To the Palace! (Well, nearly)

Yesterday, a running day, I decided that after cycling to and from work and swimming on Friday, my 40 minutes of netball and my pre-match warm-up constituted sufficient running, given that I only had to do 20 minutes anyway.  (We won our netball match, by the way - Cumberland G 19-14 Palmers Green.)

The Pirates flyer.  Y'know
just in case you're
interested.

Today was a cycling day.  Sundays are usually quite busy for me, being a church organist and itinerant chorister, and today was no exception.  One of the things I do as part of my musical role at my church, St. Paul's, Harringay, is help co-ordinate a programme of concerts and other musical events called Music on the Ladder (the church is in an area called the Harringay Ladder, so named because of the road layout).  As part of Music on the Ladder, we hold a couple of "come and sing" events each year, where people rock up to the church at lunchtime, rehearse a choral work in the afternoon and then perform it to a largely unsuspecting and usually very forgiving audience in the evening.  On 7 June, we're going to be doing "The Pirates of Penzance" in this format and today was one of our audition days for the principal roles.  In order to audition some folks at a different church, I needed to get from the morning service at my church to the other church as quickly as possible and, because the other church is on the other side of the railway, it's a bit awkward to get to.  I decided that the best thing to do was cycle there and back, regardless of the hills.


Oh yes, the hills.  This part of London is known, from a techie geographical perspective, as the "Northern Heights".  It's more than a bit undulating, with some roads that are almost vertical (yes, yes, I'm clearly exaggerating).  To give you an idea, Muswell Hill (which is very close to where I was going), is the residual geological structure of an ice age glacial moraine.  Don't say I never tell you anything.  After leaving church, I walked across the railway bridge at Harringay Station and then got on my bike and pointed it in the direction of Hornsey.  One of the first things I had to do was go down a massive hill, which was terrifying and exhilarating. I stopped to take a picture of the view from the top of the hill, which gives you an idea of just how steep it is and also gives you a nice look at Alexandra Palace.  My route took me through central Crouch End and the attendant shopping traffic and then down Middle Lane and through Priory Park, before heading via some side streets onto Park Road.  Another couple of hundred metres and I was at my destination, Hornsey Parish Church, which is more or less in the shadow of Alexandra Palace.  I was amazed at how quickly I had got there - it took me one second shy of 15 minutes to get there, including my photo stop and a couple of waits to pull out on right-hand turns.  My top speed (down the massive hill!) was 22.39 miles per hour.

After hearing a prospective Major-General and Sergeant of Police, I got back on my bike to head home - as I was going home rather than back to church, I chose a different route which would involve me going up a much less daunting hill than I went down on the way.  I went on the main road along to one of the side-pieces of the Harringay Ladder, Wightman Road, and then set off, for the first time ever, along that road from the northern end - every time I ride anywhere it involves using the southern part of this road, but the northern part is, you've guessed it, hilly, and so I avoid it if possible.  I managed it, though, and was rewarded with the unusual delight of being able to turn left into my road, rather than right (just over the brow of a hill on a steep downhill and on a speed bump...)

Adding my cycle home on Friday (7.45km) to today's round trip (5.60km) and my previous total, I have now cycled a total of 57.14km.

Tomorrow is a rest day, but I'm contemplating cycling to work anyway.  I'll see how I feel in the morning.

Encounter with a Creature of the Night

Today is a cycling day.  And a swimming day.  I think I have just done my first duathlon. Well, sort of.  I got up to a foggy morning and thought twice about whether cycling was the best plan, but then I remembered how the fog had cleared about ten minutes after I would have set off the last couple of times it was foggy and decided it would probably be OK.  However, by the time I got to the swimming pool, it had not cleared much at all.  I had all my lights on, though, so it turned out alright.

On my cycle to the pool this morning I encountered something I haven't encountered for years and years.  It is no secret that I am not a stick insect type of girl and, while I would (like lots of people) like to lose a few pounds, I'd rather be fit, happy and not skinny than starve myself, be skinny and miserable - I don't want to get into a debate about this, it's my choice about how I lead my life.  However, this morning, a pedestrian decided that my outlook was all wrong and shouted something very abusive from the side of the road about my non-stick insect like frame being clad in Lycra.  In my teenage years, or even my twenties, I probably would have been very upset by this and it would have knocked my confidence significantly.  However, this morning I was aware enough of the "gentleman" in question to notice that (a) he wasn't a stick insect either, (b) he was, prior to shouting at me, shouting at someone down the phone, (c) he was smoking, (d) he had a really, really bad suit on (with a not quite done up tie and his top shirt button undone), (e) he looked like he hadn't been to bed, (f) he looked and sounded like he was drunk, at 7.45 a.m. and (g) I was the one doing the fitness activity, not him.  I was not upset by his abusive comment.  I just pitied him.  What a sad individual.

Not long after I had passed this most valuable member of society, I got to the point where I had to go a different way from usual to get to the pool.  I managed not to end up in Walthamstow by mistake this time, but I did have to walk the bike a short distance because of building works on the route.  My total cycle this morning (including the bit from the pool to work) was 9.01km, bringing my total cycling distance so far to 44.09km.

In the pool, I scanned in with my membership card for the first time (this was clearly more exciting than it ought to have been) and then set off to get ready.  I was slightly apprehensive about swimming after cycling, but I needn't have been - I was much better warmed up than usual and my swimming was pretty good, both from a technique perspective and in terms of speed and recovery.  After four lengths of warm-up, I took myself off to the medium lane on the far side of the pool (much quieter than the one next to the slow lane) and did four sets of three lengths of front crawl, followed by four individual lengths.  My recovery times between sets are really starting to come down now, but by the final set of three lengths I was getting a bit tired and my form started to go a bit.  That said, if you'd told me a few weeks ago that I would be swimming 480m of front crawl in one session without too much bother, I wouldn't have believed you!  After a couple of lengths of breaststroke as a cool down, I was off to get changed back into my cycling gear.  In total, I swam 660m this morning, bringing my swimming total up to 3.18km.

