Angels and Demons

Today is a cycling day.  Let me start with last night, though.  After I got home from swimming, the first order of the evening was to do a bit of work on my bike (actually, that's a complete lie - the first order of the evening was to Pronto Pizza...).  Some time ago, I had bought some toe clips for my pedals, but I hadn't quite got around to (or got up the nerve to) put them on.  With only a month to go from tomorrow until the triathlon, I decided it was now or never and put them on.  First, I had to find my multi-tool with the right allen key on it to do up the bolts.  I had left it on the table by the turbo trainer in order to be able to retrieve my saddle and seat post and put them back on my bike, but it had somehow disappeared.  During the period that it must have disappeared in, James was the only one to use the turbo trainer.  That is all I have to say on the matter.

My beautiful new cycling shoes!

It was no problem, though - I just nicked James's multi-tool from his saddle pack, got my saddle back on my bike and then set about putting the toe clips on.  An easy enough job, just two bolts per clip through the holes that are already in the front of the pedal.  Yesterday, following a whole day of James waxing lyrical about his new cycling shoes, I succumbed and went to Cycle Surgery (again) to have a look at some for myself.  I bought the cheapest pair in the shop, which the sales guy and I agreed were the right ones for what I wanted them for.  I was a little bit hesitant about trying out both new toe clips and new shoes on the same trip, but then figured that as far as I am concerned they are effectively one piece of equipment and it would be better to do it all in one go than to have to get used to the toe clips and then use them with different shoes, or vice versa.

I decided that trying out this new arrangement for the first time on a busy road would be a very stupid thing to do, so planned to walk my bike to Finsbury Park, spend the time I needed getting used to the new stuff and then, assuming I was coping alright, cycle to work (I didn't really have a plan B, but I'm guessing I would have gone home and changed and got the train).  When I got to the end of my road, I was exceedingly glad that I had decided to walk to the park as there was nose to tail traffic on Wightman Road from beyond my road right up to the junction with Endymion Road (probably about a 1km queue, all told), presumably because of the tube strike - on foot, I probably beat some of the cars.  Once in the park, I hopped on and gave it a shot.  I had completely mixed feelings about the results - on the one hand, I couldn't get my left foot into the clip at all (I always start with my right foot on the pedal), but on the other hand, it was a revelation how little effort was required to go quite fast.

The good thing about toe clips is that if you can't get your foot in, it doesn't really matter, so long as the clip doesn't touch the floor when your foot is on the other side of the pedal.  For this reason, I decided I would carry on to the office on the bike.  I set off down Green Lanes and made it up both hills with relative ease, even though I still hadn't sorted my left foot out.  Then, just as I was coming up to Newington Green (and when I had already moved into the right hand turn lane) two things happened.  The first was that I managed to get my left foot in the clip, just as I was coming up to a red light, of course.  The second was that something hit me in the right shin and I realised that it must have been one of the bolts from the right toe clip, which was hanging off the front of the pedal at a jaunty angle and, when the lights changed and I pushed off, began fouling the tarmac with every revolution - all this on an enormous, busy roundabout that I was turning right on.  I had to stop immediately, and I managed to get safely onto a pedestrian refuge (with much cursing, apologising and signalling).  I have no idea whether the problem was that I hadn't done it up tight enough (likely), that the front of the pedal being ever so slightly bent was causing it to undo (also likely) or that the bolt was faulty (less likely, but still possible), or maybe a combination of some or all of these things.

And then I saw it, like a gold aura-ed mirage on the other side of the road - PUSH Cycles.  I figured I had two choices here - I could either take off the offending toe clip and sort it out later, or I could pop into PUSH and see if they would sell me a bolt to replace the lost one.  I decided that if I didn't get it sorted straight away, I might write off the whole toe clip project and never get it sorted, so I went into PUSH (well, not actually inside, I just sort of hovered in the doorway) and asked the chap if he had a bolt that would fix my problem.  He took a look at it, went off and found a bolt, discovered it was too short, went off and found a longer one, fitted it, tightened the other bolt on that clip and then checked and tightened the ones on the left side as well - I asked him how much I owed him and he shrugged his shoulders.  I suggested that I would mention him in my blog as compensation for his time and the bolt and that went down well, so I went on my merry way.  It seems that at the moment I'm spending quite  a lot of time both in bike shops and telling the world how wonderful bike shops are, but this was special - such a nice man and such great service and kindness in helping me out.  I will definitely be revisiting PUSH.*

Once I'd walked round the remaining bit of Newington Green, I was back on my bike and had a fairly innocuous remainder of the journey (other than a 271 bus deciding to pull out in front of me from a side road - the 271 doesn't even usually go that way) until I got into the City and discovered that Moorgate was closed; the Crossrail project often causes road closures and you can never be sure whether a given road will be open at a particular time - it reminds me in some ways of the staircases moving about at Hogwarts.  However, this led to me finding a better route to the office by going straight across a junction I normally turn left at and then taking a left further on - much less busy and no buses.  I'm still a bit hit and miss on getting my left foot into the clip, but I was improving pretty consistently from Newington Green to the office, so I'm confident I'll get there.

I had started my watch when I got onto Green Lanes at the Manor House junction.  When I got to work, it said I had been going for 41 minutes - this included the time spent at the bike shop, walking around the remaining bit of Newington Green and getting stuck in traffic in the City, and I was amazed at how quick I'd been.  My average speed was only 6.4 mph (but I was stationary for probably about 5 or 7 minutes and walking for another 2 or 3), but my top speed was 19.4 mph.

The measured part of this morning's cycle was 7.08km, taking my cycling total to 130.04km.  Hopefully I'll have a less eventful journey on the way home!

*I should say here that PUSH Cycles is, of course, a business and is not in the habit of just giving away free stuff, so please don't try it on - it's a really nice shop run by nice guys, though, so do go and see them.  I should also say that I'm not in the habit of offering mentions on my blog in return for free stuff, so please don't try it on with me, either!!

Life in the Fast Lane

Today is a swimming day.  I got up early, as usual for a swimming day, got my act together and went to the station to get my usual train to the pool.  There is a tube strike today.  One of the reasons that James and I chose to live where we do is that we would not be reliant upon the tube to get to work.  We live very close to the mainline train line and, as a result, we are still able to get into the City when the Underground is not working.  This morning, however, both the train I normally get and the train after were so full that I could not physically get onto them.  I contemplated going home, unpacking and repacking everything and getting on my bike, turning it into a cycling day, but then realised that my saddle was still attached to the turbo trainer and I didn't know where my gloves were, so my turnaround time might not be that small.  I stuck to the train and got on the next one, which was reminiscent of a cattle truck, half an hour after the time of the train I was supposed to be getting.  This was too late for me to get my swim in before work, so I headed straight to the office and contemplated my next (training) move.

