I am a triathlete!

You might want to get yourself a cuppa now, before you start!

Today is a rest day (apart from the two netball matches I'm playing tonight, but, er, that doesn't count, right?) Yesterday was race day.  It started like a completely normal Sunday for me - I got up, went to church, busked my way through a few hymns, downed a cup of tea and then headed to Harringay Market for lunch.  Luckily, the pasta stall was there, so that sorted us.  Then it was home to make our final preparations and to book a taxi to Hyde Park (yes, I know, a taxi, but with the amount of stuff we had to carry, including wetsuits and extra pairs of shoes, cycling or public transport weren't really options).

Once we got to the park (in our MPV with blacked out windows!) we wandered down to the event area and on the way a chap asked us if we were doing the triathlon and, when we said we were, he wished us the best of luck. We stopped for a minute to put all the various stickers on our bikes, helmets and bags - we'd had to wait until we got there as it wasn't abundantly clear from the instructions which stickers went where, so we wanted someone else to copy or someone to ask.  While we were stopped, three people came up to us to ask us directions to the registration area, which made us very glad that we had done all of that bit on Saturday.

With all the stickers stuck, we made our way to the transition area and checked in.  We were allocated row I of the bike racks and told to find the next available space.  We were with other people who were in the same wave as us and, as it turned out, the people next to us had consecutive race numbers to ours.  We all got talking about why we were doing the race and whether it was our first and so on - it was really great to make some friends right at the start and that set all our pre-race nerves at ease a little.

Suited, but not booted!

Once we'd set out all our kit underneath our bikes, I had a realisation of something I hadn't quite bargained for - doing this triathlon was going to involve me going through the agonies of putting on a wetsuit in public. James pointed out that at least everyone was in the same boat, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get over it.  At this point I discovered one of the wonders of the modern world: Bodyglide.  This magic substance is a bit like vaseline, but comes in a stick (a bit like one of those stick deodorants that you wind up from the bottom) - you apply it to all your exposed bits before attempting to shoehorn yourself into your wetsuit and it makes getting it on and, crucially, getting it off considerably easier.

It was time to drop off our non-transition stuff in the bag drop and head to the start.  As we got to the assembly area, the wave in front of ours, all sporting orange hats, were just being taken over to the briefing area and then on to the pontoon.  At this point, we were next to a group of four or five Sikh guys who were all doing their first triathlon (James had to point out to one of them that he still had the stickers on the lenses of his goggles - it turned out he'd forgotten his prescription goggles and had had to buy some at the expo) - they turned out to be quite a feature of my race as I was neck and neck with them in the swim and saw them again at both transitions.

Soon it was our turn to head to the briefing area.  A man with a megaphone told us what would happen at the start and then we headed out onto the pontoon to get ready.  As we walked out, I suddenly felt very emotional, as I remembered why I was doing the race and all the work I'd put in to get me to that point.  We were allowed to sit on the pontoon with our feet in the water for a couple of minutes before being told we could lower ourselves in.  This is where it all went a bit wrong for me - I slipped as I was lowering myself and ended up more or less catapulting myself into the water, going a full two feet under the surface and eventually surfacing coughing and spluttering and with water up my nose.  James said later that he wondered what had happened to me as I was there one second and not the next.  In the end, I was alright and grabbed the pontoon as required a little while before the thirty second warning.  The ten second warning was sounded and then we were off!

We had been told by many a seasoned triathlete to expect a washing machine churn of arms and legs as we set off, with people swimming straight over others and doing everything they could to get an advantage.  It turned out that, in this instance, either we were so strung out along the pontoon that we couldn't get near enough to swim over people or none of us was competitive enough to be bothered about barging others out of the way.  In fact, the only person who barged me at all was James.  I decided not to barge back as it would be a waste of energy!  After the first 20 metres or so the split between the speedy front-runners and us not-so-speedy triers became evident and that was pretty much how it stayed for the rest of the swim.  One of the Sikh guys had to grab on to a kayak near the first buoy, but he made it in the end.  Otherwise, I didn't see anyone in any particular difficulty and we all made it back to the pontoon and up the ramp into the next phase, transition 1.

