Get your shades on for these ones...
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Thursday, June 29, 2006
Get well soon Rich..
Late last week I felt pretty down so decided I needed a pick me up....kind of a get well soon Richard present :-)
Get your shades on for these ones...
Get your shades on for these ones...
Grim up North? It's been pretty dire down here as well...
The National Age Group Champs are now less than 4 days away and I am still, as I sit here typing this, not sure whether I will be joining Gregg, my swimming buddy, on the journey up the M1 to Wakefield on Saturday.
The ingenious plan to get me into the GBR squad in my first year of triathlon all started to unravel over a week ago while I was doing a running session at Hampstead Heath track. The session included 6 x 1mile efforts at 39min/10k pace. I had completed five of these and as these had all been under the desired time so when it came to the last one and my knee started hurting after about 300m I made the foolish decision to keep on running so that I could finish the set - I assumed it was nothing serious and it would go away after a couple of hours. This was also on the back of another strange incident which occurred during a brick session a couple of days ago where I had to pull up all of a sudden because it felt like I had trapped a nerve in the top of my foot. On that I also did some more running when I would have perhaps been much better off just going home and resting the foot, albeit it felt okay a few minutes after it started to hurt.
What has followed on from this week of running hell has been an ongoing battle between my inability to rest, my desire to 'fix' these ailments and the continued pressure of what is coming on the horizon and how I need to be in A1 shape when, and more importantly if I jump in Pugney Lake on Sunday morning. My coach has been very helpful in terms of giving me other activities to do to keep my fitness levels as high as possible but these exercises, although very low impact, probably do slightly hinder the resolution on the knee (what I believe is some damage to the anterior ligament). However, this week things have started to improve quite rapidly and walking around no longer seems to be a problem. At times it has been horrible to walk as I needed to reduce the pain on the knee, and at the same time, twist my foot to accommodate the trapped nerve feeling in my foot. As you can quite imagine - this meant the use of some new muscles that started to hurt as well...all in all, it has been a very depressing week and a bit.
At the start of this week, I decided that, if things continued to improve, I would try and have a short run on Thursday and then on Friday I would make my decision as to whether I would make the journey or not. I did go out after the bike home yesterday and did about 100m to see how things were and, at that point it seemed that I may as well throw the towel in - it just seemed there would be no way that I would be able to race. Today was 'run day' though and I have been down to the gym for a go on the treadmill where I assumed that the impact would be lower than that of the road. It was pretty never racking standing on the treadmill waiting to press start...what happened in the next 20 minutes will ultimately decide whether or not I have any chance at all of being able to go to Wakefield. To prolong the discomfort I seemed to spend ages trying to find a good song on the iPod...I think that at this time I was still feeling pretty negative and all the way in on the tube I had been pretty sure that things would fall apart on the treadmill, even though I had to run for the bus and that felt okay.
I started off at a gentle pace and was quickly able to get it into the 12kph range which not too much trouble, albeit a couple of niggles that would quickly go away. Still, 12kph will not be getting me near the GBR squad. I had set the machine to to go for 20 minutes and I reckoned that if I could go for this amount of time without too much trouble then this would be a big step in the right direction. In the end I managed to get through the 20 minutes and during this time I even increased the speed to race pace (~15/16kph) for a couple of minutes to see how it felt and it was not too bad - whether or not 40 minutes at that pace would be achievable is another matter altogether. Still, I finished the session and after getting off the knee still felt okay and as I sit here at my desk there still does not appear to be any resultant pain from the morning's run. I may put some ice on for a while though just to make sure. The funny thing was how much like hard work it seemed to be when I went into the race pace zone...a couple of weeks ago, running at 15/16kph would not be too much bother at all but today it seemed pretty fast and the rate at which I tired seemed to have gone up quite a bit. Still, I suppose you can not expect to come back after a couple of weeks off and just get straight back into it!
Tomorrow I will try a very short run on the road to see if it holds up on the harder surface and then later on the decision will be made. This is all I have been thinking about for the last couple of months and have been putting in a lot time and energy to getting myself ready for this.
Still, if Friday rolls on and things are not looking good....the top 10 finish for the AG'ers at London is still the 2nd goal for the season and would be something to be pretty proud of, especially in my first season.
Got photographed at Hampstead Heath lido the other day as well...part of some art project that a lady does every year. The photos are below anyway..
The ingenious plan to get me into the GBR squad in my first year of triathlon all started to unravel over a week ago while I was doing a running session at Hampstead Heath track. The session included 6 x 1mile efforts at 39min/10k pace. I had completed five of these and as these had all been under the desired time so when it came to the last one and my knee started hurting after about 300m I made the foolish decision to keep on running so that I could finish the set - I assumed it was nothing serious and it would go away after a couple of hours. This was also on the back of another strange incident which occurred during a brick session a couple of days ago where I had to pull up all of a sudden because it felt like I had trapped a nerve in the top of my foot. On that I also did some more running when I would have perhaps been much better off just going home and resting the foot, albeit it felt okay a few minutes after it started to hurt.