A chap I saw on Whitecross Street
I only ever walk the other way,
so I hadn't seen him before!

I had a look at the swimming pool website and ascertained that it would be open and not full of lessons, water polo or frogmen at the time I would be likely to leave work, so decided to go on the way home.  It was a little odd going the "wrong" way up Whitecross Street and through St. Luke's to the pool.  Once I was changed and in, I briefly regretted my decision as, at about 7.10 p.m., it was packed.  Every lane was full.  I started my warm up in the slow lane, doing 2 x 120m of breaststroke.  By the time I was half way through the first part of my main set (540m of arms only - it was supposed to be 5 x 100m, but it morphed into an odd patchwork of sets as I had to let others go before me and I swam an extra length because I needed to do an odd number, which would have made me finish in the deep end and would have been suboptimal) the pool had thinned out considerably and very few people were still there.

All of a sudden, the penny dropped - it was ladies' night (or, rather, a women only session) and all the men had left the pool at 7.30 p.m.; there was a blind down completely blocking the training pool from view so that those who are at an all-ladies session for religious or cultural reasons could be attended by an all-female staff and not seen by any male staff who happened to be around.  The main pool, however, even though the swimmers were all female, had a male lifeguard.  One poor chap had used the automatic check-in kiosk in the lobby (so didn't speak to any staff at the desk) and almost made it into the pool before the lifeguard told him he perhaps might feel out of place in all-female company.  He didn't look like he would be bothered, but left without a fuss.

The spread of swimmers in the pool was heavily weighted toward the slower end of the dolphin spectrum and, when I finished my arms-only set, I realised that while the double-width slow lane was reasonably busy, the two medium lanes had only a couple of swimmers in each and the fast lane was home to a lone backstroker.  I also saw that the swimmers in the medium lanes weren't really going very fast at all so I thought "why not?" - I went in the fast lane.  Yes, the  fast lane!  I did 7 x 60m, alternating hard and easy effort, and I was going at a slightly faster pace than the backstroker, but we were about a length apart, so we passed each other midway down each length, but neither ever caught the other.  It was somewhat serendipitous.  I don't know if it will ever be repeated when chaps are in the pool, but I still feel like I've achieved something.  The last bit of my session was 4 x 30m (2 x breaststroke and 2 x best stroke front crawl).

Today's session highlighted the problem with training in a 30m pool as, in spite of a bit of scaling for the longer pool length, I ended up swimming significantly more than I was supposed to (10% more, in fact).  Today's tally was 1.32km, taking my total swimming sum to 11.68km!  Tomorrow is a cycling day, which may involve some more firsts - check back to find out what I've got planned!

Going the Distance

Finally, I've managed to say that I'm going to do something on a particular day and actually do it on that day!  Today was a swimming day.  In spite of all my ranting and raving about how much I disliked Clissold Leisure Centre the last time we went, we went there again on the grounds that it takes half the time to get there as it does to get to Ironmonger Row. (By the way, the reason the weather would have mattered in deciding where to go had we gone yesterday was that there was a "Pets in the Park" event at Clissold Park that we thought it might be nice to wander through before or after our swim, but we weren't going to be doing that if it was rainy (and so we would have gone to Ironmonger Row instead) and then we ended up going today after all, so the weather didn't matter.)

We wandered through the park on the way to the pool and saw the deer mooching about. Once we got to the pool, we were surprised at how quiet it was.  However, there were several groups of kids about - this is, generally speaking, not a problem at all but the main pool at Clissold is supposed to be lane swimming only and the lanes are clearly marked - the kids didn't seem to be interested in adhering to the lane-swimming etiquette and the pool attendant was more interested in trying to pick up her water bottle (which she'd dropped) with a long-handled water scoop without having to climb down from her lifeguard's (high) chair than she was in making sure that the pool rules were adhered to.  Thankfully, there was a shift change halfway through our swim and the new, fresh pool attendant was not taking any nonsense.  James spied her walking along the pool side swinging her whistle in an officious manner and knew immediately that she was going to do something about the kids, who by now had started bombing into the pool.  They were told, in no uncertain terms, that if any of them did anything they shouldn't again, then all of them would be thrown out of the pool. After that, swimming became a lot more pleasant.

I have to say that while the kids were annoying, I did think that with the pool being as generally quiet as it was, the staff could have given over one of the lanes to splashing about for confident swimmers (bearing in mind the pool is 2m deep the whole way across) - that said, at Clissold, you can't see what's going on in the training pool from the main pool (it even has separate changing rooms!), so I've no idea how busy it was and, hence, why these kids had chosen to go in the main pool instead.

Today's session was quite tough.  James decided to follow what I did (without having done the seven weeks of training I've already done).  He agreed that it was tough.  We started with 4 x 50m breaststroke as a warm up.  Then we were on to 4 x 25m crawl kicks - the only floats that were available for use looked like they had been hewn from the polystyrene blocks that protect new appliances in their boxes and then someone had chewed around the edges.  Then it was the main event.  This was the first time I had to swim the race distance of 400m without stopping.  Seven weeks ago I was dithering about whether I thought I could train myself to swim 400m of front crawl in the 3 months available and contemplating that it might be rather easier to just do breaststroke.  Today I swam 400m of front crawl without stopping, a full five weeks before the event.  In addition, I had already swum 300m before I even embarked on this bit of the session.  To say I'm feeling proud of myself is an understatement.

After the main set, I still had 3 x 100m arms only to do and then 50m breastroke and 50m best stroke front crawl.  Once that was done, I did another couple of lengths while waiting for James to finish what he was doing, taking today's tally to 1.15km and my overall swimming total to 10.36km.  Over 10km!  That's a blimming long way!  If you think my 10km of swimming deserves a reward of a few quid for Marie Curie Cancer Care, please click the Justgiving link on the right hand side of the page and make a donation - I'm not far off the £100 required for me to post that picture of me in my oh-so-flattering swimming hat...

Goddess of the Waves

Today was supposed to be a running day which morphed (by arrangement) into a swimming day, but it turned out that I got enough of a workout from going shopping (not even joking, read on), so we'll go swimming tomorrow instead.

You may recall that a friend had offered to lend me her wetsuit and trisuit for my triathlon.  Now, the same very kind friend alerted me this week to a coached open water swimming session that is happening next weekend and which she had already signed up for.  You may be starting to see where this is going.  One cannot go open water swimming in the UK in early May without a wetsuit, as the water is too cold and one would last two minutes before panicking and, potentially, dying.  Also, one cannot wear a wetsuit at the same time as someone else is wearing it.  Well, I suppose it is possible, but there are all sorts of issues involved that we won't go into now.  Therefore, if I was going to sign up for the coached session (which is clearly a Good Idea), I would have to find alternative wetsuit arrangements by a week from tomorrow.