The way the timing system works is that as soon as you leave the water there is a timing mat that your timing chip communicates with, which means that from that moment the system is timing your transition time, until you cross the bike start mats.  This includes the run from the water to the transition area, which is something I hadn't trained for and wished I had.  The run was 300m in a wetsuit that you're trying to take off, barefoot and on a slippery blue carpet.  This took me a while.  Once I got into transition, I ran back to my bike and got the bottom half of the wetsuit off very, very easily (thanks to the Bodyglide) and then set about putting on my socks and cycling shoes, gloves, glasses, helmet and Marie Curie vest.  The one thing I forgot to do at this point was have a drink of water. D'oh.  I grabbed my bike and set off to the cycle exit from the transition area and ran down to the mount line (remember Jonny Brownlee in the Olympics? - I wasn't going to make that mistake!) to get onto my bike - then I was off.

We had been told that the bike course was flat.  This was lies.  It is fair to say that it wasn't mountainous or even particularly hilly, but it definitely (definitely) wasn't flat.  I headed out down Serpentine Road and then along the bottom edge of the park, round the corner over Serpentine Bridge and then heard someone shouting my name - it was James coming back the other way, about half a lap ahead of me.  I made it to the first turning point, near Speakers' Corner and negotiated my way around the 180 degree turn - the bit I'd been dreading.  I headed back along the return part of the lap, past the fantastic Marie Curie supporters and navigated around the other 180 degree turning point at the end of the first lap - this one felt much tighter and I only just made it.  I passed James again in more or less the same place, so I must have been just about keeping pace with him, even though I appeared to have given him a head start.  After the second lap, I headed back up Serpentine Road towards the transition and heard another person shouting my name - it was my friend Cecile, who had just arrived to support us.  I stopped just before the dismount line (the chap behind me got it wrong and went over the line - I don't know what happened to him) and ran back into the transition area.

Once in transition, having racked my bike, my first priority was to have a drink and an energy sweet.  That accomplished, I switched shoes, took off my helmet, glasses and gloves and swivelled my number belt around so that my race number was on my front, then headed for the run exit, just after which I saw Cecile again and gave her a massive high five.  After a couple of hundred metres, I realised I was in trouble.  I think that sitting on the bike for a while after swimming had taken its toll on my lower back and I found that I had a pain just above the base of my spine.  Walking didn't really hurt so much, but running did.  I carried on walking a bit and running a bit for the rest of the first kilometre or so and then, all of a sudden, it eased off and I was able to run the rest of the way.  Just after I'd got my mojo back, I shocked some Spanish speaking supporters (who were supporting everyone, but in Spanish) by thanking them, in Spanish, for their support.  On this part of the course, I was heading more or less due west along the southern side of the Serpentine and, given the time of day and the time of year, the sun was full in my face for that whole long stretch.  I was overheating a bit, but thankfully respite was just around the corner (literally) in the form of the shade of some trees.  I went past the Marie Curie supporters again, who were all shouting my name, which was written on my vest and printed on my race number, and blowing whistles.  Once I'd got over the Serpentine Bridge, I turned right towards the finish.

Just finished - that "laugh
or cry" moment.

As I drew level with the grandstand, the finish line commentators clocked me and gave me a shout out, which was very sweet of them, but they weren't done with me yet.  I saw James and Cecile shouting for me at the turning point into the finishing straight, and as I turned in, the commentators started interrogating me - they announced my (full) name, the crowd were cheering, I was waving, and then they asked me if it was my first triathlon.  Frankly, at this point, I had no idea.  In fact, if they hadn't just told me who I was, I don't think I'd have known.  My brain kicked in and I managed a thumbs up and as I crossed the line with my arms raised in victory, they shouted in unison "You are a triathlete!"

Then I promptly burst into tears.  Bearing in mind that I'm not allowed to watch the London Marathon or any Olympic medal ceremonies on the television any more because I'm such a sap, this was not entirely surprising.  Fortunately, there was an ambulance lady just after the finish line who, having established that I was physically OK, gave me a big hug.  She is awesome.