Because I was cycling, I had to pack really light this morning.  I decided it was all experimental and I would be able to learn what did and didn't work from the experience.  My plan was that because I would be cycling from the pool to work, there would be no point in showering at the pool and, therefore, I would take a shower once I got to the office (plus the shower in the office is much nicer than the swimming pool one!)  In my wisdom, I decided that I probably didn't need a towel, either, because I would be wearing my swimming hat, so my hair wouldn't be too wet (based on Monday's experience) and I have a towel at work already.  Although this turned out alright in the end, I probably could have done with at least a very small towel - maybe even just a dry washcloth - as I had significant issues getting my cycling gear back on with my slightly damp skin, in particular the crop top style sports bra I had decided to wear this morning.  It's one of those that just pulls on over the head, but with my damp skin, it rolled up as I put it on and I got horribly stuck.  I was torn between battling on, putting on my ordinary underwear that I'd brought for work and taking that drastic and embarrassing step of asking someone else in the (communal) changing room for help.  Thankfully, after much wriggling and cursing, I freed my left arm sufficiently to get the thing on and all was well.

I was sitting at my desk, showered and dressed (obviously - the alternative would be a bit too weird), about 15 minutes before I usually would be on a swimming day, even though I left the house at the same time and had an extra change of clothes because of choosing to have my shower in the office.  The only problem I have now is that I have to cycle home as I'll need my bike over the weekend!  If you'd like to sponsor my cycle home, the button to donate to Marie Curie Cancer Care via Justgiving is at the top right of the page!

The Fluorescent Pianist

Yesterday was a running day.  I was absolutely dreading it after Sunday's pitiful effort, but thankful that my "consolidation week" of training meant that it was only a 20 minute run.  I was also extremely conscious that, having done the run, I would then have to go and play netball.  So, I set off with a small amount of trepidation at lunchtime to have an amble around the City.  I ran up London Wall, past the Museum of London, towards the place where my work netball team plays its matches in a summer league and then cut through a pocket park and down the side of Waitrose onto Bunhill Row.  Then I ran through the Bunhill Fields cemetery, where such luminaries as William Blake, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe were laid to rest, before turning onto Finsbury Pavement and heading back towards the office.

However, when I got to the next junction, I realised that my time was nearly up and I was very near to a Cycle Surgery shop where I could buy some cycling gloves to replace the pair that is no longer a pair (I've come to the conclusion that either (a) the missing one has been accidentally thrown away, in which case I'll be waiting forever for it to turn up or (b) having bought new gloves, the missing glove will now immediately turn up, so I'll have two pairs).

The run went much, much better than Sunday and, although I did have some pain above my ankles again (and had to stop to stretch a couple of times), it wasn't nearly as bad as Sunday's and it went away after a while.  As a result, I managed to keep going for the full 20 minutes and I ran 2.21km - when added to the 1.67km I didn't want to talk about on Sunday and the other running sessions I had done previously, I have now run a total of 7.91km.

Today was supposed to be a cycling day, but I think the emotional drain of Tuesday's funeral was greater than I expected and, added to my doubling up of running and netballing and an extra early start today because of a conference call, it meant that cycling just wasn't happening.  I could quite happily have stayed in bed all day.  I also didn't want to be in the situation where I cycle into work, don't feel I can cycle home again and leave the bike at the office and then have to deal with strenuous logistics regarding swimming kit and bike tomorrow.  So, I'm going to try something new tomorrow - I'm going to get an early night tonight and then I'm going to cycle to the swimming pool early in the morning, do my swimming session and then head to the office (and then cycle home again).  Believe it or not, this is better logistically (from a kit management perspective)!

My lack of cycling today does, however, give me the opportunity to tell you about something else I've been up to.  You may recall that in my post entitled "More Haste, Less Speed" I wrote about going to my friend Rod's house on a special mission.  I had had several discussions with my parents about the music that we were going to have at Uncle Donald's funeral and my Mum had decided she would like to have the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata because the Second World War Blitz on Coventry (where Uncle Donald spent the war, working in the automotive industry and, apparently, brandishing a broomstick as part of the Home Guard) was code named "Operation Moonlight Sonata", which he talked about every time he heard the piece - as I learnt to play it as a child, this was fairly frequent!

Something was holding me back from saying "yes, this is a great idea", but I couldn't work out what it was.  Then, on the Sunday morning before last, I woke up having had an idea while I was dozing - I almost dreamt it, I think.  I had to play it myself - that was it, that was why I couldn't just say yes to my Mum.  The only problem was that it needed to be a recording as there would be no facility to play it live.  As soon as I got up, I put a post on Facebook asking my friends for any help they might be able to give me in recording the piece, such as putting me in touch with sound engineers and studios or lending me equipment - it had to be a really good quality recording or it would sound like bad lift music.  Many people made helpful suggestions and gave me encouragement, but it was my friend Rod who ultimately came to the rescue.

Rod is a professional composer and pianist.  He writes music for films, TV shows and plays - you've probably heard some of his work (and whether you have or not, you can find out more about him and his work on his website here).  He has a home studio and he invited me to go round and record Moonlight Sonata there, which I did the very next day.  Rod works using digital technology and records music as MIDI files.  He has a full weighted 88-key keyboard and a choice of piano samples to use - I chose a Bechstein grand, with the lid up, of course.  After a few practice runs to get used to the set up, I recorded three takes and we (well, Rod) then edited the best of them a little to get it at its absolute optimum.

Recording Moonlight Sonata: how it might have looked!

Now, you may remember that the reason I mentioned this in the earlier post was that I had cycled to Rod's house because I didn't have time to go home first.  This meant that the entire recording session was done with me in my cycling gear, which was a bit strange.  I meant to ask Rod to take a picture of this spectacle, but in my excitement I forgot, so you'll have to make do with the reconstruction I've included here!