Initially, I looked into the idea of hiring a wetsuit.  I discovered that while hire is reasonably priced, the addition of a hefty deposit would mean that my initial outlay would be about the same as buying an entry level  triathlon-specific wetsuit (which, if I decide I don't want to do another triathlon or open water swim ever again, I could potentially sell on after 1 June).  I then looked into entry level triathlon-specific wetsuits and where to buy them and discovered that the King's Cross branch of Cycle Surgery has recently introduced a range of triathlon products, including wetsuits, and that they had a wetsuit in the size I thought I would need at a price I was willing to pay.  James found himself also in need of a wetsuit, so we both made the trip into town this morning to go and have a look.

As a general rule, I am very distrustful of sales staff in shops that sell technical sports gear, on the basis that there is always something else you "need" to go with the six things they have already managed to sell you (only one of which - the thing you went in for - you actually need/want).  However, my faith in human nature was somewhat restored today when I found that the sales staff in Cycle Surgery were extremely helpful.  They didn't try to sell me something better/more expensive/shinier than I needed, but were very knowledgeable about the things I did want to look at.

I very quickly located the wetsuit I wanted to try on and went into the fitting rooms - James had been instructed to stand just outside in case I need some assistance.  Wetsuits are notoriously difficult to put on, especially when they are new.  The thing you have to remember when putting on a wetsuit is that it just needs to keep going up.  You have to get it up as far as it will go - on your legs, your arms, over your backside, everywhere - because once it is on, it won't go up any further, but it may move downwards.

There's that "sprint" word again.
I can assure you there won't be any of that going on.

It was at this point that I realised that my suspicions about why I'm not allowed to do the triathlon in my preferred reverse order (have I mentioned how much I hate running and I'd like to get it out of the way?) were totally accurate.  It took me about 15 minutes to get into the wetsuit from start to finish.  I only got completely stuck once, at the point when I'd got both arms in but couldn't move either of them enough to pull the suit up further around my shoulders.  At that point, I was sufficiently well covered to open the door and let James help me.  To give credit where it's due, he only laughed a little bit, and I wasn't sure whether it was more at how red my face was or at how stuck I had got myself.


Eventually, with a bit of help, I was in.  It was decided between me, James and the shop guy that the suit was the right size for me (they are supposed to be very tight on land) and the size up would be too big.  The size: WLA.  What does WLA stand for?  Apparently, it stands for "Women's Large Athena".  Yes, Athena.  I am going to be a goddess of the waves (actually, I'm hoping there won't be too many waves, but you get the idea).  Wetsuits are not known for being the most flattering of outfits, but I was reasonably pleased with my reflection, given that I was expecting it to look utterly hideous.  In any event, black is very slimming.

The real test of this exercise was how quickly I could get the thing off.  Surprisingly, considering how long it took me to put it on, the answer was about a minute and a half (and that was with a new suit when it and I were both dry - it's easier when wet).

There was no wetsuit on the rail in James's size, so there was a short interlude while the chap went to find one in the storeroom, and then we went through the entire process again.  I think James was a little quicker than me at getting the suit on, and he had probably learnt a bit from my mistakes so didn't get quite as stuck, although he did still need a bit of help with doing it up.  As I was zipping him up, he said that he imagined that this experience was a bit like wearing all-over Spanx.  He overheated as much as I did and, by the time he was out of it again, we were both exhausted.  I suggested that we would both have to factor extra energy into our nutrition plans to cover the amount we would expend putting on our wetsuits.

We hadn't just gone shopping for wetsuits - I also had my gait analysed and bought some new running shoes as mine are due for replacement and James bought some cycling shoes in the hope that the more rigid sole (than his trainers) would help him to win his battle with plantar fasciitis.

On the way home (Nandos may have been involved in the meantime), James mentioned again how slimming a wetsuit is.  I thought aloud that I might consider wearing one all the time because of this benefit and that it would probably look OK with a dress over the top (I wasn't really being serious, obvs).  I added, though, that it might be a bit weird.  James just looked at me and burst into fits of laughter.  "You think?" he said.

His 'n' hers.  Nice.

Multi-tasking

Today is a cycling day. Unfortunately, today is also a rainy day. Although this means that I did not cycle to work today, it does mean that I have been able to spend all of today being smug about my excellent decision-making skills as the sky has got darker and darker and the streets have got wetter and wetter.

It also means that I am now multi-tasking because, as I type, I am on the turbo trainer, getting in a few leg-revolutions.  You may recall that I have previously had issues with the turbo trainer due to the saddle being, essentially, like a bird's perch (although it was clearly made for blokes, not birds, which is another issue). Today, I finally managed to get round to switching the saddle with the one from my bike. This is much more comfortable, but it is a bit on the high side compared to what I'm used to - the seat post is much longer than the one on the trainer bike and won't sit all the way down into the frame. It's not too high though - my hips aren't moving up and down with the pedal rotation - it just feels a bit odd.

This session is giving me the opportunity to try to flush out last night's Speednet-related fatigue from my legs. I've found that as I've got fitter from a cardiovascular perspective, I've been moving a bit faster and more flexibly on the netball court, meaning that I've started to wake up aching the next day as I find a few more muscle groups I'd forgotten about.

Tomorrow we're going on an exciting adventure and then we're going swimming. Bizarrely, where we swim will depend on the weather - check back tomorrow and all will be revealed!

Mid-week Mayhem

Yesterday was a running day.  So I ran.  A lot.  At netball training.

I had intended to go running at lunchtime, but I got caught up doing something else and couldn't get out.  I thought that I would go after netball instead but a couple of things got in the way of that.  The first was that it was tipping it down with rain (not quite to the point where I was wondering whether I'd need to use my amazing swimming skills to get home, but sufficient to make me rue leaving my raincoat at home).  The second was that we played "versatility" in netball training last night.  If you know nothing about netball, this might be lost on you, but the principle is that you play whatever position you draw - the player bibs are thrown in the air and you grab one without looking and have to play the position on the bib you've grabbed.

Now, I usually play goalkeeper or goal shooter - these are positions which require little running and are all about jostling for position in a very small space.  However, I managed to get stuck at wing attack, centre and wing defence (all mid-court positions) in succession and spent a large part of the evening running from one end of the court to the other, especially as centre - I'm a slow enough runner that by the time I've reached where the ball is, it's already on its way back down the court.  I seem to recall this type of problem being what put me off playing (field) hockey altogether when I was at school.  I think I got put as centre half for several games lessons in a row and found it so frustrating that I never wanted to play ever again (and managed to get away with that other than the annual house hockey competition, where if you could move you were required to wield an offensive weapon (otherwise known as a hockey stick) for one afternoon a year).

Therefore, I did quite a lot of running - not the monotonous, boring plodding that I'm actually required to do, but enough to make me feel like going out running after my running would be overkill.  I've no idea how far I ran, but I can safely say it was a long way.