The Lambrusco, pretzel and Ribena party (with Matilda).

I somehow got myself around the corner to get my medal, have my timing chip removed and then have my picture taken with a big cheesy grin by the event photographers.  I met James and Cecile and then we were off to find our bags and bikes.

We finished the day with a lovely picnic in the park with our friends Cecile, Matilda, Anna and Céline, who had all brought food for us and, in Cecile's case, Lambrusco.  Oh yes, classy beings that we are, we were drinking mini-bottles of Lambrusco, from the bottle, on a park bench. Cecile said she only just stopped short of getting straws...

We spent a while watching the inline skaters doing their tricks on Serpentine Road, but soon it was starting to get dark and chilly and it was time to go home.  We headed for the London Hilton, just across Park Lane and managed to get both of us, all our kit and both of our bikes into the back of a black cab at the taxi rank, thanks to the extremely accommodating driver, who knew exactly how to fit everything and everyone in and wasn't at all fazed by the situation.  Soon enough, we were home and sleepy.  A very long day.

Quite a lot of things surprised me about the event - the main one was how spread out everyone was on the cycle course, as I'd expected it to be a lot busier.  Another was that to finish the cycle in the time I managed, I must have been going at twice the speed of my average commute (although I wonder whether I was faster or slower than the person who reportedly did the cycle on a Boris bike).  I finished in 176th place in the women's open super sprint and in 35th place in my age group in a little over an hour and a half.

Several people have asked me what's next. The first thing is, of course, the London to Brighton Bike Ride, which is now less than two weeks away. After that, we'll see.  So far today, three opportunities have presented themselves - another triathlon, a longer open-water swim and playing American football (no, I'm not even joking).  Other suggestions are, of course, welcome!

Today, I feel surprisingly OK, although a little tired and a bit achy.  I'm anticipating that, as is usually the way, I will be a lot more achy tomorrow.  Whoopeedoo.

If you haven't had the chance yet to sponsor us (or you wanted to wait to see if we'd do it!!), it's definitely not too late.  Our fundraising page will be open for a while yet at www.justgiving.com/bbjatriathlon, so you can go there at your leisure to make a donation to Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Classy Lambrusco in the park, with Cecile (why am I
clutching those pretzels for dear life?)

James and I would both like to thank everyone who has supported us during this journey, whether by making a donation, by sending us a message, by asking us about our training or simply by thinking of us - it means a lot to us and we couldn't have done it without you!

Only one more sleep to go!

Today was a registration day.  We got up this morning and went to Hyde Park to pick up all our bits and bobs ready for tomorrow.  The first thing I had to navigate was having entered the triathlon in my married name and having photo ID in my maiden name.  I decided to take our marriage certificate with me in case there were any issues, but it turned out that taking my husband was sufficient.

It was great to go and have a look at the course and the transition area today so that we have a vague idea of where we're going tomorrow. The elite races were on today, although when we were there it was the corporate relays that were going on.  That said, there were quite a few GB athletes wandering about (in kit) from all different age groups, warming up and getting ready for their races later in the day.

The "blue chicken"

We had a bit of walk around the expo and James got his last bits and pieces from one of the stalls, then we had to head home as I had a rehearsal this afternoon.  Now we're home and sorting everything out because I have to play the organ at church tomorrow morning, so we won't have too much time to get ready after that and before we need to set off.

I've written my name in my wetsuit, pumped up my tyres (not that they needed much) and found all my kit.  Now the main thing is to work out which stickers need to be affixed to which bits of me and my bike! James, on the other hand, has been spending quite a long time trying to figure out how to put on his race-day swimming hat.  So far we've had the "blue chicken" and the "utterly inept".  I'm looking forward to being able to share the "properly on the head" at some point in the future.

The "utterly inept"

Just about all there is left to do at this point is wait until we go to the park tomorrow - I'd actually rather do it all now than go through the waiting, but wait we must!  I keep going through everything in my head - how I'm going to wait for everyone else to get away on the swim, how I'm going to be super-speedy on my bike, how my transitions are going to pan out.  I'm not thinking about the run, though.  I try not to think about running.