When the music was played in the service, I knew that I done the right thing and I think that deciding to record the piece for the occasion was one of the best decisions I've ever made.  I couldn't have done it without Rod's help and I want to thank him from the bottom of my heart for his generous assistance and advice.

Inspirations

I have hinted a couple of times that there has been "something else" going on in the last few weeks, and I feel like it is now time to tell you about it.  I mentioned in one of my first triathlon-related posts that one of the motivating factors for me deciding to do the triathlon was that I wanted to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care because, like so many other people, my life has been touched by cancer recently. I was referring to several friends and relatives who have had to put up with what this horrible disease has thrown at them, some of them with better results than others.

My Uncle Donald was diagnosed with cancer just over six months ago.  He battled on valiantly for a while, with the help and support of my parents (with whom he lived) but, after a three week stay in hospital, he died two weeks ago, aged 90.*  He had family around him in his last days and we were even able to take Polly the greyhound into the hospital to see him, which lifted his spirits immeasurably.  The nurses and other staff at the Royal Derby Hospital were fantastic and did everything they could to make him comfortable.  Yesterday, we held his funeral, including a beautiful, uplifting celebration of his life at my parents' local church.

Uncle Donald was an integral part of my childhood.  He lived with my parents the whole of my life (in fact, almost the whole of my Mum's life) and was always there to pick me up and dust me off, to play silly games, to argue with, to sing with while we did the washing up - I hated doing the washing up and would do pretty much anything to get out of it, so he got me involved by teaching me Welsh folk songs that I still remember.  There were a couple of occasions when I was having some kind of crisis at university and I phoned home to find my parents were out and it was he who sorted me out.  We had lots of shared memories - I remember when his beloved Coventry City played the FA Cup semi-final in 1987 (the year they ultimately went on to win the Cup!) and neither of us could eat our lunch nor watch the match and we ended up playing football outside to take our minds off it while my Mum gave us goal updates.  When he went to the final, I made him a little teddy bear called Oggy (after then Coventry goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic) to take with him as a mascot - he kept it and even talked about it the last time I saw him in hospital.

He wasn't a perfect man - he was opinionated, stubborn and cantankerous at times, but his heart was made of purest gold and I miss him terribly.  He would do anything for anyone, always on the look out for ways he could help other people.  I particularly remember him visiting a lady who was the mother of a work colleague of his who had died very young.  He would do her shopping, help organise her life in general, spend time talking to her - all those things her son would have done had he still been around.

I am extremely grateful to have had Uncle Donald in my life, and I know I am a richer person for having known him and loved him.

When I started out in my plan for world triathlon domination, my intention was to do it in support of Uncle Donald in his struggle against cancer.  However, my focus has shifted a little and I will now be participating in the triathlon and raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care in his memory.

Donald Sparkes
1923-2014

* I should just say here that my parents have done their level best to let all Donald's family and friends know of his passing, including putting notices in the local papers in Derby and Coventry, where he spent most of his life, so if this is the first time you are hearing this news, I am very sorry that they have not been in touch - it was certainly not intentional.

Go-faster Stripes

Today was a swimming day.  I got up at the time I used to call the middle of the night and found that it wasn't so bad after all.  It's probably because it's now properly light when I get up.  I also had two very exciting things to look forward to this morning.  One of them was picking up my swimming pool membership card.  The other was trying out my new swimming hat.

When I got to the pool I asked the lady at the counter for my membership card.  I had my picture taken (for their records but, bizarrely, not to put on the card itself) and I was good to go.  The next thing I had to deal with, once I was in my swimsuit, was putting on my hat for the first time.  I don't know for certain, but I believe that one of the reasons that I have never before worn a swimming hat is that my hair was so thick and long as a child that my parents couldn't be doing with trying to get it all into what is, effectively, a rubber glove with no fingers. (Now there's a thought, you could go swimming with a rubber glove on your head and look like a chicken - this might be the answer to the question "why did the French supermarket I frequented in 1999/2000 sell rubber gloves in packs of five?"  I digress.)  I thought that my once again long and still thick hair was quite likely to cause me issues but, having put it in a sort of loose bun on the top of my head, the hat went on pretty smoothly.

Modern swimming hats tend to be made of silicone, so wearing one is a bit like having a cupcake baking tray on your head.  Well, sort of.  It felt a bit snug at first, but it was alright after a while.  You might remember that I also bought a tri-mask on Saturday.  I decided that trialling one piece of new equipment per session was sufficient, so I'll leave that for another day.  It's a bit like my number one rule for a night out - only one piece of potentially troublesome clothing per outfit; for example, if I have to wear a strapless bra with a particular dress, then the 5-inch heels are staying at home.  As a result of leaving the tri-mask at home, I had to put up with the foggy goggles one more time and adjust the strap to fit my new, streamlined head.

The swimming hat and the membership card!

By this point, I was actually ready to get into the water!  Today's session involved 4 lengths of breaststroke, 2 x 3 lengths of front crawl, 4 x 2 lengths of front crawl and then 2 lengths of breaststroke as a cool down.  Apparently this week is a consolidation week, so the sessions aren't quite as tough as last week.  The hat definitely makes a difference.  I think I was swimming faster than normal, but the main difference is that swimming just feels easier without the drag (and dripping) of my hair to contend with.  I was able to focus on the form of my stroke a lot more because I wasn't panicking so much about breathing, too, and that included making sure I was looking straight down to the bottom of the pool (no frogmen today!) rather than slightly ahead of me.  I also worked on getting my upper body rotation right, which I find a bit difficult - the main problem is that I still really only want to breathe to the left, and I think that makes my stroke generally a bit lopsided, as my right arm doesn't come far enough out of the water and my left arm spends too long in the air.  By the end of the session, I'd improved a bit, but when I get tired, my form goes, so it's something to keep working on.  In total, I swam 600m today, which makes my total to date 2.52km.

