Festival of Light

Last week I mentioned the nights getting darker and today I'm commenting on Light. The Indian's celebrate Diwali on this day each year. It is a festival intended to bring new light and new hope into our lives and to flush away any darkness from our hearts and minds.
I've new hope, in the form of a washing machine I ordered yesterday that should be delivered next Tuesday. I've never bought a washing machine before. The first I inherited from my Grandmother, the next was in a house I bought 5 years ago.
How is training? It's going quite well. Only swam once last week. The Saturday EAST session where John Digby told me to focus on the push part of the end of my crawl arm stroke. I put that into practice yesterday morning and took at least 2 strokes off each length. Was doing a 50m length in 41 strokes. Riding last week involved an interesting off road Rough Stuff Ride to get me to 206miles. Only ran 19.5miles, but the quality was good, a 4.5mile t-run after Saturday's bike ride at 80% heart rate that felt hard and awkward proved to be 7:20mpm pace.

Getting Darker

The nights have definately drawn in now and with the clocks going back an hour on Sunday we now have 5 months of dark evenings ahead of us.
Night time riding will more likely be done on the turbo trainer in the garage. However I have a new lease of life for those dark post ride transition runs. Last night I christened by Petzl head tourch with additional Petzl signal rear light. It's brilliant.

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/Cycle/7/Petzl_Tikka_Head_Torch/5360028218/
http://www.outdoorsmagic.com/news/article/mps/uan/5064

The Week That Was - 13-19 Oct 2008

Though the title should be the weekend that was, not that there was ever a TV program of that name.
The weekend topped off what was a pretty good week.
Friday evening - I attended the wedding reception of Dean Grady and Fiona Hunter, who are kayaking and cycling friends as well as being neighbours.
Saturday morning - swimming training with East Anglia Swallow Tails before heading off on a Tri-Anglia ride to the English Whisky Distillery outside East Harling (route). Wrapped that up with a 2.2mile transition run.

Diss Swim Relay Challenge
Pleased to report that following a solid display of consistant swimming in the 15 minute Relay Challenge that the Tri-Anglia team consisting of Matt Ellis, Matt Spillman, Oliver Milk and myself won. More

Club 10k

Sunday morning saw the first Tri-Anglia Club 10k of the winter series. The run follows the 10k run route from the Norwich Olympic Triathlon, though admittedly with a slightly different start/finish point. The route is undulating and twisty with a significant portion off road. So not a quick course. Managed to post a time of 41:21 which is just 6 seconds off my all time 10k PB recorded 3 years ago.

I'm very very pleased with that.

Then went for a 36 mile ride on the single speed Specialized Tricross. Mark Nowell gave me company to Wortwell where he bought us hot drinks. The 36 miles is the furthest I've ridden on this bike in one go so far and takes the total mileage on that new bike through 100miles.

My ever faithful Giant OCR2 which was my first bike back in sept 2003 this week went through the 15,000 mile point. Total training mileage for the week was 192.6miles consisting of 5.1 miles swimming, 161 cycling and 26.5 running

Pleasing Long Run

Went out at lunchtime for my weeks long run of 10 miles. Managed to beat my official 10mile PB from Wymondham 10 last year. Admittedly by only a few seconds, but still pleasing all the same seeing as I was thinking about technique.
Route was: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2336536
10.5 miles according to my pedometer (gmaps does under estimate) in 1:21:52 at an average pace of 7:44 minutes per mile (mpm).
My only 10mile race was Wymondham 10 in April 2007 where I completed in 1:17:29, average pace 7:45 mpm.
Admittedly my half marathon PB works out to a pace of 7:04mpm, but I'm still very pleased with today's run.

Ironman UK Report and TV Coverage.

I've now written up my race report and it can be found at: http://www.tri-anglia.co.uk/2008/IMUK/RobLines.html

And Channel 4 will be broadcasting a half hour highlights programme from the 2008 UK Ironman this coming Saturday morning at 7:30am

Training total year to date

Todays swim, bike and run have taken me through the 7,000 training miles year to date.

