It’s been weird today - no races coming up in the next few weeks. Nothing to train for. Nothing to work for. Nothing to live for. Er. . . hold on a minute. Let’s just rewind that. Today is an official rest day. In fact, the whole week is pretty much in the diary as a...
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So just the run left to do. Two laps of Warwick School’s playing fields, with around 400m on pavement around the outside of their grounds. Not much to say about this really . . . except that discipline at the school must be pretty strict. At the top corner of the course, next to the...
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So the swim wasn’t the fastest. But I’d had a look around the bike course, and was pretty confident that I could make up for it here. In transition everything went like clockwork - putting everything on in the right order, remembering to take a gulp from the bottle that wasn’t on the bike, and...
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It was the  . . . uh . . . usual race day wake up for me. How cool is that? I’v now got the experience to have ‘usual’ wake-ups. I don’t mean that they’re like the mornings where the alarm clock goes off and it’s time to get up for work / training / get...
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After the drive down to Tall Friend’s house (grotty traffic), I arrived just after 2pm. So after the usual ‘Hellos’ and unloading the car, we went for a walk around the park for ice creams & to exercise Tall Friend’s dogs (bouncy, bouncy creatures). It was one of those sunny but not hot days,...
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I’m getting ready for a long car journey tomorrow - loading some audio books up to keep me going. While these are importing, I was noodling around Charlie The Bike Monger’s links page, and came across this insane video of a NYC Bike Messengers’ Race. It’s fantastic viewing - makes Formula 1 / Indie /...
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2008? Already? Yep. My goals for next year represent quite a serious shift up the ladder, so I’m going to have to do some real training. Getting enough sleep, having an actual plan, and periodisation. Stuff like that. At the moment, I’m looking at three triathlons - Stratford Sprint (400m swim, 23k bike, 5k run) as...
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One of my favourite ’slow’ training runs is to go from home to Tynemouth and back, along the sea front. What makes this an interesting route is that there are lots and lots of steps that go from the promenade to the beach and back. So you can make like Jack & Desmond in the...
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Nope, this isn’t a posting about the money in the Harry Potter books. I was running late this morning when I headed out on Christine for central Newcastle. Less than half a mile down the road, there was a curious ‘pop’ from somewhere near the back wheel, followed fifty yards later by quite a loud...
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A run to the lighthouse and back . . . when I went out this morning there was some of that autumnal chill in the air again. So for this evening’s run, I opted for the tights to keep my pipe-cleaner skinny legs warm. And didn’t bother to take any fluids with me. Doh! big mistake -...
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I first read about Jane last year when she was taking part in the Race Across America. Jane was a remarkable woman who’s refusal to give in, and her drive to make something positive come out of her incurable cancer is something we can all learn from. Any other words of mine wouldn’t do her...
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Today is Tuesday, and that means one of my two weekly run sessions with Shana. When I got up this morning, the house felt cold - where’d the summer go? Actually, come to that, when did it arrive? So although it was a beautiful cloud-free sunrise over the sea, it was time to start moving...
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This evening I was supposed to be going to the NE31’s swim session. But that’s always a tough session, and after only a couple of 100m repeats on Friday, my shoulder was feeling a bit rough on Saturday (kinda aching all the way from shoulder to elbow), and I’m racing again this weekend, so...
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This morning, Daughter and I took our Huge Dalmatian for a walk along the promenade (four miles for me, a lot further for her on her bike - needing a cup of coffee at the half-way point for me, and an ice cream for her) . . . and then after lunch,...
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So having failed to knock one of my goals off yesterday, I went for a short ride with The Irishman. It was the kind of ambling along “shooting the breeze” (as he put it) riding, talking about the stuff that blokes talk about. Well, actually, the stuff that engineers talk about . . . I’d...
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So Saturday was my first attempt at my goal of 10K in 40 minutes. For this, I’d selected the Wallsend Harriers 10K road race circuit. This is a local race that I’ve run before, and it’s a good fast course. I also had my friend The Irishman come along on his bike. I knew...
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Nothing much to say - went to the pool on Friday afternoon for my weekly swim with Daughter. While she was playing, I did get a few lengths in, but although it’s now pain free, my shoulder did not feel right . . . and in fact, my left arm was quite sore on...
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This evening when I got in, Wife & Daughter had just finished baking some brownies. The kitchen smelt fabulous, and I arrived just in time see ‘em come hot out of the oven. Oh, it’s hard being patient under such circumstances! Anyway, earlier in the week, I was going to cook another batch of the...
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So after two days taking it easy, it was back to the grindstone this morning. The plan was to put in 50 miles, starting at 6am. But watching just one more episode of Season 4 of Twenty-Four last night made for getting to bed late, so I ended up leaving the house just before...
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So this morning, Shana was back from her week in Turkey. Actually she and her husband took last week as a holiday at rather short notice. The official rumour going around the neighbourhood is that the couple of easy hill repeats we did a couple of weeks back almost killed her, and she had...
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So today the official results for the Hartlepool  Marina Triathlon are out . . . There were 90 finishers on the day, and I did: Swim - 84th; 23:01 Bike - 65th - 41:59 Run - 40th - 20:07 Overall - 67th - 1:25:07 In a way, I’m a little disappointed - I finished just outside of the bottom quartile. BUT...
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