When I was getting out of the pool, I realised that I must have been going at quite a lick (in the medium lane, no less - there was only one other person in it, so it made sense!) as I was changed and ready ten minutes earlier than normal, having done about the same amount of swimming and having spent time getting the hat on before I even got in!  I put this down to the stripes on the hat, which must make me go faster.

One of my favourite things about my morning swims is the walk to work afterwards (apart from the actually getting to work bit, obvs).  I walk past the London Symphony Orchestra's rehearsal space in an old church, past the church gardens and down Whitecross Street, where there is a lunchtime market every day - when I'm walking down there, the traders are just setting up for the day and it is bustling and full of life.

If you would like to sponsor my swimming hat, then click the Justgiving link on the right of the page.  I will also pledge that once the donations hit £100, I will post a picture of me wearing my swimming hat on this blog!

Possibly the worst training session ever

OK, I might be exaggerating just a little bit.  I did manage to get up early enough to run this morning.  James insisted on coming with me.  I was supposed to run for 25 minutes, so we decided to do a loop through Stroud Green for a change.  We hadn't been going very long when the outsides of both of my legs, just above the ankles, got very sore.  This happens quite often when I run, but usually subsides after a few minutes.  This morning, that did not happen and despite stopping three times to stretch it out, it wasn't shifting, so to avoid causing myself further damage, we decided to call it a day at 17 minutes, having only run just over a mile, and ambled back home in the drizzle.

It wasn't all disastrous.  When I was running, it was at a pretty good pace for me (the fact that we still managed over a mile in 17 minutes with three stretching stops shows that), and we saw our vicar, Father Philip just coming out of his house to do vicarly Sunday morning things and when he saw us he shouted across the road that our efforts were very impressive and that he would join us, but he had his hands full.

I'll have to do some investigation as to the cause of my sore legs.  Possibilities include my trainers, yesterday's cycling and running up a very steep hill at the beginning of the run.  Given that it's both legs, it seems that it isn't an injury caused by a single event, but rather a tightness possibly caused by a build-up of things or just overuse.

Tomorrow is a swimming day, and then I have a rest day, so plenty of time for my legs to recover.  If you'd like to sponsor my legs to feel better, you can do so by clicking the Justgiving link on the right of the page, and donating some dosh to Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The Wilds of Walthamstow

I'm back!  I've had a couple of days off because I've been to a wedding in Somerset.  A fantastic time had by all, but it's played havoc with my training schedule.  So, I've taken stock of what I have and haven't done and at the time of writing, I'm down two runs and a swim, but up a long cycle (having done tomorrow's training already).  I'm not sure how I'm going to sort it out, but I'm not too worried about missing a couple of sessions at this early stage.

Today was all about the cycling.  I had missed a 30 minute cycling session on Thursday, and tomorrow's training is supposed to be an hour's cycling, so I decided to combine the two and go out for an hour and a half on the bike.  This morning was nice and sunny and I knew the forecast was for showers in the afternoon, so I set off at just after 10 a.m. towards the Lea Valley.  On the way I had a major cycling skills breakthrough.  It might seem like nothing to the experienced cyclist but, as I was cycling down Woodberry Grove, I had a couple of strands of hair trying to get into my mouth.  Before I even realised what I was doing, I took my right hand off the handlebars and brushed the hair off my face and tucked it behind my ear.  Hitherto, any departure of hand from handlebar, whether to readjust hair or clothing or to signal at a junction has been a major event to be undertaken, if possible, while at a standstill (at traffic lights being a favourite), and if that isn't possible, all of the concentration in the universe is required to make sure that I don't fall off.  Therefore, my completely instinctive action of brushing the hair off my face represents a huge leap forward in my skills and confidence on the bike.

My plan, once I got to the river was to go the other way.  Every other time I've been to the Lea Valley (apart from the time we just popped over to the marina on the other side of the river to see James's friend Matt, whom, incidentally, I bumped into today), I've turned left onto the river towpath towards Waltham Abbey, Hertford and other areas of Not London.  This time, I intended to go onto the other side of the river, past Matt's marina, and follow National Cycle Route 1 towards the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Canary Wharf and Greenwich.  I didn't have any pretensions of actually reaching any of these places within the 45 minutes until I had to turn around and go home again, but the purpose of the trip was to do a recce to see what the route was like for future reference (by the way, I don't think I've mentioned that I'm doing the London to Brighton Bike Ride again this year, and it's only two weeks after the triathlon).

Where I wanted to be, from where I had ended up.  Note
Canary Wharf in the distance, just right of centre.

Unfortunately, National Cycle Route 1 is not particularly well signposted at this point.  I was reminded of trying to find the yellow brick road to Welwyn Garden City and being thwarted by non-existent signposts.  This time I knew the path went away from the river and that there was a right turn to rejoin the riverside path, but I hadn't seen a turning.  I put it down to clonking my head (helmet) on a bridge I had to go under that had a five feet high clearance - I had remembered that I had my helmet on and so had to stoop extra low, but had forgotten that I also had a light attached to the top of the helmet, giving me an extra couple of inches on top of my head.  Eventually, the path bent around to the right and I wondered if I was on the right track after all.  That is, until I realised I was in the centre of Walthamstow.  I did not wish to be in Walthamstow.  Not that I have anything against Walthamstow, it just wasn't where I was aiming to be.  I turned around and retraced my steps.

The rain from the mythical National Cycle Route 1
(which apparently does actually exist!)

After a few minutes, I was back at the car park I had passed on my way out.  I had a little look around, and there it was - the sign for National Cycle Route 1 - through the car park.  Of course!  Why would the cycle route not go through the car park?  I followed the route for a little while but, thanks to my detour (and maybe because it was starting to drizzle a little), it was time to head for home.  I went back over the bridge and turned up the river the other way as I wanted to explore a route back to the main road that didn't involve going up the dreaded Spring Hill.  This took me past the rowing club where, to date, I have only seen young crews training (largely with London Youth Rowing).  However, it was my pleasure today to see an eight just going out which was made up entirely of women over about 45.  I have no idea whether they were novices or pros as I didn't see them on the water, but I was impressed nonetheless.

