It’s been a busy few weeks with one thing and another. After a lengthy period of writers block, I’ve found some time in between plastering the kitchen* and getting ready for a duathlon tomorrow.
To recap, the latter part of August and September were spent preparing for the final round of the Dragon XC mountain bike series. Having spent a good deal of time entering races, I felt quite qualified to actually try and organise one. In a sense, it helped quite a bit, but in many other respects I under estimated the amount of work involved both before hand and on the day. Four of us spent days strimming tracks, building berms and little bits of north-shore, putting arrows and marking tape out. The result was what many racers regarded as an excellent course – one of the best of the year if you read the straw poll on the xcracer.com forum. Anyway, suffice to say there’s much more to running a race than meets the eye, but seeing 60 odd happy (and tired) riders kind of made it all worth while.
In between times, I’ve continued to try and get the hang of this swimming malarky, with at least two sessions a week. Its the one thing where my base fitness from cycling doesn’t actually count for much because its some much down to your technique, or in my case, lack of. I’ve done a bit of running too with the local club, completing my first bench-mark mile the other week in 6 mins 22 seconds. I wasn’t sick when I crossed the line, which was something. I’d hope to get under 6 minutes pretty quickly now I’ve learnt a bit about pacing for that sort of distance.
I’ve been away with Beth on holiday, for the first time on what seems years. Taking time of work to train or do DIY isn’t really much of a holiday. Looking at the photo above, you’d think we’ve been somewhere really exotic, but it’s actually Pembrokeshire. A vast array of photos, trimmed down from over 400 is here.
So, that brings you more or less up to date. After a hour fettling in the garage this evening, I’ve got my tri-bars in the right position for tomorrow. It’s not a particularly serious event, between the local triathlon club and the athletics club, but it’ll be a first time I’ve done an event such as this. The route starts with a hilly 2 mile run, followed by a 9 mile bike and a 2 mile run again. The trick I suppose is not being totally wrecked when I get off the bike so I die on the final leg of the race. Full report to follow soon…
* or rather, the room where the kitchen used to be. Most of “the kitchen” is in pieces outside waiting for me to fit the new one which is taking all the space where we used to have a dining room and a lounge. Like all good DIY jobs, there’s more to it than you first thought…
Middle Ring All The Way 