andygates

I've been wanting to get back in the gym for ages; just as I was getting set up for it, LEJOG prep and now a triathlon have got me with their beams of shiny.  Once Burnham is done and dusted...

A shift all-out to some focused lifting.  I looked at a strength assessment a while back and it reminded me (bigtime) that I'm a fair squatter, a really rather good deadlifter, but a novice bench-presser.  It's been an avoid-training-weaknesses-because-they-suck thing.  Well, balls to that.  I'm going to go with 12 weeks of the 5x5 programme, which has a good reputation and satisfies my urge to pick up heavy things and put them down again.   

One thing I got from LEJOG was a grok of the idea that repeat small stuff makes big results.  I think that reflecting that on the winter's deadlift goal -- where it was less structured but still solid -- I have a mental toolkit for plugging away at this and not letting myself get derailed.  Bored, distracted, or whatever, yes, but almost a degree of detachment that should keep me on track.  Less "this sucks" because there's always an hour of suck, so just ignore it; less "ooh shiny" because shiny isn't going to get the miles in.

Also: that 74-year-old gymrat granny.  Awesome.  My inner transhumanist wants to see Aubrey de Grey all buffed up and greybearded, so it does.  Between her and Jack laLanne and the inevitable wonderful old gimmer plugging round every club tri circuit, I think Yoda needs updating: "When this old you are, look this good you may well."

I'm kicked back into tri-thinking by these guys: Freak Events are new, and South West, and their proposed May 15th race at Roadford Lake, Okehampton looks tasty as a battered haggis pizza.  Roadford's a reservoir that doesn't get enough swim action, and the surrounding course will be lumpsome and bumply (moi luvly).  Sprint and Oly.  Spendy, but with awesomeness potential.  And it doesn't clash with our Club race, the week before. 

Now where did I put those running shorts?

Just a reminder, if you're thinking about entering the Exe Valley Tri on 9th May 2010, entries are filling up.

It's a nice pool sprint with a mostly flat out-and-back valley bike, then an onroad rolling run. Good little start to the season.

Swim 41:27: Good first half, got noodly in the second half.  Zero viz. Who thought blue buoys was clever?  T1: Golden. Long. The shoe trick worked. Bike 1:16 including transitions I think: An hour and more of playing Wipeout on the bike.  Fast, twisty, with tunnels and ramps. No weapon power-ups. Went out hard and fast. T2: Oh, I can run in those shoes if I have to. Yay.  Run 1:04: I checked my soul in T2 and sent my corpse out to shamble round the run.  Run and walk in the hot sun / I fought the nause and the nause won.  Total 3:11.  Full writeup and photos to come once I'm back at base camp - am still at Charlotte & Liz's making their spare bed smell like wet dog.

Is it true that the docks on the Isle of Dogs are full of dead dogs?

Today was lovely: set up for the race, a little swim counting (argh! clipboards! hats!) and then lots of standing around in a tabard yelling "GO ON TRITALK!" and more usefully, "WELL DONE! Through the gate, straight across, SPRINT FINISH!"  or "Looking GOOD 123!" at various marshal points.  Nobody got lost on my watch (some novices rode the full sprint distance due to a marshalling bork up the road).  

Everyone had fun.  The novices on bike-shaped objects and plenty of suspended MTBs got a good thrashing and ended feeling like they'd done something big and challenging and excellent (surrounded by worshipful family members).  The club athletes had perfect race conditions - warm without being hot, broken cloud and tree-shade, gentle breeze.  That Freedman fellow won again with an utterly dominating 56-minute time: the lad's pointed towards 2012.  Women's was won by our Speedy Sue, who is still pocket-sized and lovely and bloody fast. 

With all the sturm und drang about training and targets, it's good to just go along to a race and be reminded that they're just good fun.  I spent most of the day thinking "I wanna play!" and that, for sure, is the right headspace to be in for the coming week.

Now, if only I can master that shoe trick...

A couple of youse guys were interested in offroad triathlon; there doesn't seem to be a handy list of 'em, but this thread on TriTalk has more in one place than I've seen anywhere else, including some sprint and olympic distance ones as well as bonkers gruel-fests like the Big Ben.  Hawley Lake might make a grand day out.

I'm very tempted to go for an offroad sprint or two: Loch Lomond was a hoot.

It's getting time to think about 2009's race calendar.  I'm aiming to do 2-3 olympics and probably 3 sprints this season (no more long stuff: I enjoy the training for these distances far more).  And the Great West Run, just because.  Bala or Perranporth will probably be my end-of-season oly, and that's in mid-September.  The GWR precludes doing New Forest this year, so I'm looking for a couple of high-season olys.  Is there a date for Burnham yet?

If you want a nice sprint on rolling Devon roads, 10th May is the Exe Valley Tri (pool swim) - I'll be marshalling again and promise to wave :)

It has been observed that I have a strangely serene calm lately.  I guess I'm not one for serenity normally.  I think it's the Plan.  Because I've handed all my big training decisions until over-the-horizon to the Plan, that whole stressor has gone quiet.  The stress of the training itself and the microplanagement still exists, but it's almost as if I've abdicated responsibility to the Good Book.

I wonder if this is what religion feels like?  I can see how it might be compelling; this is quite nice. 

Must rinse wetsuit.  Today opened the book with a sea-swim session with the club: force 4 and lumpy, swimming was like crawling across a ploughed field and every time you found a rhythm, a fat wave hit you in the face. About 1000m of hard going.  The buoys are visible on Google Earth!

The river today was much warmer, and we put a thermomomometer in to see.  Ten degrees (fifty to you yanks).  Okay, it took the best part of ten minutes to get comfortable, but the temperature was fine for actual swimming.  So any swim that there is, isn't going to scare us because of the cold.  I'm glad on that count alone that we made the effort to get wet.

Of course there had to be an issue.  I swim well only on an empty stomach, and I mean empty.  2 hours from a light snack, 3 from a meal.  Hungry works.  Fasted first-thing works well.  So a big late lunch and a pasty grabbed on the drive over was dumb -- and yea, verily was the price paid in spades.  From this are revealed three things:

1. Barf chunks in your beard are bad, hm'kay?  But the swim washes them out.
   
2. Never underestimate the bloodymindedness of a guy who knows how bad it would be to bail on the swim.  Even if he has barf in his beard.
   
3. There is no shame in brainlooping the verses of Rocky 2's Burning Heart if that's what gets you to the end. 

Found this abstract while googling around for swim stuff.  You tri lads might be interested:

Facial Hydrodynamics and Front Crawl
D Drexler et al, UC Berkeley Institute of Sports Science