I found my alternative route back up the hill which was, thankfully, significantly less steep than Spring Hill, and then I made my way back to base.  Altogether, I cycled 15.45km today, which makes 35.08km in total to date.  This distance (given the hour and a half timescale) initially concerned me as it is just shy of the actual distance of the triathlon cycle, but when you take into account getting lost, having to get off the bike to go under five-foot bridges, stopping to take a couple of pictures and the 10 mph speed limit on the best-surfaced bit of National Cycle Route 1, it wasn't bad at all.  In addition, the route was significantly more hilly than Hyde Park will be, so all in all, it wasn't a bad effort for a first long cycle of the year.

This afternoon, I attended to a couple of things I have been meaning to do for ages.  I went to Sports Direct and bought two pairs of padded cycling shorts (I'm not convinced that the world at large is ready for my legs, but they fit me better than any of the longer-legged bottom half clothing they had, so they will have to do), two swimming hats and a tri-mask (i.e. humongous goggles so that you can see all round you - I'm not sure if they'll mean I can see behind me, though...)

Tomorrow, I'm planning to catch up one of my runs by going out before church in the morning.  We'll see if I make it out of bed in time.  If you'd like to sponsor me to get up in time to go running, you can make a donation to Marie Curie Cancer Care by clicking the Justgiving button on the right hand side of the page.

More Haste, Less Speed

Last night's cycle home started off a bit shakily as it was the first time ever that I had attempted to ride home in rush hour traffic. However, once I'd made out of the City and up into Shoreditch, it wasn't so bad and I joined what looked and behaved like a "cycle train".  It was light enough and busy enough for me to cycle through Shoreditch Park and I made pretty good time on what was an otherwise uneventful journey.  I went to my friend Rod's house on a special mission (more on that another time) and then cycled very, very quickly to the pub for the weekly quiz.  I'm not quite sure what the landlord made of me when I turned up carrying a bicycle folded in half (still with my rack pack attached and the handlebars on), my helmet on (complete with flashing light on the top) and dressed only in fluorescent things, but the expression on his face was priceless.  All in all, cycling from home to work, from work to Rod's and from Rod's to the pub, I cycled 19.63km yesterday. This surprised me, as it didn't feel like that far, and it's quite a lot further than the actual cycle I have to do in the triathlon!

Ooh look!  Page 2!

Sadly, we didn't win the pub quiz this week, and once I got home, it was more or less straight to bed for me as I had to get up early this morning for more swimming.  I nearly didn't make it to the pool this morning as the train I have to get in order to be able to do my full session was delayed by 11 minutes and I had just missed the previous, also delayed train.  Those 11 minutes would put me right on the cusp of "can I fit it all in?" but, when the train came, I didn't feel like I'd been waiting an extra 11 minutes and when I checked the time it was actually only four minutes late (in fact, I think I ended up being earlier than normal at every subsequent stage of the morning!)

Once I got to the pool, I realised that it was exceptionally busy in all of the lanes.  There just wasn't room for anyone else in the medium and fast lanes (although some people did keep trying to squeeze in, much to the disgruntlement of the incumbents) and ploughing up and down doing crawl in the slow lane wasn't going to impress anyone.  As a result, I decided to modify my session slightly.  After the four length warm up, I decided to do the secondary set of the main session first - four lengths of crawl legs only.  I got a float and went up and down.  With each kick, I could feel the lactic acid from yesterday's cycling shaking down into my toes.  I think my feet must now be entirely full of lactic acid.  And oh, how it burned!  By the end of the set, I was ready to give up and go home, but then I realised the pool had cleared out a bit, so I really ought to carry on.

As I was really good for nothing by this point, my seven sets of two lengths of crawl were going to be taken very easily and I decided to stick with the slow lane even though the other lanes also had dwindling numbers.  The combination of my weariness and the need to not go too fast in the slow lane resulted in a minor revelation for me - I don't panic about breathing when I'm going slowly!  I even managed to try a couple of breaths to the right instead of the left!  I'm not sure how much of this is about the actual pace, how much is because I've improved in my training sessions to date and how much is because I wasn't exerting myself sufficiently to be out of breath, but whatever the reason, I found these lengths much easier than I had on Friday.  In addition, I needed much less time to recover in between repetitions, making the whole set take a much shorter time (about 5 or 7 minutes less), even though I was swimming more slowly.

Once I'd finished the main set, I did a couple of lengths of cool down, making a total of 720m, meaning I've swum 1.92km in total so far.

Finally, I had some brilliant news yesterday.  A lovely friend has offered to lend me her wetsuit and tri-suit for the triathlon.  I may need to shed a couple of pounds before I can get into them, but at the rate I'm burning calories at the moment, I don't think that will be a problem.  The best thing is that the tri-suit has zebra stripes on!  Some of you will know how much I love stripes, so I'm very excited to say that I will more than likely be doing this triathlon dressed as a zebra!!! (Well, sort of.)

Tri-ing my best

Yesterday was supposed to be a cycling day.  It was not a cycling day.  I was too tired and achy from the previous several days of exertions to even contemplate fluorescent Lycra, so I decided not to do it.  However, I can't just stop training, so instead of having my rest day today, I cycled into work.  This week is going to require a little jiggery-pokery in any event as we're off to a wedding on Thursday, which requires an early start (so no time for training) and won't be back until Friday afternoon - I haven't quite worked out how to fix it just yet, but I may need to double up on one or two days to make sure I do all my sessions.

This morning, I planned to leave the house at 8.30 a.m.  I have no idea what time I did actually leave the house, but it must have been closer to nine o'clock because I spent a considerable amount of time pumping up my tyres and looking for one of my cycling gloves, which appears to have gone missing during the trip my helmet took from the hall to the lounge a couple of weeks ago.  I never did find the glove, so I had to borrow James's old ones which are both decrepit and too big but, on balance, marginally better than having no gloves at all.