What has followed on from this week of running hell has been an ongoing battle between my inability to rest, my desire to 'fix' these ailments and the continued pressure of what is coming on the horizon and how I need to be in A1 shape when, and more importantly if I jump in Pugney Lake on Sunday morning. My coach has been very helpful in terms of giving me other activities to do to keep my fitness levels as high as possible but these exercises, although very low impact, probably do slightly hinder the resolution on the knee (what I believe is some damage to the anterior ligament). However, this week things have started to improve quite rapidly and walking around no longer seems to be a problem. At times it has been horrible to walk as I needed to reduce the pain on the knee, and at the same time, twist my foot to accommodate the trapped nerve feeling in my foot. As you can quite imagine - this meant the use of some new muscles that started to hurt as well...all in all, it has been a very depressing week and a bit.
At the start of this week, I decided that, if things continued to improve, I would try and have a short run on Thursday and then on Friday I would make my decision as to whether I would make the journey or not. I did go out after the bike home yesterday and did about 100m to see how things were and, at that point it seemed that I may as well throw the towel in - it just seemed there would be no way that I would be able to race. Today was 'run day' though and I have been down to the gym for a go on the treadmill where I assumed that the impact would be lower than that of the road. It was pretty never racking standing on the treadmill waiting to press start...what happened in the next 20 minutes will ultimately decide whether or not I have any chance at all of being able to go to Wakefield. To prolong the discomfort I seemed to spend ages trying to find a good song on the iPod...I think that at this time I was still feeling pretty negative and all the way in on the tube I had been pretty sure that things would fall apart on the treadmill, even though I had to run for the bus and that felt okay.
I started off at a gentle pace and was quickly able to get it into the 12kph range which not too much trouble, albeit a couple of niggles that would quickly go away. Still, 12kph will not be getting me near the GBR squad. I had set the machine to to go for 20 minutes and I reckoned that if I could go for this amount of time without too much trouble then this would be a big step in the right direction. In the end I managed to get through the 20 minutes and during this time I even increased the speed to race pace (~15/16kph) for a couple of minutes to see how it felt and it was not too bad - whether or not 40 minutes at that pace would be achievable is another matter altogether. Still, I finished the session and after getting off the knee still felt okay and as I sit here at my desk there still does not appear to be any resultant pain from the morning's run. I may put some ice on for a while though just to make sure. The funny thing was how much like hard work it seemed to be when I went into the race pace zone...a couple of weeks ago, running at 15/16kph would not be too much bother at all but today it seemed pretty fast and the rate at which I tired seemed to have gone up quite a bit. Still, I suppose you can not expect to come back after a couple of weeks off and just get straight back into it!
Tomorrow I will try a very short run on the road to see if it holds up on the harder surface and then later on the decision will be made. This is all I have been thinking about for the last couple of months and have been putting in a lot time and energy to getting myself ready for this.
Still, if Friday rolls on and things are not looking good....the top 10 finish for the AG'ers at London is still the 2nd goal for the season and would be something to be pretty proud of, especially in my first season.
Got photographed at Hampstead Heath lido the other day as well...part of some art project that a lady does every year. The photos are below anyway..
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Monday, June 12, 2006
Windsor Triathlon - First Full Distance
Swim went really well and I think I got out the water in just under 22 minutes which is as close to my PB as I think I could have hoped for - those chaps helping you get out were a great help though - my legs needed some encouragement to start working, especially as I had not done the final 100 kick thing cause the turn to come in came quicker than I thought..well, to be honest, I missed it slightly
Got on the bike and felt really strong so thought that I would just hammer it as hard as I could and see how I got on. Was able to overtake a fair few and the best thing about these bigger races seems to be that there is always someone in front to focus on. After a few km's of feeling good, I made a pact with myself not to get passed once on the bike leg. One chap did try it, but I had to overtake him again...it became a big thing to do really well on the bike. Made it back to the complicated finish in about 1:02 which is much better than I expected...the computer topped out at 70kph going down through Windsor Park!
Now, the run...after momentarily losing my racking spot I set out on 43 minutes of pretty grueling pain, coupled with a nice bit of cramp on the second lap. My legs just don't seem to want to operate after the bike,always feels like I am shuffling along. Still, coach had set me a best case scenario time of 2:10 for the whole thing and I knew I was on track for that thanks to the faster swim and bike section...was close in the end though - I got it as 2:09:54
Next stop...Wakefield, I have seen horrible rumours of 24km of climbing in the bike leg
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