The Weekend Round Up #2

Miles swam: 2. Last night was the last Sunday swim before the Christmas break but you couldn’t tell that it was time to ease off the gas a little. We put in a 600 meter warm up followed by 20 * 100 meters freestyle on the rather quick (when you are bashing out 20 of them) time of 1:45 and then a 400 meter warm down which I swam pretty much on my back to try and ease my shoulders off.

Miles on the bike: 20 miles as 10 miles on Saturday and 10 miles on Sunday; all turbo work.

Miles run: I tend to do most my running mid-week so I didn’t get any runs in.

Christmas trees up: 1. This weekend was pretty special, the first time I have ever put a Christmas tree up anywhere but at my parents house. On Friday night we went and bought a tree and then spent an hour putting it up on Saturday.

Engagement parties attended: 1, no booze drank (which is good for me) and we had a pretty awesome time.

So there you have it, my busy but decent weekend.

What A Week

I have just been stupidly busy this week and when I haven’t been working I have been sleeping, eating or playing call of duty. Plus the weather has been pretty frosty and everyone knows that I am a fair weather athlete. All this has kept me indoors with the exception of two runs and a swim.

What I should have said is it’s been cold, I have been working a lot and I have been too lazy to ride my bike.

On Monday I headed down to the pool and put in a couple of thousand meters. I can’t remember the full workout but I know there was a lot of pull and catchup drill.

Tuesday I went out for a run and froze because I had forgotten my running jacket and I was at Sarahs.

Wednesday was a rest day.

Yesterday I ran a few miles complete with running jacket and felt warm, happy and actually quite quick (for someone who isn’t a good runner and who struggles with anything more than a brisk walk). I think I clocked in around 28 minutes for 3 miles, running easy in sub zero temperatures. There is something about cold weather running that is quite cathartic.

Just Messing About With Write or Die

Okay guys this isn’t really a great post. I was just testing out a new service called write or die and thought it might be fun to challenge myself to write 250 words in 10 minutes or less. Here is what I produced; it’s not great but it was actually quite fun.

So I need to write something like 250 words in 10 minutes which doesn’t sound that tough really and if I can get this sorted that I can churn out a few articles an hour. I guess the first thing to do is pick a topic right?

Triathlon has always been a pretty important part of my life and so I guess that’s the easiest thing to write this article about. For me there is nothing tougher than pushing your body and mind to the absolute limit and then breaking through that barrier to push for the finish line.

Without a doubt my favorite discipline in triathlon is the swim, mainly because it can be completely batshit crazy. I mean there are bodies, arms, legs and hands everywhere and to do well you need to keep your mind free of worries and stresses to push to the finish where you climb out and try not to think about your legs that suddenly feel like jelly, that feel weak and that don’t feel like climbing on a bike to ride for 25 miles.

I think that the swim in triathlon takes bottle if I am honest. Because of the danger that open water has, a lot of folks get worried that something will go wrong, however once I learned that it doesn’t really go wrong and accepted that I had to push on through then I suddenly saw the appeal of open water swimming and my triathlon performance increased greatly.

I am now no longer bothered by open water events and actually (dare I say it) look forward to them.

Pro Triathlon Guides

Just a quick post right now guys to let you know that you might have noticed that there are three new tabs on the site caled Swimming, Cycling and Running. These new pages are hopfully going to become over the next couple of years, awesome guides about training for each of the three events for triathlon. Right now they are still kind of drafts and under construction-ish (or if you want to get technical, they are in beta) but they will be getting packed full of information before long.

What A Week

This week has been one of those ‘where the heck did the last 5 days go?’ kind of weeks.

Work has just been the kind of leading time suck this week, with a couple of projects on the go I have been getting in from work kind of late and by the time I have got my kit on, I have only been able to put in a couple of three mile runs, no rides and only swam on Monday.

Last night I went out to see paranormal activity which although was never going to win any oscars, was actually pretty good. I didn’t find it as kind of spooky as I thought I was going to find it but for a cheeky Friday night trip out it was pretty good.

Anyway I am going to try to rustle up something to eat and then force myself to jump on the turbo.

An Open Letter To The Gym

Dear Gym,
Have you ever seen that episode of classic TV show friends where Chandler wants to quit the gym and they make it pretty tough for him to leave. Then Ross signs up and, well this video probably explains it better…

Anyway why do you make it so tough to leave? I mean I use to go pretty much every day… for 2 years and now when I move out of the area you make it pretty much impossible to leave within a month.

First I have to write you a letter saying that I am giving you my one month notice, then explain why. Then I have to wait for one of the reception monkeys to read my letter and pass it on to the membership team and then wait for them to assign it to the ‘quitters team’. Finally you process my cancellation and this takes a flipping month.

You make it so easy to join, we did it over the phone. I was amazed at how efficient you all were but now that I wish to stop being a member you drag your heals to squeeze that last bit of money out of me.

Thanks guys.

Kind Regards

Paul

In other none angry news; I had a pretty decent swim last night and covered around 2500m in an hour. The set was roughly:

600m warm up alt 150m free/ 150m back
50m easy swim
4*100m IM on 2 minutes
4*100m free on 1:45 (with the goal of being under 1:10 for them all (pull))
50m easy swim
4*100m IM on 2 minutes
4*100m free on 1:30 (with the goal of being under 1:15 for them all)
50m easy swim
150m swim down

The IM seemed easy, the last 75 of the 100′s pull were really tough but I hit the times. Swimming form seems good so just gotta keep it up.

Bike tonight and run tomorrow night; I am going to be knackered by March.

The Weekend Round Up #1

Miles swam: A big fat 0. I just couldn’t be bothered to drive to the pool when the house was so warm and full of Call of Duty goodness.

Miles on the bike: 20 on the turbo split into 10 miles each day, just to get back into things.

Miles run: 0. Nothing could get me out of the door yesterday. Torrential rain and driving winds don’t make for a fun run along the clifftops.

Food of Choice: Bacon. I ate far too much bacon.

Comedien of the weekend: On Saturday night Sarah and I sat down to watch the new Russell Howard DVD and proceeded to laugh our arses off.

Movie of the weekend: The Dark Knight. Well I got through half of it last night. Someone could have warned me that it was such a long movie!

A hypothetical for the week: If you could be training anywhere hot right now, where would it be?

Wow I Just Started A Blog

I lay in bed just one hour ago after dreaming of being a triathlete and taking part in the London triathlon. I lay there and thought “yeah I quite fancy giving triathlon a shot”.

Anyway as I lay there thinking I thought it might be an awesome idea to write a blog that can kind of double as a training log as well.

I haven’t really done much in the way of competing since I was 18 and decided to jack it all in. I use to swim a little bit and have just started to get in the pool again to get rid of my five year old beer belly and I also use to ride a little bit and broke a couple of local time trial records so I still have the bikes.

Anyway I digress, so I wanted to get into triathlon, I wanted  to blog and so I needed to think of a title; as it turns out, triathlon lends itself quite well to some possibly dodgey titles

• tri hard
• could tri harder
• tri me a river (you can tell I was half asleep)

Well you get the idea so I just decided on the simple title of triathlon and me as it pretty much does what it says on the tin.

I figure that if I set a couple of goals for myself then I might stick to my training a lot more. Next season I would like to do at least 3 triathlons and try to get round the olympic distance race in the Stockton Triathlon next year.

Well I have been up an hour or so and the fog still hasn’t lifted so it looks like I am going to blow the dust off the old turbo trainer and turn the pedals for the first time in 5 years. Wish me luck.