I set off as usual, completely chickened out of the mini-roundabout right turn at the bottom of the road, walked to the park and figured I'd lost my nerve and had to get it back pretty quickly - no time to turn back, no bag to fold and stow my bike into, so cycling (and not walking) all the way was the only option.  Once I was through the park and back onto the road, I started to feel my mojo slowly returning.  By the time I got to Newington Green (the enormous roundabout disguised as a park), I was on the "b*gger it, let's give it a go" side of the "I'm really not sure about this" line.

I carried on towards town and was only mildly distracted when someone shouted "nice a*se" on the side of the road.  Then I realised that they were talking to me.  Then I realised that my lower back was cold.  Then I realised that they were talking to me because I was, basically, mooning the people of De Beauvoir Town due to a minor wardrobe malfunction.  I stopped to fix this just before going into Shoreditch Park and carried on my merry way.

(I should add as an aside here that, while the previous paragraph may seem like too much information, I have a terrible affliction whereby if I do something embarrassing, stupid and/or hilarious, then whereas other people would keep it to themselves, never to be mentioned to another soul, I tend to tell people about it if I think it is funny.  Just the other day I managed to get myself stuck standing on the arm of an armchair (no, not sure how); I probably could have got myself down eventually, but life's too short to spend it standing on armchair arms, so despite the fact that I knew I looked stupid and would be the subject of laughter, I shouted for James to help me.  When he'd stopped rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically, he did help.  Actually, on balance, it may have been quicker to get down on my own.)

The rest of my journey was uneventful until I reached Leonard Circus, which was completely shut and I had to walk around.  This junction previously had a really stupid north-bound only segregated cycle lane that was all but impossible to get onto and cyclists often would just cycle on the wrong side of the road for that 20m or so as it was probably safer than the possibility of getting in a tangle with the kerb on the cycle lane.  I really hope that whatever they are doing there (which looks like quite a major facelift) solves this problem and gives cyclists better options.

I'm not sure if I'm going to cycle back tonight - I have to go somewhere (more later) before I go home, so I'll need to work out if there is a sensible route I can take to get there.  Otherwise, I may cycle back tomorrow evening.

Finally, I'm afraid my training plan didn't fit in my saddle pack this morning, so I'll have to supply the "tick photo" later!

The Mushroom House

Today was a running day.  However, before I could go running, there was the small matter of a netball league match to deal with.  The division I play in has all its matches at 9 a.m., which means that I have to get a train at 8 a.m. in order to be there for an 8.30 warm-up.  In turn, this means getting up in the middle of the night. Again.  This is happening all too often and before long I'm going to be in bed at nine o'clock every night to compensate for the uncharacteristically early starts.

However, the early start for netball means that it's all over by 10 a.m. and I have the rest of the day ahead of me.  Given that I was meeting James and a couple of friends at local treasure Café Lemon for brunch, I figured the best way to deal with the running was to do it by running back from netball (not all the way - that would take probably twice as long as the time I had to run for, twenty minutes, and I had done a lot of running around already).

My best laid plans nearly came a cropper when I came a cropper in the second quarter of the netball match - a slight pull to the ankle meant I hobbled around for the rest of the match, although it was just about alright by the end and I felt better because we won the match 20-12.  I wasn't convinced it was OK to run on, but after some cake from the stall set up to raise funds for the same charity I'm doing the triathlon for, Marie Curie Cancer Care, I felt re-fuelled and fortified and decided it would be alright.

I walked to the centre of Palmer's Green, set the alarm on my phone for 20 minutes hence and set off at a very steady pace.  On the way, I passed Greek food shops and restaurants, an "entertainment agency" and a house, in Woodside Park, which is shaped like a mushroom.  Yes, that's right, a house shaped like a mushroom that looks like it's been lifted directly from a fairy-tale.  Apparently, it's just been sold, so some lucky person gets to live in it.

By the end of the twenty minutes I was really struggling.  My netball kit plus light-ish running jacket (with all-important zip-up pockets) made me far too warm on such a sunny day, but I didn't have anywhere to put the extra clothes, and I was lacking energy because of the netball, the last several days of training and the need to eat more food.  However, I was shocked when I got home to discover that, in running from Palmer's Green to Wood Green, I had only run about 100m less than I did on Wednesday, so even though it felt bad, it was comparable in distance and probably a better effort given the circumstances.

Tomorrow is a cycling day.  It will be good to get out on the road on my bike for once.  James is talking about going swimming tomorrow too, so it might be a mixed cycling and swimming session (not at the same time, obviously!), combining tomorrow's and Tuesday's sessions and potentially giving me an extra day off.  I'll see how I feel...

The Frogman of Ironmonger Row

This morning saw me at the swimming pool at the crack of dawn again - or at least I think it was the crack of dawn as it was so foggy that I wasn't entirely sure whether dawn had broken.  The pool was quite busy this morning and I hadn't gone very far when I spied my freediving frogman friend at the bottom of the pool again.  This time, he was moving so, although he made me jump (not literally, it's quite difficult to jump when your feet are surrounded only by water), I wasn't concerned for his safety.  However, he managed to make me jump another six times during my swim by suddenly appearing far beneath me.

Many ticks

This morning's session was similar to Tuesday's in that there was a four length warm up (which I did as four actual lengths of the 30.5m pool without any scaling), a 16 length main session (which I'll talk about shortly) and a two length cool down (also done as two actual lengths without scaling.  The main session involved scaling issues because it was supposed to be 16 x 25m done as 4 x two lengths (i.e. not stopping after one length but having a short break after two) and 8 x one length (with a short break after each length).  As discussed in my previous swimming post, in order to not break myself by overtraining at this early stage, and given that I'm working to a sprint distance training plan rather than a super sprint one and swimming the actual number of lengths prescribed in a 30.5m pool instead of a 25m pool would result in many extra metres of swimming, I'm having to scale the number of lengths so as to get as near to the distance and tasks included in the plan as I can within the confines of an oddly calibrated body of water.  Therefore, having realised that today's session was all about joining up the lengths I'd already mastered on Tuesday, I scaled the session to be 4 x 60m and then 6 x 30m.  This made my total swim distance today (with the warm-up and cool-down) 600m, meaning I've swum 1.2km in total so far.