This time tomorrow, we will have finished and will hopefully be enjoying a well-deserved picnic in the park.  If you'd like to sponsor my triumphal sausage roll, there's still time to do so by going to www.justgiving.com/bbjatriathlon and donating a few quid to Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The Money Shot

I promised faithfully, some time ago, that upon reaching £100 of donations for Marie Curie Cancer Care I would post a photo of me in my oh-so-glamorous (and ever-so-slightly-stripey) swimming hat.

Well, dear reader, that day has finally come.  Today, our fundraising total hit £115, thanks to a generous donation from a work colleague, and so here it is - the Money Shot - my swimming hat pic.

I think it's particularly attractive as I seem to have managed to contort my eyebrow into a strange position by sticking it to my hairline with the hat; trust me, I can't do that unaided by silicon!

Just because we've reached this mini-milestone along the way doesn't mean it's too late for you to donate if you haven't yet had the chance - you never know what picture you might get if we hit £200....!  The button to get to our Justgiving page is on the right hand side - click it and follow the instructions.  Thanks once again for all your support!

Swim-distancegate and the cut-off time saga

Today is a rest day.  It isn't supposed to be a rest day, but I'm out tonight, straight from work, for my netball team end of season dinner, so kit management was going to be too difficult for me to train as well.  I'll do something tomorrow - I'm not sure what, but something.

However, in the last couple of days, there has still been stuff going on.  The main thing has been the publication of the start times and race numbers for all the competitors in the WorldTri London triathlon, along with the Competitor Guide (which has in it all of the info about where to be and when). So, at 17:00 on Sunday, 1 June, I shall be starting my first triathlon in Wave 61, wearing a blue swimming hat and sporting number 5395. James will be starting at the same time, with similar headgear, and number 5394.  Needless to say, if you're around in London that day and would like to cheer us on, make your way to Hyde Park as it would be great to see a few friendly faces!!

Some of the things that the Competitor Guide does are to set out exactly how many laps you have to do in each discipline and, crucially, how far each of the three triathlon distances is and what the cut-off times are (i.e. the time you have to complete the triathlon within, else they might pull you off the course and not let you finish).  When we signed up for the super sprint distance, the website said (and still does say), quite clearly, that the swim distance is 400m.  This is what we've been training for and, as I've found out in the last couple of days, what all the other super sprinters have been training for, too.  However, in the Competitor Guide, consistently throughout, the swim is referred to as being one lap of 500m.  That would represent an increase in the swim distance of 25%.  That's a lot further.

In addition, we had been told at sign-up that the cut-off time for the super sprint distance would be 1.5 hours.  While this is certainly achievable for me, it could have got a little on the tight side in the event that I got my leg stuck in my wetsuit or, for example, had to swim 500m instead of 400m.  In the Competitor Guide, however, the cut-off is set at an absolute time of 7 p.m., regardless of what your start time is - for me, with a 5 p.m. start time, this means that I would have an extra half an hour to complete the race, which would take off a huge amount of pressure (during my marathon training I learned to live in abject terror of the sweeper bus); for those with a later start, though, this would mean they might have five or ten minutes less time to finish.

There were a number of other errors in the Guide as well (such as a reference to the event being on 1 May and the number of laps for the sprint distance being put in for the super sprint), but the swim distance and cut-off times seemed to be the main issue.

The super sprinters, including me, very quickly took to social media - first of all to verify among ourselves that our understanding of 400m swim and 1.5 hour cut-off was consistent (which it was), and then to try to get some answers on how far we needed to be swimming and, effectively, how fast.  There were many, many tweets and facebook messages to the organisers asking for clarification and several people said they had e-mailed as well (which I also did).  Eventually, last night, someone got a response to an e-mail and posted it on facebook - the swim is 400m and the cut-off is about 7 p.m. but they aren't going to enforce it too rigidly.  Result.  The cut-off time saga is over.  Swim-distancegate is resolved.  As you were.

