IN WHICH THE LONGEST DAY HAS COME AND GONE, WE FALL OFF THE WAGON(ISH), AND WE TRY TO GET SERIOUS WITH THE TRAINING, GIVEN THAT THE CLOCK IS TICK-TOCKING AWAY (BUT LET’S AT LEAST GET THE FOOTIE SORTED FIRST…)
It’s Friday. I don’t quite have that Crunchie feeling. It’s been an emotional week, what with Ireland doing the business against Italy and all that.
Monday was a short and nippy run. A roughly 8k ramble in just over 39 minutes. Or 5:02/km pace. Time constraints prevented anything more ambitious.
Tuesday, and again, with no cover to head out on the bike, I chose the gym bike instead, and did about 31k in the hour, and then did a mile on the treadmill at 7mph. My head doesn’t work in imperial any more, so I couldn’t tell what that was in metric, nor do I like the treadmill, which on this occasion was doing hills at random, so the incline was popping up to 3.5% for the craic, and everything in between…
For the record, I follow Rob Cummins excellent blog (and you can check it out here), and this week’s post is all about the bike. One thing I noted was his point about the benefits of the turbo over the road, in that you have to keep working on the stationary bike; there’s no freewheeling or fiddling about for water bottles, or stopping for traffic. Valid points indeed. Anyway, have a wander over and see what I mean.
One of my recent posts contained a rather upsetting image. Children were hiding under their beds, crying. Grown men were weeping. That sort of thing. Well, no, not really. But in an effort to make up for that, here are some more random and unnecessary images, with at least the most offending part covered over with a T-shirt. No laughing, please, and definitely no references to the Elephant Man or Borat’s mankini will be countenanced.
According to Kev, my cousin-in-law, who is a sound bloke and has a few ironman races under his belt, I should be running off the bike from here on in. In fact, Kev imparted a few nice pearls of wisdom to me about long distance triathlon, so I have been taking note 😉
So, runs off the bike from now on. I will test this to the max on Sunday when I have a long spin pencilled in.
Wednesday was a pool session, and just did the mile in the 45 minutes, which is par for the course. Later that evening, I hosted a BBQ for the station crew, and we watched the game. I hardly need remind you that Ireland finally stuck one in the onion bag on about 85 minutes or so, thereby making the evening something of a success. So we retired to our local to continue the celebrations. My own favourite team, Iceland, also made it through with a rather thrilling do-or-die effort.
So it would be fair to say that on Thursday, I was a little delicate. A rest day was called for while I tried in vain to track down the truck that ran over my head the night before. I shall reserve my next evening’s celebrations for the night of the 20th August, when hopefully we will have gone the distance.
Friday, and I rose early and hit the pool for the 7.15am session and stayed in ’til 9. I clocked in the 4k, which again is about my average pace these days. I might be getting a little better at the breathing though, as I don’t seem to have taken so much of the pool home with me this time, via my nasal cavity.
On the way back from the pool, I popped into Wheelworx to pick up a few things. A sponge for the bike (coz I keep robbing my Dad’s, and that’s not right…), a can of Trislide, and some elastic laces for my new runners. The Trislide will help, apparently, with just about every event you care to mention where friction and chafing might be a problem. You. Yeah, you at the back… wash yer mouth out!
unironedman 