Now onto the exciting part.  As the pool was so busy, especially the slow lane, I found myself struggling, even in my warm-up, just to do a length of breaststroke without bashing into people and having to overtake very swiftly to avoid crashing into people coming the other way while I did so.  Even though I struggled to maintain form after a few lengths on Tuesday, I knew that my crawl was significantly faster than my breaststroke and I wouldn't be able to do my session properly in the traffic I was dealing with.  Therefore, I had two choices - abandon the session and just pootle up and down doing breaststroke, or move to the medium lane!  I took a look around and saw that the nearer of the medium lanes had only three people in it and figured I could give it a go and see what happened.  I could always retreat to the safety of the slow lane if I embarrassed myself with my over-inflated ideas of how fast I was.  So, off I went to the medium lane, for the first time ever, and started swimming my first two lengths of crawl.  It was all fine.  In fact, on the third set of two lengths, I realised that I had just overtaken a man swimming in the fast lane, although I thought that moving up to the medium lane was plenty for one day.  I did the whole of my main set of lengths in the medium lane, before moving back to the slow lane for my cool-down.

Possibly the world's most silly
swimming injury

The other exciting (that's not the right word really) thing that happened in the pool was that I got my fist injury of this training campaign.  It must be pretty difficult to injure oneself swimming, but I did just that.  The medium lane is half the width of the slow lane - or, rather, the medium lane is only one lane width, whereas the slow lane is two, plus the extra little bit to account for a gap between the last lane and the side of the pool.  Therefore, it can be a bit of a tight squeeze going up and down the pool in the medium lane, especially if one person is doing breaststroke (thereby making them wider as they kick their legs out).  As a result of this, I was very much aware of keeping to my side of the lane, so as to avoid upsetting anyone, but this proved to be my downfall - as I was putting my arm into the water on a stroke, I clipped the lane rope with my forearm.  It stung a tiny bit when I did it, but then I noticed once I'd got to work that I had quite a mark where I'd hit my arm.  Now there is a mark, but no pain, which has to be a good outcome in the circumstances.

Tomorrow is a running day.  It's also a netball match day.  I haven't quite figured out how these two things are going to interrelate yet.

I want to ride my (tri-)cycle

Today was a cycling day.  I got up bright and reasonably early in order to ride into work and, eventually, back again, went about my morning routine, almost got to the point of finding and putting on my cycling gear when I looked out of the window.

Fog.

Many fog.

Now, I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to doing things in adverse weather conditions, especially in the name of charidee and/or fitness - many a time I've gone out running in the pouring rain or voluntarily covered myself in mud while doing burpees (yes, I know I can see someone about this affliction, thanks) - but there are two particular elements that I, as a still novice cyclist, fear above all: one is icy, snowy weather (for obvious reasons); the other is fog.  No matter how much hi-viz clothing I put on, no matter how much I look like a brightly-lit Christmas tree, I still don't think it is necessary for me to cycle from A to B in the fog when there is an alternative that doesn't involve traffic.

Tick, tick, tick, tick

The problem I then had was that there wasn't enough time for me to get in my prescribed half an hour on the turbo trainer in our conservatory before I had to leave to get the train to work.  I decided that I would either go out for a ride on the road or get on the turbo trainer when I got home.  As it happened, by the time I got off the train, the fog had completely cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day.

Once home, I decided that the turbo trainer was the way forward (not literally, of course - that would result in me bursting through the conservatory windows into the pond) and I had been in the saddle for about three minutes before realising that I had made a very bad decision.  In my excitement to just get on with it (none of that procrastination, remember), I had completely forgotten that the turbo trainer bike has a men's racing saddle on it, otherwise known as a stick.  By the time I was halfway through, I was shifting my position every thirty seconds or so, just to maintain feeling in my backside and, by the end of the ride, my toes were tingling (I have since found out that the tingling toes are a "feature" of riding this bike, as James also has this problem).  Needless to say, I shall not be repeating this experience unless and until the saddle issues are resolved, either by the procurement of a different saddle or by getting a gel seat cover - bear in mind that I was already wearing padded cycling tights, so this saddle is really, really bad.

Anyway, I got to the end and I'm now really looking forward to getting up at non-existent o'clock in the morning to go swimming.  No, really, I am.

Tri waits for no man (or woman)

Today was unutterably rubbish.  I will expand upon this at some point in the future (thereby making it utterable, I suppose), but this is not the time - suffice it to say that I am fine and you are not to worry about me.  However, even though I've only been training for two days before today (and one of them was a rest day), I find myself with fresh purpose.

Even before taking into account the aforementioned rubbishness, fitting in my whole 20 minutes of running today was always going to be a bit of a struggle.  The main problem was that I had to be at work early this morning for a photo-shoot.  Bearing in mind that I am a lawyer and not a model/photographer/editor/journalist, this was quite some occurrence.  I found myself being pimped and preened by a make-up and hair lady who seemed mildly obsessed with my hair (in front of my boss, which was just weird) before pretending to have a meeting while a photographer who referred to himself as a piano player and his six-strong entourage took endless pictures that I'm not convinced I'll ever want to see.  The result of this was that my whole day was a little behind and I had a couple of trowels' worth of slap on my face that would need to come off before I did anything vaguely athletic, thereby making my original idea of running at lunchtime incredibly cumbersome (much time for make-up off and get changed, actual run time, shower and change time).

Day 3 and counting...

I formulated a new plan, which meant that I would go to netball training after work as usual and then as soon as I got home I would dump all my stuff and get out of the door.  I had to have another change of plan though - I set off from the office a little bit late for netball and then when I got to the tube, the trains were all too packed to get on.  At the point where I was already half an hour late for netball, I gave up and went home, then went straight back out again for my run.