It seems I was right not to do even more running, as I woke up this morning with a twinge of my back problem from last week.  Enough to make me decide not to cycle today, but not enough to stop me from feeling guilty about not cycling today.  I will be cycling tomorrow, though, and not swimming - I'm going swimming on Saturday with James.  Although I'm still sticking to the training plan in over all spirit, it is becoming more and more difficult to do the right things on the right days.  I've decided it doesn't really matter as long I'm training the right amount and resting enough.

What's the swimming equivalent of a saddle?

Well, whatever it is, I'm back in it.  Ever since my epic trip to the London Metropolitan Archives, I've more or less been putting my feet up and doing just about nothing.  Last week was supposed to be a consolidation week, but I took it to the next level and, apart from a short (by today's standards - it was still 780m!) swim on Wednesday, didn't train for a whole week.

If I'm being honest, it was in part due to laziness and busyness in equal measure, but the main issue was that I had a bad back.  I think the problem was caused by overdoing it on the day I went to the LMA and the day before (all in all about 30km of cycling and 1km of swimming) and then not stretching properly.  After a couple of days of stretching and ibuprofen, it was OK and by Wednesday morning it felt good enough for a bit of a swim, but then I rested it for the rest of the week as a precaution.  This meant that by yesterday evening, I was climbing the walls at home (not literally, it would scare the cat), so it was a bit of a relief to eventually get in the pool this morning, even though I really didn't want to get out of bed when the alarm went off.

There were two very noticeable things about the pool this morning.  The first was that it was very, very quiet, which suited me very well; presumably a lot of folk are still on holiday or having to deal with "first day back" issues.  The second was that it was very dark - so dark, in fact, that they had to put the lights on.  The pool is normally lit naturally by a sky light that covers nearly the whole area of the pool.  Today is the first day since I've been training that it hasn't been sunny (or at least bright - it was foggy a couple of times), and it really makes a difference to the feel of the pool, and my mood on leaving.  The drizzle today is like the permadrizzle I recall from my student days in Manchester.

In any event, by the time I left the pool, I had done 4 x 60m breaststroke as a warm-up, then 300m with the pull buoy and 7 x 60m front crawl, followed by a couple of lengths each of breaststroke and front crawl as a cool down - another 1.08km chalked up.  When added to the 780m from last Wednesday, this takes my total distance swum up to 9.21km.  This means that next time I swim (most probably Friday), I'll be going over the 10km mark - please sponsor my milestone swim by hitting the Justgiving button and donating a few quid to Marie Curie Cancer Care!

Journey into the Annals of Time

Today was supposed to be a running day, but I'm going to be very short on time tomorrow (for a long bike ride) and I needed to be somewhere today, and I could cycle there, so today turned out to be a cycling day.

The place I needed to be was the London Metropolitan Archives, somewhere that's been on the periphery of my things to do list for a long time, but I've never had a real reason to go before.  One of my activities outside of the day job is as a church organist.  I play regularly at St. Paul's, Harringay, which was accoladed last year as one of the top ten best modern churches in Britain.  In order to get a modern church, either someone has to decide to build one where there wasn't one before or something has to have happened to an older one - in this case, it is the latter, and the old church burnt down in 1984.  The new church has no war memorials in it so, in this year of the commemoration of the start of the First World War, we want to find out whether there were any memorials in the old church and, if we can, work out what happened to them.  I had done some searching online and found out that some documents that might be helpful were at the London Metropolitan Archives.

The LMA is only open one Saturday a month (it's open on other days too, just not weekends!) and it just so happened that today was the day, so off I went.  The LMA is just off Rosebery Avenue, near Sadlers Wells Theatre.  My main geographical issue was turning off my autopilot when going around Newington Green when I had to take a different exit from the one for my route to work.  However, I had plenty of other issues - my gears were a bit clunky, I'd got to the point in Finsbury Park where I usually remember to turn on my sports watch when I realised I'd forgotten even to put it on and when I was over halfway to the LMA, I realised I'd forgotten my phone (during the course of the day I also managed to spray cola all over the visitors' lounge at the LMA and drop my bike on its side when the saddle pack was open, thereby littering my belongings all over the street...).  I had been a bit concerned about where I would park my bike, but the LMA has bike racks out the back and a very nice guard who will show you where they are.

Now, I knew from my pre-trip research that you need a "History Card" to access the original documents in the archive and that you can pre-register to save time on arrival (which I had done).  However, what the website does say is that they will take a picture of you for your card.  They also don't tell you that the perfectly lovely man taking the picture will not mention to you that, having cycled nearly five miles to get there, you have a red stripe across the middle of your forehead from where your cycle helmet has been.  The result of this is that you end up with your History Card looking like this until 2017:

I had a great time looking at the documents and finding out all about the history of my church.  Reading through handwritten minute-books is always fascinating (OK, maybe that's just me), but seeing all of the lists of the fallen to be included on the memorial was also heartbreaking.

Once I'd made all the notes I could and seen all the documents I had the time to review, I set off back again.  I stopped on Essex Road to visit one of my favourite fabric shops (oops!), which also allowed me to hop (on foot, but not literally hopping) around the most hideous temporary traffic lights known to man - I'd figured out that the best way to deal with it was to walk to the other side of the junction and set off when the cars going the other way through the lights had a green signal.  This helped me to miss the seemingly millions of buses that were queuing up to make my life a misery, and I set off back towards home with relatively little of note happening.

This is the first time for a very long time that I've cycled this kind of distance two days running, so I was quite pleased with the way it went.  The total distance there and back was 15.68km so, with 8.01km ride home yesterday evening, my total for cycling is now a humongous 122.96km!

That Sinking Feeling (or not, it seems...)

See the bruise on my middle finger?
See it?  Yes, it HURTS!

Yesterday was supposed to be a cycling day.  It was not.  I managed to hurt my finger playing netball, and it was so painful that I couldn't have squeezed the brake lever on the bike, so I decided it (or, rather, I) would be too dangerous to cycle.  I probably could have done some running instead, but we all know what I think about that, so an extra rest day was just the ticket.  That meant, of course, that (finger-dependent) I would have to double up today.

