Loving my Runnning

Since my last blog update at the beginning of January it feels like the weather has not been above freezing level. But with all the festive holidays now well and truly behind us it's been a time to start laying the foundations for the forthcoming season.

January is also a month where I like to fit in a few running races, 6th of January was the annual Cambridgeshire XC Champs held at Prior Park in St. Neots, with a pretty stacked field and 4 laps around the muddy park it seemed to be a very long 10k, well it turned out to be nearly 10.8km but great fun as always. I managed to finish in a respectable 17th with Josh having a great run and finishing 6th and grabbing a place for the Inter-Countries later this year.

The following weekend (13th January) saw the 4th round of our local inter-club XC league 'The Frostbite Friendly League' 5 miles of mixed terrain around Whitemoor Prison near March, it's a pretty un-testing course being fairly flat, but all good fun none the less and nice to get the legs turning over a bit faster than normal.

Then can the snow, and with it the first cancelled race of the year, the Folksworth 15, this was to be my first proper road race of the year and a good indicator to see how things were progressing ahead of the VLM. With a little surfing an alternative race was soon found, the first of three Wellingborough 15K multi terrain races. After racing and winning the 10K there last year it was an ideal time to up the distance to the 15k. By the time we got lined up on the start line in true XC fashion in my NVH's Singlet and shorts the snow was starting to fall again. 3 x 5k laps of the snow covered course and it was over, a not to shabby 3rd place behind the legendary Hywel Davies...

27th January and it was time for a day of swim coaching, Emily had very kindly treated me to a Swim Smooth Clinic for my birthday and at last, the time had come to literally jump in at the deep end. The session was run by Steve Casson, and involved pool videoing, drills, classroom analysis of our strokes and then back in the pool for more drills and race simulation work.... all in all an enjoyable day and I can away with lots of things to work on, as we all know my swim is my biggest limiter so the hard work continues.

Finally last Sunday (10th February) saw the Folksworth 15 was re-scheduled, after a pretty big week of 16 hours of training I was not really looking forward to a wet and windy 15miles specially after attending a Roundtable Ball the night before. But hay hoo its all good mileage leading up to London. The plan was to try and run a steady even paced run at 5.55min/mi. As normal the gun went off and I shot out the blocks like in a bloody 5k race, it didn't help being downhill and back wind, but I soon settled down running in a small group. It's an undulating course of 2 laps with 3 main hills per lap, but worse than the hills is its exposure and the back straight of about 3 mile was into the wind. On the first lap I found myself running the back straight with fellow Ironman Mat Stephenson, after sitting in close behind him for a while I repaid the honours.. I hate running into the wind..... once round the corning and out the wind it was back to ticking off the miles until that same section on the next lap, this time all on my own, so tooth gritted, head down, and thinking only 3 miles of wind then it's back wind, downhill home (well back wind maybe but there is one last killer hill at mile 14). With a last little effort up the last hill and half a mile back wind to the finish I manage to get 4th place in a time of 1:28:39 some 1:39 faster than last year and bang on my target pace of 5:55min/mi. I even managed a small negative split :-). All in all a good race and the time bods well for my sub 2:45 VLM target...

Next (running) stop, Stamford 30K next Sunday, now this one is a toughie but really looking forward to it and testing out my new Sketcher GoRun2 shoes, which I kindly received last week courteously of the RacetimeUSN race team, they do look awesome. I think they will be the perfect Marathon and IM shoe for this year so big thanks to Racetime and Sketchers for all their great support.           

Apart from running I've been maintaining my bike fitness with a far bit of time spend to the rollers and turbo in the mornings before work and most Saturdays morning out on the road with Jimmy who's been cranking up the mileage in readiness for our trip to Nice next month to recce the Ironman bike course.

Thanks for reading this far,,, I'll leave you with my January stats.......... Train hard, train smart..

January's Stats, Tried to maintain my swim volume, and substituted some bike hours to my running.

	Duration (h:m)	Distance  (mile)	TSS
Swim	20:25	32.65	925
Bike	24:23	454.45	1349
Run	16:11	140.38	1359

An Emotional Roller Coaster

Well what a month,,,,

It all started off with a fun XC race in the North Mids Leagues at Wollaton Park, where I met up with one of my new RacetimeUSN team mates, Duncan Shea-Simond for a brief chat before the race. With Duncan's past performances duly noted I thought we would be pretty close in the race. After 2 laps of the 3 lap hilly course I could see a shadow slowly catching me, yes it was Duncan, he was just too strong for me on the day and he edged away to take me down by some 17sec..... Albeit I was happy with my 48th placing in a stacked field of 'runners'.

