andygates

The dawn is a deep red, scorching the bellies of low black clouds into a dull hot bronze.  That's to my left through the huge picture window at the pool; to my right, a haze of splashing and limbs.  I'm swimming without contact lenses this morning, barely able to make out the gridwork of tiles on the pool floor, and no more detail than that.

It is very busy. 

And after a few lengths, imagination and that apocalyptic sunrise conspire.  All the other swimmers are of a similar build: squat, thick-shouldered, a little muscular, a little ungainly.  Are they really all bald?  Are they swimming in sync, some awful, blasphemous sympatico that unites these slippery heavy fish-men?

Dear gods, I'm in a pool full of Deep Ones.

Don't panic.  They'll taste it, and they'll converge on you.  Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming.

The illusion is broken only when I start drafting drills, swimming up close to the swimmer in front to take advantage of their wake.  No fish-man has such a ragged kick as this.  No half-human spawn of Dagon breaks into breast-stroke halfway up a length so that I end up up their arse.  And look, the feet that have just kicked me in the face are not webbed!  Sweet relieving joy!  These are humans after all!

And with a profound sense of relief, I shower and get the hell out of Dodge.

I do not want to do the Norseman.  I do not want to do the Norseman.  I do not want to do the Norseman.

It's not just an Ironman, it's an Ironman that starts on a ferry in a fjord and finishes with a marathon up a mountain.  The winners - winners, mind you - finished in 11:25 and 13:00 this year. 

I don't want to do it, but if I did, I could die happy.  Probably about halfway through the run.

Taking the previous post's ideas a stage further (using open source screen-capture tool CamStudio and mixing it all together with Windows Movie Maker), here's a proof-of-concept of the flyby movie. This is the 56-mile bike route for the Wimbleball half-Iron 70.3 race bike leg:



Some initial thoughts:

1) Slower would be better for a real training aid.

2) So would landmarks on the ground ("Morebath", "Transition", etc) and caption commentary ("This bit's steep!" "Fast for 3 miles: hoof it!").

3) Watch out that the camera doesn't fall into hillsides!

4) Lots and lots of waypoints on the original Gmaps Pedometer map make for a better flyby.

5) Billboard Head Soup makes for very silly soundtracks: entirely superfluous but entertaining.

Dilemma dilemma: which tri do I book for the 8th of July?  Assuming that New Forest isn't a deathmarch and I am playing the standard distance game, the choices are:

Hayle: Tide-pool 1500 swim (open-water, no swell or shipping); "intermediate tri-bike friendly" 40k bike - I read that as pretty flat; 10k pretty flat run.  But it's in Hayle, which has that Coventry vibe.

Bournemouth:  Ocean 1500 swim; scenic and spectacular 40k bike round Corfe Castle; 10k scenic run with cows.  We all know that "scenic" means "hilly as hell".  But it sounds lovely.

Bog: 120m bog snorkel; 19 mile mountain bike; 12 mile fell run.  Silly, and there's the chance of being on telly, but a whole different bunch of skills. 

My heart says the bog, my head says that Bournemouth will be a really meaty challenge.  My inner wuss wants me to go to Hayle (because it's the wussiest of the standard-distance freaking triathlons)

Yes, I'm so chuffed that I've reverted to teh internets stupidest emotional excesses.  Oh noes!!!111

Beautiful countryside and a marvelous little lake daintily set among rolling Exmoor hills.  Yeah, that's hilly.  Second time round, those chevrons (14%+ climbs) are going to be mental challenges.  The climb out of T1 isn't half the ogre it looks; the descent to point 5 is a cliff; signs to Morebath may be repainted to read Morepain by the day of the event.

I'll be truing wheels, making coffee and chilling coldpacks in the van fridge.

Just popping over to skean's to compare it to Rapperswill, hm'kay?  :)

That's the first triathlon of the season booked: Penzance on Easter Sunday.  Strictly speaking, it's timed to get me nicely into race mode for the New Forest, and to scare me out of winter ad-hoccery and into season strictness.  Go Spartans! 

The wise will notice that it's also an excuse to spend the rest of the Easter break down in Cornwall surfing.  I am already *so* looking forward to it.

The new year club "10" is traditionally where you put up the season’s worst time.  It was cool and damp with a stiff constant headwind for over half the course.  And I just couldn’t find the leg power: I was working as hard as I could, but my HR didn’t pop over 170 (the whole time was spent up in zone 3 though).  Yup, season’s worst and exactly the rude awakening I was expecting.  My best is 27:47, but today I put down 31:25.  Under evens!  Oy, veh.