Thankfully, the finger is a lot better today, so I got up nice and early (oxymoron) to cycle to the swimming pool.  As usual, I forgot to press "start" on my watch until I got to Finsbury Park.  For the last few weeks, I've had a sinking feeling - every time I get on my bike, I think my saddle has sunk down and so I put it up a little bit.  I've cleaned the seat post and otherwise fiddled about with it to stop this sinking from happening.  Today was no exception - by the time I was coming out of Finsbury Park, ready to cross over and head on down Green Lanes, I felt like my knees were going to hit my chin and my heels were kicking my backside.  As I was waiting for the lights to change, I checked the seat height and discovered that it hadn't sunk from the last time I'd ridden.  I quickly put two and two together and miraculously got four - I realised that I needed to put the seat up by quite a bit because, in my metaphorical cycling journey, this was the next progression.  I had previously thought that I was at the highest I would get to, but having put it up about an inch in tiny increments over the last couple of weeks (to counteract the imaginary sinking) and then a whopping two inches this morning, I was able to power down Green Lanes towards the City, and the journey from when I turned the watch on just inside the park to where I have to dismount to cross over a busy road by Old Street roundabout (6km) took marginally over 20 minutes - for the first time ever, I had averaged over 10mph on the journey to work (sorry about the mixed units - my old maths teacher would have a fit).  Levers are wonderful things if you get the angles right!

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I was at the receiving end of some attempted abuse from a sewer-rat.  Oh, how the tables have turned!  This morning I was serenaded by a builder singing R'n'B (very well) near the swimming pool - something about a beautiful lady, followed by a cheeky "Alright, darlin'?" as I went past him.  Much appreciated, thank you, kind sir!

Once I was changed and in the pool, I got very frustrated for two reasons.  One was that it was busy, which is always annoying (can't these people go later, or go to a different pool or something?), and the other was that swimming felt oh so slow compared to cycling.  I started plodding up and down the slow lane doing my warm up of 4 x 60m of breaststroke and then moved on to 4 x 30m of crawl kicks only.  I thought, momentarily, that the numbers were thinning out a bit, but then a few more people arrived.  I went on to my main set of 300m front crawl without stopping - I tried my hardest not to stop, but it was impossible not to stop at the shallow end each time to let more people in or to orchestrate overtaking.  I don't think I stopped for more than five seconds at any turn, though.  Then I was on to 300m of front crawl arms only, with a pullbuoy.  It was at this point that I noticed the Adonis in the next lane.  Terribly sorry, James, but it was worth going swimming this morning just to see this guy.  Finally, I did 60m of breaststroke and then 60m of best stroke front crawl to finish.  My total swim today was 1.08km, taking my total up to 7.35km.

Once I'd changed and hopped back on the bike, it was just a short jaunt down to the office, taking my day's cycle (so far - I have to get home yet) to 8.79km and my overall total to 99.27km.  This means that on the way home tonight I will be going over the 100km mark for cycling - that's got to be worth a few quid for Marie Curie Cancer Care, so please put your hand in your pocket and click the Justgiving button on the right hand side of the page to donate!  Thanks!

Deflated

No, not my tyres or anything like that - it's just how I feel.  A bit deflated.  Last night I had a reasonable cycle home, but when I got to the last but one hill, up to Manor House tube station, I pretty much hit the wall.  I didn't think that was even possible on a cycle of around 5.5 miles but, apparently, it is.  I was completely devoid of energy, my thighs were burning, and even in the lowest gear I had, I couldn't make it up the hill (especially with a bus up my rear end).  I had to get off and walk over the junction and then cruise down the other side of the hill, before getting stuck in horrendous traffic for ages, just a couple of hundred metres from home (it was very tempting to get off and walk, but I wanted to practise turning left into the next road to mine and cycling up that hill).  The traffic situation wasn't helped by a rail replacement bus basically riding shotgun for a number 29 - while the 29 was gutter crawling so as to pull in for its stops, the other bus was staying just behind it (it couldn't get past), but positioned on the outside of the lane, making it impossible for anything to get past.  In any event, once I worked out how much energy was required to cycle to and from work and compared that to how much I'd actually eaten during the day, it was not at all surprising that I had run out of energy - I'll need to look at that; it's a fine line between petering out because you're not eating enough and becoming the size of a 4-bedroom semi because you're overcompensating.

If I hadn't felt so terribly tired, I was going to go and have a look at what has become over the last few days a local landmark - the very first mini-roundabout I ever tried to turn right at (see this post).  You see, in their infinite wisdom, Haringey Council decided it was high time that particular roundabout had a facelift.  It was looking a bit old and tired and becoming a bit decrepit and dangerous.  They got a contractor, Ringway Jacobs, to come in and resurface the road and repaint the roundabout onto it.  Simples, no?  No.  Apparently not.  Somehow, in this routine bit of road maintenance, the contractor managed to paint the arrows (to show you which way to circumnavigate the roundabout) the wrong way!  Yes, they painted them pointing anti-clockwise around the roundabout.  This was first reported over the weekend, and it took them until yesterday to do anything about it - a temporary measure where it looks like the arrowheads have been painted out with some kind of tar paint.  You can read all about this wrongabout on the site of one of our local newspapers, here, or in the Evening Standard, or amuse yourself with some witty repartee about it on Harringay Online.

So, without the detour, I cycled 8.21km on the way home last night, taking my total to 90.48km.

Today is a running day and I set off a lunchtime, all ready for a nice pootle about the City.  I was going pretty well and then about nine minutes into my run I got a really, really bad stomach ache.  I don't know what caused it - it could have been any number of things - but I had to stop.  I was pondering whether to try jogging a little to see if it would just go away, but decided that it wasn't worth it (and, besides, I have to play netball later).  By the time I had walked back to the office, it was starting to dissipate and now I'm back at my desk it has gone altogether, so I think I'll live.  The thing is, I'm really gutted about it because I was doing really well - I was going at a consistently faster pace than I have previously and my legs, in spite of the cycling yesterday, were feeling OK.  Anyway, in the 10 minutes or so I was running for, I did 1.25km, which takes my total to 11.46km.

If you'd like to sponsor my stomach to not ache while I'm running, you can do so by clicking the Justgiving link on the right hand side of the page and donating some money to Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Pave-Dwelling Troglodytes

Yeah, I know the title doesn't scan very well, but you'll see why I've done that if you carry on reading!

Today is a cycling day.  It isn't really supposed to be a cycling day, it is supposed to be a swimming day, but I did today's swimming on Sunday and didn't do Sunday's cycling, so I'm doing Sunday's cycling today (got it? Good.)  I wasn't all that keen on getting out of bed this morning and that meant that I didn't leave the house until gone 8.30.  I thought this was going to be a problem because Sunday's cycle was meant to be a long one, and even though the two rides today (into and home from work) would add up to roughly the right amount of time, I felt like I needed to do a little bit more.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the presence of a circus and a fair in Finsbury Park precludes circuits at the moment, so scooting around there a couple of times was out.  Then I remembered the deer in Clissold Park and decided I would go and say good morning to them.  This turned out to be a Good Idea, as I got up this morning feeling very nervous for some reason - I can only presume that it was nerves about cycling that did it as there isn't anything else that I'm nervous about at the moment.  I managed to get myself to Finsbury Park, then realised that, yet again, I had forgotten to start my Garmin sports watch, so would have to add a kilometre onto my morning's recorded distance.