All cleaned up and back in the car to head home I got the sad news that Emily's mum had been taken ill and had been taken in to hospital. I rushed back home and to the hospital to pick up Georgie to give Emily some time with her mum and to wait for her brother to join her that evening.

Sunday was the Nene Valley 10mile road race where I was due to marshall, so Georgie and I headed down there in the morning to give Emily and her brother some quality time with their mum who sadly lost her fight on the Monday morning and slipped away from us. As I'm sure you all would imagine the next couple of weeks were all over the place as we all came to terms with our loss and the emotional roller coaster that comes with any bereavement, Hilda you will be dearly missed.

December 16th saw the third round of our local Frostbite Cross Country League which was at Hinchingbrooke Park. After all the rain that had fallen recently the course was slightly amended due to flooding. Normally this course suits cross trainers due to the mixed terrain and about a mile of tarmac. After a recce of the course on warm up where I could hardly stand up due to the mud, I opted for spikes. I think this was a good move even with the tarmac section. Finished 9th in the end which was my best Frostbite placing, just some pretty sore calves the next day for running on the tarmac.....

December also saw Stamford Tri Clubs Awards Presentation night where in my absence I was delighted to pick up "Male Best Athlete of the Year" and the winner of the "Male Club Championship" which very nicely capped off the year in terms of silverware. Thanks to everyone at the club for their support thoughout the year, cheers guys....

Well now the year is coming to an end its time to start thinking about 2013, how I can improve, how I can go longer, how I can go faster..... 

December, its been a mixed up and emotional month, just getting it done when I can.

	Duration (h:m)	Distance  (mile)	TSS
Swim	18:41	30.70	694
Bike	28:06	490.22	1411
Run	13:29	114.69	1165

2012 Totals,

	Duration (h:m)	Distance  (mile)
Swim	150:53	265.26
Bike	265:19	4912.18
Run	156:09	1366.67

Happy New Year everyone,,,, and hoping all have a great 2013..
 
   

November Training Stats

November, its been another nice steady month, an increase in bike miles over last month and all good base milage, will be ramping it up from now on....

	Duration (h:m)	Distance  (mile)	TSS
Swim	13:18	23.00	602
Bike	27:48	484.44	1340
Run	11:35	98.49	978

Just ticking along nicely

Training Update

Well after my little bike accident I'm now pretty sure I must of at least cracked a rib, the following week (w/c 29th Oct) I was not a happy bunny but luckily it was an easy week, I had to make it even easier than normal. Only one short treadmill run in agony, one swim with Stamford Tri Club, where I had to knock it on the head after a 400m warm up. At least I could bike, so I did manage three good bike sessions.

W/c 5th Nov I was still struggling with my ability to swim (nothing strange there I hear you cry) but with the help of some pain killers I managed to get my four swims in, albeit at a very steady effort. Running was back again with the aid of some pain killers and biking was still good which got me back on track with a nice 12.5 hrs in the bank.

W/c 12th Nov, pretty much back to normal now can swim Ok (just can't get out the damn pool at the end of the session without the aid of the steps) and got my 4 swims, 4 runs, & 3 bikes in. Clocking up 14.25hrs.

W/c 19th Nov, the last week of my current block and for the first time in a while I ticked every box, 4 swims, 4 runs, 3 bikes, all going nicely to plan considering the poor wet weather we had. I was lucky and stayed dry all week and only doing one run session indoors on the treadmill. Saturdays ride was a little longer than planned after trying a new route and completely heading in the wrong direction for about 10 miles before realising..... Week total 14.5hrs

I'm now looking forward to a nice recovery week before I see what Steve has in store for me in my next big training block.

News

I've been kept busy at home too, tidying up my garage, painting the floor, and preparing to move my turbo and rollers in there. My time is finally up in the Dining room, I've been evicted....

I also had some great news, when I received an invite to join the Racetime/USN Race Team for 2013, its a fantastic opportunity for me to race in a top quality team with some extremely talented team mates. The Team has some great sponsors too which include Greeper Laces, Compress Yourself, USN UK, Ashmei Running, Skechers Performace, Bonk, and Sunwise. I'm really excited about this opportunely and looking forward to to racing in 2013.

My new ride for next year is how complete and after a visit down to the guys at Freespeed on friday for a bike fit I can't wait for some dry weather to go for a spin.

