptation to play an April Fool's day trick on you all :) I'm nice like that!