I was still feeling a little nervy by the time I got to Clissold Park, but it is amazing what the sight of a few fallow deer prancing about (literally - I'm not even joking) in their bucolic pasture can do to calm the spirit.  I'm trying to work out how I can go and see the deer over and over again, but without ever losing the feeling of how special it is to be able to see them in the middle of Hackney.  Maybe I should only go and see them every couple of weeks.  I don't know, I'll figure it out.

It was a good job that the deer calmed me down, because it was just after I left the park that I came across the life-form referenced in the title of this post - the Pave-Dwelling Troglodyte.  Now, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I am (or, at least, I try to be) a law-abiding cyclist.  I stop at red lights, I don't ride on the pavement, I have lights all over me when riding at night and so on.  I also try to be courteous to other road users, partly because it's just the right thing to do and partly because I feel I need to redress the balance a bit against all those rubbish cyclists that give all us good cyclists a bad name with drivers and pedestrians alike.  I'm the first to admit that I don't always get it right, but my intentions are good and most of the time I do get it right.  Until now, there has been a steady stream of cyclists on my route into work who have decided that traffic lights just don't apply to them and have gone straight through, regardless of what else is going on around them.  I've seen a couple of near misses and seen one car shunt another because the front car had to brake suddenly to avoid a bike.

However, there now seems to be a new way of light jumping.  I say "new" - I'm sure it isn't new at all, but this morning I noticed it in volume for the first time.  I saw no fewer than 12 cyclists this morning who mounted the pavement just before a traffic light that was on red, cycled across the pedestrian crossing (on the green man) for the perpendicular road at the junction, onto the pavement on the other side and then rejoined the road on the other side of the junction, all before the lights for the road they were theoretically travelling on turned green.  In their minds, this works because they are, technically speaking, not jumping a red light, because they are not on the carriageway.  However, they are still breaking the law by riding on the pavement and they are being Bad Cyclists in any event because they are scaring the bejeezus out of the pedestrians trying to use the crossing that has been put there for their safety.  This displeases me greatly.

There are all sorts of arguments about whether cyclists should be able to cross junctions or turn left or whatever on a red light but, until someone decides to change the law, jumping a red light is illegal and no-one should do it, driver or cyclist.  To my mind, saying "I think the law should be that I can jump a red light, so I'm going to do it anyway and that's OK" is a bit like saying "I think the law should be that I can steal stuff, so I'm going to do it anyway and that's OK".  It's not OK, don't do it (either thing, that is!)

The rest of my journey was fairly uneventful, but when I got to the place where I get off my bike to go to the office (the one way system means I have to stop on Moorgate and then walk through a passageway, I happened to glance up at a clock on a bank building and saw that it was only 9.14.  With my little detour through the park, I had expected my journey to be quite a bit longer than normal, but when you add my first kilometre onto the 38 minutes showing on my Garmin and take into account that I didn't leave the house until gone 8.30, I think it only took me about 42 minutes including the detour to get into the office.  I may need to go and see the deer again on the way home to make sure I've done enough today...

This morning's cycle was 8.66km, taking my cycling total up to 82.27km.

The Tropics of Hackney

Today should have been a cycling day, but it turned out to be a swimming day.  You see, James no longer works in the same area of town as me and so no longer has easy access to a swimming pool during the week.  This means that he hadn't yet managed to do any swimming training for the triathlon, so we decided that rather than cycling today (it was a bit rainy, anyway), we would go swimming.  Thist means I'll have to cycle an extra day in the week, but that will be fine.

We decided that we should go to a swimming pool which is closer to our house than Ironmonger Row, just for the sake of having an adventure, so we went Clissold Leisure Centre, which is very close to Clissold Park in Hackney.  We got off the bus a stop early so that we could walk through the park and quickly discovered that there were loads of facilities there that we would have a look at on the way back.

Gratuitous picture of ducks

Clissold Leisure Centre is enormous.  There are three swimming pools (a main pool, a training pool and a toddler pool), each, somewhat bizarrely, with its own changing rooms.  There's also a gym and a sports hall and a number of other facilities.  Having done some research before hand, we knew we wanted the 25m main pool, which is dedicated to lane swimming at all times, has eight lanes and is a constant 2m depth the whole way across.

There's a big sign outside the pool area changing rooms that asks you to remove your shoes before going in.  I reckon the hit rate on people who comply with the sign is probably about 40%, which makes for a very wet and muddy changing area.  So far, I wasn't very impressed.

Once I got to the poolside I realised just how busy it was.  I know it was Sunday afternoon, but there were far more people there than I was expecting.  I got in and started off on a 4 x 50m breaststroke warm-up in the slow lane and quickly figured out that the rest of my swim was going to be in the medium lane at least - I may even need to venture up to the fast lane here.  Once in the medium lane, I did 4 x 50m of front crawl, arms only, using a pullbuoy.  It was during this set that I realised that there was nothing wrong with my goggles and it really was the water that was cloudy - certainly not the crystalline waters we're used to at Ironmonger Row.  I moved on to 6 x 50m with very short breaks in between and then 4 x 50m with slightly longer breaks and then finished with 2 x 50m (25m breaststroke, 25m best stroke front crawl).

A hackneyed old
goat!

I had completely lost James pretty early on in the swim and now that I'd finished, I could see that he was plodding up and down the medium lane doing breaststroke (he must have moved up to medium just as I'd finished and gone to find him in the slow lane!) - I started to get a bit cold waiting for him, so I did another couple of lengths of breaststroke, taking my total for the day to 1.05km, meaning my swimming grand total now stands at 6.27km.

All in all, we weren't that impressed with Clissold Leisure Centre - all the infrastructure is there for it to be a really nice pool, but it didn't seem very clean and everywhere was a bit chaotic, including in the pool itself (on both counts).  The only upside is that, at 25m, it means I don't have to scale my training (although the lengths do feel very short!), but that isn't enough to make me want to go there again.  We're planning to rearrange my training schedule so that we go swimming every weekend, but we'll be trekking all the way to Ironmonger Row in the future.

On the way back through the park, we went for a bit of an explore.  Among the wondrous things in the park are some animal enclosures and we went for a wander around.  The first creature we came across was this tropical little chap, who seemed very interested in the nuts on James' ice lolly.

The victorious Cumberland G Team

Around the corner, we met some goats and a herd of deer - because why wouldn't there be a herd of deer in the middle of Hackney...?

Yesterday, I managed to completely ignore the fact that I was supposed to be running, but did play netball in my team's last match of the season - we won 19-14 (again) and, because of the way other results fell in yesterday's matches, we finished second in our division.

Tomorrow is a rest day and I'm definitely going to be resting.  If you would like to sponsor my rest day, you can make a donation to Marie Curie Cancer Care by clicking on the Justgiving link on the right hand side of the page!