I haven't been running for running's sake for a very long time, so I was expecting twenty minutes to be very hard.  I'm pleased to say it wasn't even nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I did need to have a short walk in the middle as the sides of my ankles were hurting (an issue I always have when running after a long break) but from a cardio-vascular perspective I was absolutely fine - I had been expecting to have more than one walking break, so this was a good result.  I did a small tour of my local area, only nearly got bitten by a dog and must have managed a negative split since I turned back exactly on 10 minutes and had to run past my house to get to 20 minutes.  I only managed 1.29 miles (2.07km), but it has shown me that the 2.5km I need to do in the triathlon should be a doddle in 11 weeks' time as long as I keep up the training.  I just keep having to remind myself that running is the discipline I'm least good at, that the session was marked "easy pace" and that it will get easier as I progress through the programme.

Tomorrow, I shall mostly be cycling.  The jury's out on whether that will be on the turbo trainer or a cycle into work and back...

The Tri-als and Tri-bulations of Tri-training

Facebook is a wonderful thing.  It meant that yesterday, when logging on, I was duly informed by WorldTri that here is my training plan for the triathlon and yes, I should just get on with it please thank you very much.  I opened up the document and discovered that I was already in the middle of doing all the training I was required to do yesterday - rest.  I'm quite good at that.

Unfortunately, we all have a tendency to favour training in the things we are already good at, so I shall have to curb my enthusiasm for further training in "resting" and direct my attention at the "doing" that all of the other days of this week require.

After last year's completely ridiculous Lenten vows (where I somehow found myself giving up pretty much everything to eat or drink, in my view exempting myself from any ingestion-related privations for the next five years), I decided to give up something a little more philosophical (and psychological) this year - procrastination.  I'm not even joking when I say that it took me four days after the start of Lent to decide that this would be my Lenten commitment, but it wasn't really through an inability to make a decision - rather, it was a lack of inspiration (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).  Therefore, when someone (WorldTri, no less) presents me with a training plan for an event I'm going to do, I must get on with it and stop thinking about whether I can put off beginning until tomorrow or next week or the week after.

Progress so far

It was against this background that I found myself in the pool this morning at some ungodly hour that doesn't even exist.  OK, it was 8 a.m.  I know you've all been up for hours by then, getting kids ready, getting yourself ready, getting to work early and so on, but that's just not how things work for me, so it was excruciatingly early.

There are a couple of issues with the training plan, the main one being that it is for the sprint distance triathlon, which is a lot further than the super sprint I'm attempting.  To be fair, neither involves huge distances, so I'm sure training on the basis of a sprint distance will not be the end of the world.  However, to add to this, the training plan assumes that I'm training in a 25m pool.  I am not.  I am training in a 30.5m pool.  I don't know who designed the pool, but if they were still around (unlikely given the age of the building) I would give them a stern talking to.  This means that I have a couple of options: (a) just treat "lengths" as "lengths" regardless of their length (if you get my drift) and (b) scale the distances so that I'm actually swimming as nearly as possible the total distance required in each section of a training session.  On the one hand, (a) is a bad deal since I'm already going to be doing more than is required for a super sprint distance if I follow this training plan and those extra 5.5m per length soon start to add up.  On the other hand, (b) just isn't very convenient - when the plan calls for having a short breather after, say, every two lengths (remember we're in the early stages here) and doing a total of 16 lengths in a particular section of the session, then it doesn't really work out; I can't just stop in the middle of a length and I can't take my breaks where I'm supposed to.  I'm sure that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter as long as I'm approximately in line with the prescribed sessions, but it does make it all a bit complicated.

This morning, I decided that scaling the number of lengths so as to do the right distance was the way forward for the main part of the session.  The first section was a 4x25m any stroke warm-up, which I just did as four lengths (120m on the basis of a 30m length - life's too short to do the sums for the half metre).  The main focus was 16x25m front crawl with short breaks in between lengths.  This amounts to 400m and I decided after about three lengths that I was definitely scaling the lengths back to fit the distance, so I did 14 lengths, which is 420m - still slightly over the set distance.  Finally, there was a 2x25m any stroke cool-down, which I did as two lengths or 60m, bringing my total for the morning to 600m.

I discovered that while I can pootle up and down the pool doing breaststroke at a reasonable pace for seemingly hours on end, the same cannot be said of crawl.  Since childhood I've been a pretty strong swimmer, but since the annual humiliation of the House Swimming Competition at school (which involved me always doing the individual medley on the grounds that I was the only one in my house willing to vaguely approximate butterfly) finally stopped when I was 18, I haven't had much call for racing about at top speed in the water and my forays into front crawl tend to be limited to a couple of lengths per swim if I'm feeling spritely.  This means that while my technique is fundamentally pretty good, I'm really struggling to maintain form after a few lengths, particularly in respect of breathing.  I made it to the end of the session, although one could have been forgiven for thinking a (cooked) lobster was getting out of the pool rather than a person, and I suspect my "short breaks" between lengths were right on the cusp of the meaning of "short" by the end of the main section!

I have a few things to work on: (i) bi-lateral breathing (I only want to breath to the left at the moment), (ii) not holding my breath when my face is in the water and (iii) getting a swimming cap, as I think one of the problems I have is my hair flicking water into my face when I surface, which makes me panic a bit.

Speaking of panicking, I did quite a lot of that when I saw a freediver (complete with wetsuit and fins) lying motionless on the bottom of the pool, but it turned out he was just practising holding his breath.

Tomorrow is a running day, apparently.  Watch this space.

If you'd like to follow along with my training, the plan I'm working to is here (click on the link for the pdf to open).  Even more importantly, if you'd like to sponsor me for my triathlon endeavours, I'm doing this to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care (which is a charity very close to my heart at the moment) and you can make a donation by going to this page.