Swim wise i'm just 2 miles short at 132 miles of my 2007 total with eleven weeks still to go. Bike wise, I'm just 4 miles short of 6,000 and run wise I'm at 929.

Nearly went out on my single speed winter bike today, but glad I didn't as the fast boys (Matt, Matt, Oli and Russell) were out and I would not have kept up on a 42-18. Weather was fab, and we found a lovely road with tail wind that we belted along at 23+mph, which meant we missed the planned route, but meant we were on the right route for us for today.

Planned route was: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1661635

Acctual route was: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2327582

Heart Foundation Relay Challenge

Each year the British Heart Foundation host a sponsored swim at the Diss pool that also includes a Relay Challenge involving a four man (or women or mixed) team seeing how far they can swim in 15 minutes.

Teams are allowed no more than 2 swimmers at a time, so the concensus of the teams is for the 4 to split into pairs and swim 50m at a time. So, basically 15 minutes of 50m on, 50m off.

This year Tri-Anglia have a team consisting of Matt Ellis, Matt Spillman, Oliver Milk and myself.

How far do you reckon we'll get? The fast teams from the local swim clubs aim for 100 lengths (2.5km) and often get over 90.
Perhaps we should have a sweep stake? £1 a punt with 50% going to the charity and 50% into the prize pot. Or you could just donate to BHF at www.justgiving.com/tri-anglia

If anyone else would like to get a team together, I can email you an entry form.

Long lunchtime run

Trying to get into the habbit of doing my long run mid week rather than at the weekend. The idea is to separet the long bike ride and the long run. This weeks long run didn't need to be terribly long. In fact none of my long runs need to be terribly long for the next month or so. So todays 8 miler I fitted in at lunchtime.
Went out on a route that from memory was 8miles. Was thinking about technique and form - run tall, run straight, hips forward, high cadence, don't bring feet to far forward resulting on heal strikes and a braking action, and lean forward. Pace on the watch was good to start at 8mpm, on the downhill to the railway station was 7:30mpm, but after that it was 9mpm which I was sure wasn't right. It then dropped to 10mpm, I was tired but that definately didn't feel right.
Finished the run and the pedometer has measured it at 7.2 miles, 1:04:36 so 8:58mpm average. Checked the route from last time when I'd gmapped it: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1493067 8.17 miles in 64:36 works out to 7:54mpm pace including styles, level crossing, traffic lights, road junctions etc. I'm very happy with that.

UEA Swim

Bumped into Jim Keeble and Paul Kemp at the UEA 50m pool this morning. We were doing fairly similar sessions - warm up and then 200m efforts. My 200m efforts alternated between 4x50m drill swims on 60s and a 200m swim on 3:30. 600m warm up plus a 200m warm down to map a nice 2,400m 40min session.
Simon was leaving the pool when I arrived (I was late this morning) and Penny was in the pool by the time I left. Suspect the lady in the lane next to me might have a triathlon/multisport bias going by the cycle short tan lines on her thighs. When quized she said she'd just got back from the Pryennes.

A New Dawn

Winter is here. Yesterday was horrid and saturday's 10M time trial was horribly windy.
My winter bike is now all but set up and was used this morning in earnest to get me to UEA for an early morning swim. The crankbrother egg beater pedals combined with with specialsed off road shoes seemed to work a treat. The addition of a speedo has confirmed rather than allayed my fears of being able to stay the pace of group rides in a single 42-18 gear.
Appreciate that it's been a while since I last updated my blog. Would like to be able to say that I've been having a well deserved rest since the Ironman, but the reality of it is that I've been busy with Tri-Anglia events of Aquathlon and Waveney2, plus a weekend consumed by the annual Round Norfolk Relay. Been so buys that I've still to write up a report for the Ironman and put photos onto the website. Oh, well, hope to soon.
On Friday evening we had a Tri-Anglia committee meeting at the Earlham firestation. Quite exciting after the meeting to look round the engines. During the meeting I managed to avoid being nominated for 2009 Chairmanship - there's no way I can possibly take on anymore.
One thing that did go well, was how we allocated the clubs slot in the 2009 London Marathon, conversation was rather timely as notifications came out that same day. I'm in due to having been rejected for 5 consequative years.