Right I'm off for a nice recovery week and maybe a little cross country race next weekend in the North Mids League at Wolloton Park, time to get muddy ..... Cheers for reading... 

Oh and don't forget and check out racetime-events.co.uk for thier 2013 events calendar... 

October Training Stats

October, its been a nice steady month of ticking over, low intensity, and just enjoying swim, bike, and run.

	Duration (h:m)	Distance  (mile)	TSS
Swim	15:34	29.25	859
Bike	17:55	333.49	801
Run	13:42	119.94	1203

Senior to Vet

Training over the last couple of weeks has been nicely chilled out, low intensity, and generally just ticking over before starting my next big training block later in November.

Sunday 14th October saw me run my last race as a 'Senior', it was my local Half Marathon, The Great Eastern Run. Always nice to be able to run out of your front door to the start line as part of your warm up. I had no big aspirations about the race, but thought it would be nice to try and beat my number (55). All went well on the day and I ended up with 51th, a new PB of 1:17:01 and a nice negative split. A nice happy ending to racing as a senior.

Sunday 28th October saw my first Vet 40 running race, the Fenland 10 mile. A flat, but exposed course. I didn't have the best preparation, after a lovely surprise birthday meal on the Friday night with friends and family, I was up early (well not too early) on Saturday morning to get a steady 50 miles in on the bike. After about 30miles my gears weren't shifting to well, I looked back to check out the rear mech and the next thing I know, I'm on my backside in the middle of the road, with only a couple of bruised ribs and a grazed knee, I was lucky. So Sunday morning I was feeling a little battered but had a nice steady run of 58:26 to finish 7th. Not a bad Vet 40 debut.

Next year's race plan is starting to take shape, firstly with the Virgin London Marathon. Then with my main focus back on Ironman, I've entered IM France as my first 'A' race of the year this is in Nice on the 23rd June. As a build up race I've entered IM 70.3 Mallorca, this will be my 3rd visit to race on the Island and I'm looking forward to ripping it up again, this year without the pressure of qualifying for the World 70.3 Champs, this year I have new goals !!!!

Oh and my 2013 ride has finally arrived ... 

Can't wait for the guys at TFN to get it built up for me.... watch this space ... :-)

Got to start somewhere.....

Well here we go,, my first ever Blog....

After entering the world of triathlon in 2009, coming from a non-sporting background, the first year was all about completing an open water sprint triathlon which I had entered together with a group of friends at Blenheim Palace. I was immediately addicted to the sport and by the end of 2009 had completed my first Olympic distance triathlon.

In 2010 I set myself a goal to complete a middle distance triathlon, I choose Ironman UK 70.3 in Wimbleball, not the easiest by any means, but a challenge. With that completed I went on to compete in the Vitruvian Middle Distance tri at the end of that season, and by this time I was gaining valuable experience in the longer distances, It was time to go long.

My goals for 2011 were to run my first ever marathon and in a time under 3 hours, and to complete my first ever Ironman Distance Triathlon in under 10 hours. Through a good winter and spring of training I managed to achieve both gains. After Ironman Austria I approached Steve Casson, a BTA level 3 coach, who has now coached me since July 2011 and helped me along the road to ever faster times.

In 2012 I moved up an age group, and working with a great coach I set my sights on qualifying and racing in three World Championships, which I achieved. Firstly racing at the ITU Long Distance Champs in Vitoria, Spain, where this race was always going to be had for me due to the 4km swim, by far my weakest element, when I eventually exited the water I was some 20mins down on the leaders but after a strong bike and run I worked my way up to the podium with a third place only 22 seconds off the second step.

After my podium finish in Mallorca 70.3 I booked my slot to race the World 70.3 Champs in Las Vegas. After my result in Victoria I was hoping to place well, with the proportionally shorter swim it suits my strengths, but I didn’t have a good race. The first time I had ever raced in 40+degs, I cooked and ended up being sick on the bike, after which I couldn’t keep any fluids in and I rolled back to T2 where I made the decision to jog / walk the run for the finishes medal, of which I did. I learned a lot from this race which I have taken onboard and will bode me well in the further.

    

Bouncing back from Las Vegas and two weeks later I was at the ITU World Duathlon Champs in Nancy, France. After racing middle distance all year this was always going to be a challenge to find some speed. After a solid first run I found myself in 15^th place going out on the bike, where the technical street circuit suited me and I came into T2 in 6^th, and after the second run I crossed the line in a respectable 5^th. Happy days.     

Now 2012 is coming to an end, its time to reflect, learn, plan, and set some challanging goals for 2013....