Water Music

Today is a swimming day.  My journey to the pool was, thankfully, less traumatic than for my equivalent swim last week - the tube strike has been called off, so I was able to get the train with no trouble at all.  However, I woke up this morning with an earworm - for the uninitiated, a tune in my head that won't go away.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you what my earworm was (in fact, still is!) because it is part of a top secret programme!  We have a choir where I work and we have entered the Legal Harmony Choral Competition, which is taking place at Southwark Cathedral next week.  We'll be competing against six other law firms and barristers' chambers and will be performing three pieces in the competition.  I'll let you know how we get on!

When I got to the pool, the earworm was still ringing around my brain and, as I was swimming up and down the pool, I realised that I was swimming in time with the music in my head and that this meant I was swimming very, very fast (for me, that is - I hadn't suddenly morphed into the Thorpedo).  As this was such fun, I tried it with one of the other pieces we're rehearsing and found that it was too slow and I wasn't really going anywhere, so I tried the third - an utter disaster!  This piece has a very syncopated rhythm, which meant that I was all over the place; I couldn't work out which arm I should be moving when and I must have looked pretty strange to anyone watching.  I decided that it would probably be best if I went back to the original tune and ended up finishing my swim much earlier than I had anticipated.

The other thing about today's swim was how warm the water was - it was the same temperature as normal, but compared to the Baltic conditions at the reservoir on Sunday, it was positively balmy!  Beginning to swim in the pool felt like swimming on a feather bed of water - soft and warm and cosy.  I'd better not get too used to it!

The session today was a relatively easy one: 2 x 120m breaststroke warm-up, followed by a main session of 240m front crawl, 180m front crawl arms only and 180m front crawl and then a cool-down of 60m breaststroke and 60m best stroke front crawl.  This added up to a total of only 1.08km, taking my swimming grand total to 14.48km.

On the way to the pool this morning, the sun was shining and it was warm enough not to bother with a coat.  I hadn't looked at the weather forecast and assumed it would be the same all day.  When I left the swimming pool, though, it was absolutely tipping it down, which, although my hair was already wet, was less than excellent.  It's sunny again now, though.  The rain made the market at Whitecross Street seem even more alive and colourful this morning - I love that walk to work, even in the rain!

Whitecross Street Market in the
early morning rain

Swim, Bike...Pray!

Ah, I love the smell of neoprene in the morning!  The title of this post is apt in two ways.  The first is that it sums up, very succinctly, my attitude to the running part of the triathlon.  The second is that it sums up my morning today.

I was up at the crack of dawn today (OK, it was already light, but 7 a.m. is the crack of dawn on a Sunday) to go to an open water swimming coached session at West Reservoir in Hackney.  The session started at 8.30 a.m. and is sufficiently close to our house that the quickest way to get there and back at that time on a Sunday morning was to cycle.   The session was an hour long, so we were a bit tight on time to get to the other thing I do on Sunday mornings - play the organ at my local church.  And so it was that I packed my newly-acquired wetsuit into my panniers, hopped on my bike and cycled to the reservoir.

You may have gathered from my liberal use of the word "we" that I was not alone.  James had also signed up for the session and I had assumed as I was cycling along that he would be right behind me. Apparently not - James had been running yesterday, like a good boy, and the resultant sore legs meant that he was struggling to keep up with me.  This was the first time we had cycled anywhere together since last summer and I realise now that it felt very different because I am no longer reliant on him to protect me on the big, bad road.  We look out for each other, of course, but I don't feel like a pupil any more and now feel like I can just do it all by myself.

The buoy in the foreground is the first, then the one on
the right, then the one on the left...

We got to the reservoir very early, which was just as well, as I had to get the wetsuit on.  We had never been to West Reservoir before, although I pass it on my way to work every time I cycle.  At the entrance to the lane that leads to it is a castle-shaped Victorian water pumping-station which now houses The Castle Climbing Centre.  Once along the lane, there is an old filter house which now houses a café, changing rooms and conference facilities, along with storage for various water sports paraphernalia.  The reservoir, along with its companion (and equally imaginatively named) East Reservoir, was installed in the 19th century to deal with the water that flows into the capital from the New River.  West Reservoir is no longer used by the water companies, so you can rest assured that I haven't been swimming in your cup of tea, but it is host to a wide range of activities, including kayaking and canoeing, sailing and, of course, open water swimming.