A herd of deer.  In Hackney.  Of course.

The Multi-Storey Swimming Pool

Today is a swimming day.  I was in the pool before 8 a.m. today, ready to go.  I started my warm-up and realised pretty quickly that my arms and legs felt like lead in the water.  The water also felt a bit, well, weedy.  Not in the sense that it suddenly had pond weed in it or anything, just that it felt like I wasn't getting any pull when I moved my arms through the water, so it felt like I wasn't really going anywhere.  After a while, I got into it a bit more, but then I had the complication of having to do the first part of my main set - sideways kicks.

It sounds like I was doing some kind of underwater dance routine or, better still, nudging myself into the realms of synchronised swimming, but it was (rather disappointingly) just doing front crawl kicks while lying on my side, with a float at the head end to make sure I didn't sink.  I say "just", but it is in fact exceedingly difficult - not the kicking part, that's OK, if a bit tiring, but rather the going in a straight line part.  The idea is that you alternate which side you're lying on for each length, which means that for one length you're facing the lane rope or side of the pool and for the other you're facing into the lane.  If you're facing the rope/side, you have the advantage of something to follow, but it means you can't see what everyone else is doing and, because you're only doing kicks, it makes you a lot slower than them.  If you're facing into the lane, you can see everyone else, but there is a tendency to try to get out of their way and let them overtake, which means backing into the side of the pool or, worse, encroaching into the next lane just as a particularly speedy man is passing by.  Thankfully (both for me and for the rest of the swimmers in the pool), I only had to do four lengths of this before going onto the next thing.

"And what was the next thing?" I hear you cry.  The next thing was to swim 200m of front crawl without stopping.  Yes, without stopping.  I don't think I've ever swum 200m of front crawl without stopping before, not even when I was doing my swimming badges as a kid.  I do remember that I had to swim 800m in 25 minutes as part of a challenge badge at some point, but that was definitely a breaststroke job.  I had to wait a couple of minutes before setting out for this one as I would be too fast for the slow lane but there was a bit of lane rearrangement going on because the swimming lessons had just finished in the far lane, meaning that the overcrowded medium lane was thinning out as some folk moved over to the new lane.  So, how did I fare?  I don't mind saying that I found it exceedingly tough.  I actually did 210m because of the 30m pool issue and by the fifth length of the seven required I was struggling and got overtaken by someone swimming breaststroke.  I was determined to make it, though, and I did.

Next up (oh yes, there was more) was 390m of alternating 2 lengths breaststroke, 2 lengths best stroke crawl.  This was actually much easier than I expected it to be, given the massive effort I'd just put in on the 210m non-stop, but when I got out of the pool at the end of this, my legs were like jelly.

During this entire time, something was lurking in the pool.  It was my old friend the frogman.  He was there in his wetsuit and flippers, with a nose-clip on, skulking around on the bottom of the pool.  This time, though, he wasn't just lying on the bottom as he had been previously - he was swimming lengths.  It was very disconcerting when I suddenly caught something moving below me out of the corner of my eye, and every now and then he'd make someone jump by popping up to the surface (to be fair to him, he is very considerate about not just popping up right in front of people who are swimming on the surface).  This whole arrangement reminded me, for some strange reason, of films and cartoons set in The Future, where everyone has flying cars that go along on multi-storey airborne super-highways, so it made me think that the pool this morning, a bit like the sea I suppose, was a multi-storey swimming pool with different things going on at different levels.

In spite of my shock at the frogman popping up now and then, I still managed to swim 960m this morning (which confused me for a bit, because the training plan said today's session was supposed to be 1km and I knew I'd done slightly more than the plan required, but then I added up the plan's constituent parts and they only came to 900m, so I felt better!), taking my swimming total to 5.22km.

I've just realised that I haven't reported on last night's cycle home - it was amazing!  My confidence on the road is growing and I even managed to cycle over the junction at Manor House rather than walking.  I only had two incidents of note - one where a pedestrian walked out in front of me without looking as I was turning left (I reminded her, ever so politely, that the fact I was ringing my bell meant that I was there, but I don't think she heard me because she had earphones in) and the other where a car turning right onto the main road from a side road to my left just pulled out across my side of the road without looking - evasive action taken, no harm done.  The best thing was that I made it home in a new record time of 34:33.  This added 7.66km to my cycling total, making 73.61km of bike riding over all.

Tomorrow, the focus is going to be on the Big Match.  Yes, the last netball match of the season.  We have the chance (albeit a remote one) to finish second in our division, so all my energies will be going into that!

Confused (dot com)

Today is a cycling day.  After running and playing netball yesterday, it was a struggle to get out of bed this morning, but then I remembered I had something exciting to look forward to.  My Marie Curie Cancer Care "Daffodil Team" shirt arrived and that meant I could wear it to cycle to work!  It has many benefits for cycling to work, the main one being that it is bright yellow.  Before I set off, I took this truly awful selfie of a very sleepy me wearing the aforementioned shirt.*

I had thought that I might add a circuit of Finsbury Park to my ride this morning, but then remembered that there is both a funfair and a circus there at the moment, meaning that quite a lot of the pathways are shut and I wouldn't get a clear ride around the outer road, so I just headed straight for the office on my normal route.

For the first time since I started cycling again this year, I managed to get up the hill on Endymion Road and into the park (and then carry on) without having to stop to catch my breath.  However, I realised as reached the park that, while I had managed to turn on my Garmin sports watch thingy before I set off (so it could locate satellites and wotnot - we're getting very hi-tech here, y'know), I had then failed to press the start button as I moved off.  So, when I got to the park, I pushed the start button - some data is better than none.  As I wasn't stopping, I did it while I was still moving, so I didn't really get the chance to look at what the watch was doing, and I think this was the start of my confusion.

I carried on along my normal route without there being much to write home about for a long while.  I'm getting a lot more comfortable in traffic again, and that makes me quicker.  It's very difficult to properly "train" for cycling when you are at the whims of the traffic and traffic lights and buses and potholes and so on, but it's better to cycle than not to cycle, of course.

Once I was headed into Shoreditch and towards the city, I got to the point at Leonard Circus (that's not the same circus that's in Finsbury Park!) where they are replacing the junction and had to get off the bike.  However, whereas the other day I was able to wheel my bike along the pavement around the junction, this time they had blocked the pavement off as well, which meant a five minute walking detour around streets which are one way the "wrong" way before I could get back on track.

Eventually, I reached the office and, as I pressed the stop button on the Garmin, I noticed that the time said 58 minutes.  Now, even when I was a beginner cyclist on my first ever ride to work, walking across every junction and crying at the sight of a bus, I don't think I took 58 minutes to get to there.  Remember as well, that I hadn't even set the timer going until I was a kilometre into the ride (I know it was a kilometre because it was the point I would have swum to on Tuesday - see this post!), which means the first 4 or 5 minutes of my ride weren't recorded.  That would mean it had taken me over an hour to get in, which couldn't be right (partly because I knew roughly what time I left the house and that was less than an hour previously).

I then thought about factoring in the walking detour around Shoreditch, but that still was only about 5 minutes, which kind of cancels out the missing first 4 or 5 minutes of the journey and takes us back to the 58 minutes on the watch.  I think (although I'll need to do some technical jiggery-pokery later to find out for sure) that part of the problem might be that the watch hadn't cleared my 20 minute run from yesterday, which means I took 38 minutes (i.e. plus the first kilometre and minus the detour), which still seems a bit on the high side, given that it's about the same as my (uphill) journey home after swimming and cycling in on Friday.  Oh well, I'll just have to redeem myself on the way home!

My cycle to work this morning was 8.81km, making my total to date 65.95km.

*If a picture of me wearing a running shirt can be this terrible, then think how awful, embarrassing and hilarious a pic of me in my swimming hat will be - and remember I'm willing to put that up here, on the public interweb, when my Justgiving donations for Marie Curie Cancer Care reach £100.  You have the power to make this happen!  Just click on the Justgiving button on the right hand side and follow the instructions to make your donation.

The Barbican Triangle

Today is a running day (and a netball day).  I had a grand plan for today's run but, as it turned out, I had less time available than I had hoped and so had to shorten my session a bit (which was good because I have found that I despise running but bad because I need the training).  My plan was to spend my allotted 35 minutes (which turned into 20) of "undulating" terrain running around the Barbican, but I had two problems - one being the lack of time (for reasons I will explain in a moment) and the other being that I couldn't find the way in.

For those international readers among you (I know there are a few of you in far flung places), the Barbican is a post-WW II housing estate and exhibition centre with myriad other facilities including cinemas, a concert hall and a library, located just outside the City of London.  It was built in the 1960s and 1970s as kind of urban utopia to fill in a gap left by pre-War slums that were flattened in the Blitz.  Its Brutalist architecture is not to everyone's taste, but the apartments in the tower blocks are spacious and, since Margaret Thatcher's "right to buy" scheme took off in the 1980s, virtually none of them remain in local authority hands and most are privately owned - the views are outstanding, as are the prices!

One of the ideas behind this project was to create a place where someone could live and have everything on their doorstep, effectively without ever having to leave (other than to stumble the couple of hundred yards to work in the City).  However, that has led to an interesting issue - no-one other than the people who live and work in the Barbican can find their way around it (or, in my case today, even into it - please note that I do know some ways in, but they involve going through buildings or up escalators and I didn't really want to do that in my running kit).  I recall when I first started work we had a stall at a graduate recruitment fair in the Barbican Exhibition Halls, and those manning the stall were given two-hour slots.  Every single person turned up at the stall at least 15 minutes late because no-one could find where they were going.  The Barbican Centre management has tried to mitigate this issue by putting lines on the floor to follow to the various facilities and by putting up loads of signposts, but even the most geographically enlightened still get completely obfuscated by the similar looking towers and the highwalks (the whole thing is above ground level because there are service areas and car parks underneath).

In any event, today's run turned into a circumnavigation of the Barbican.  After three or four minutes, my ankle problem was back again with a vengeance and I had to stop to stretch.  I decided that I was going to have to go back to basics and did the rest of the run as a run/walk session.  In the 20 minutes, I managed to go further than I had on my previous run.  This is very confusing, but I can only assume that it's because when I was actually running, I was running faster than I had the previous time.  The really annoying thing about the ankle issues is that I can tell that my cardiovascular fitness has improved and I know that I could carry on for much longer and probably go a bit faster if it weren't for my legs playing up.  As with previous runs, it did ease up after a few stretches and a bit of time.  My ankles have one more run to improve and then if they don't, I'm going to see someone about them.

I have really mixed feelings about today's run as, on the one hand, my legs felt rubbish and I didn't get to do the whole time I was supposed to but, on the other hand, I can now tell that I'm getting fitter and in spite of everything I managed to go further than I have in any run to date in about the same time.  I ran 2.3km today (soooo close to the actual race distance), making a total of 10.21km.

Cycling tomorrow - I'm actually looking forward to that, even if it does mean a bit of an early start.

Spring Tides

Today is a swimming day.  I got up at early o'clock to head to the pool and, because I'd managed to pack everything the night before for once, I got an earlier train than normal.  This was probably just as well, because I was in slow mode this morning and it took me ages to walk from the train to the pool and then get changed.  I didn't really feel like swimming this morning, but once I got in the pool I was alright.

The training session today, being now in week four of the plan (and no longer in a consolidation week), was a humongous step up from my previous swims and I wasn't sure how I was going to cope with doing so much front crawl in one session.  The plan called for 4 x 2 lengths any stroke warm up, 4 x 2 lengths front crawl (arms only), 5 x 2 lengths front crawl, 3 x 2 lengths front crawl (easy out, hard back), 2 lengths any stroke, 2 lengths front crawl (best stroke).  Well, I say the plan called for that, but I had to do some scaling to fit in with the extra five metres of pool I have to deal with, or I would have been there all day and would have ended up swimming significantly more than was strictly necessary (remembering, of course, that my training plan is for sprint distance and not the super sprint distance I'll actually be doing on the big day).

I was feeling pretty good after the arms only crawl - this is achieved by using a pull buoy (which is a fancy name for a bit of floating foam you put between your knees to keep your legs up) - but I'd been lulled into a false sense of security, because after I'd done that and the warm-up, I then had to do pretty much the whole of one of my previous sessions on top.  By the end of the 5 x 2 lengths of crawl I was feeling very weary, but I was determined to get through it all and I just about did.  This means that I swam a massive 1.08km this morning, taking my total swim distance up to 4.26km.  Just for a bit of fun, I plotted this distance along my usual cycle route to work from my house, so if we have flooding of Biblical proportions, I know that I'll be able to swim from my house to about a quarter of the way across Finsbury Park (helpfully, just about to the café)!

Although I found it tough this morning, I am definitely feeling the benefits of my training.  I have now completely got over my panic about breathing and I'm able to focus on some of the other things I need to work on with my stroke technique, such as looking straight down instead of ahead and making sure I'm rotating my hips adequately to maintain my momentum.  If you'd like to sponsor the improvements to my stroke, you can donate to Marie Curie Cancer Care by clicking on the Justgiving button on the right hand side of the page and then following the instructions (and don't forget my pledge to post a pic of me in the swimming hat once I reach £100 raised...).

As usual, when I left the pool, I enjoyed my walk down to the office.  Here are some pictures of the St. Luke's Gardens bathed in the morning sunshine, with LSO St. Luke's in the background.