...then the last buoy and the base jetty on the far left.

We had no idea what to expect from the session, but once we were into our wetsuits, we went out onto the decked shore of the reservoir and started to meet up with a few other people who would be in our session (including our friend, Claire, who had alerted us to the existence of the session in the first place).  It turned out we were toward the lower end of the age spectrum and James was in a minority from a gender perspective.  It seemed like quite a lot of people had never been open water swimming before and quite a few were a bit nervous about the whole thing.  We met our antipodean instructor, Rowan, and listened to a brief safety briefing ("do what the lifeguards in the kayaks tell you, get out if you don't feel right") - then it was time for the main event: actually getting in the water.

It was at this point that I had a momentary existential crisis.  I've never particularly liked swimming in open water.  An incident involving a jellyfish in Tunisia when I was ten put me off swimming in the sea and, other than a bit of snorkelling in Thailand and the odd crossing of the River Lune in Kirkby Lonsdale as a student, I've managed to avoid swimming in open water for most of my adult life.  In my triathlon dream world, it was all going to be plain sailing and swimming in a lake would be just like swimming in a pool, so the harsh reality of being about to lower myself gently into a freezing cold reservoir that early in the morning was a bit of a rude awakening and I had a minor panic.  Somehow, I just kept going into the water, though.  My mind had decided that this was what I was doing now and that was that, completely overriding my emotional reaction.  Going into the water was a really strange experience.  It was very, very cold, and I felt it on my feet as I walked in from the edge down the ramp, but then as I kept going I was very conscious of my cold feet until I realised that I was nearly chest-deep in water and no other bits of me were cold - obviously, this was down to the wetsuit.

Once we were all fully in (there was quite a bit of "ah, ah, ah, it's cold, ah, ah" going on), Rowan, who was on the side, wearing a lifejacket (I never did decide whether this was reassuring or terrifying), got us to do some breathing exercises to get us used to putting our faces in the water.  To be perfectly honest, I felt a bit like my face was so cold it would crack in two, but after a few goes, I was used to it.  In a wetsuit, you can more or less float upright because it improves your buoyancy so much, but I was having difficulty transitioning between not upright and upright because my legs were so buoyant that I couldn't push them down under the water! We did a bit of a swim across the dock area, and the group naturally split into two - fast and not quite so fast.  Rowan sent off the faster group to do a lap of the buoys set out in the swimming area while the rest of us did a few more drills.  Then it was our turn to set out on a lap.  Rowan told us that we didn't have to go the whole way around all the buoys, we could head back in when we wanted, and we should feel free to have a rest when we needed to.  Someone asked how far it was around all four and the answer was 400m.  So, that was it, I had to get all the way around, in order to prove to myself that I could swim the distance for my triathlon in open water.

Some boat thingies

It's worth mentioning at this point that there were people swimming in the reservoir who weren't part of our session - they were just going for a morning swim.  I set off on my lap and immediately went slightly off course.  Once I realised, I adjusted and then started to make sure that I was keeping in the right direction every now and then by putting in a couple of strokes of breaststroke.  As I rounded the first of the four buoys, another swimmer, not part of our group, overtook me and then went off on a completely different trajectory from the one required to get to the next buoy.  Hot on his heels was one of the lifeguard kayakers, who had to cross my path to get to the other swimmer.  The kayak was quite a way ahead of me, but it did make me a little bit nervous for a moment.  On I kept with my mostly crawl with a peppering of breaststroke, around the other buoys, until I got overtaken by a much faster swimmer.  Then it hit me - I'd been lapped.  I could tell by the swimming hat that it was the same guy who'd struck out on his own before!

I finished my lap alongside a couple of other people in the group, but we were the last ones back.  I wasn't worried by that at all as it was my first time out, it was clear that some of the other swimmers in the group were very strong and, above all, I now know I can do it - I can swim 400m in open water without stopping!  I don't know how far we swam other than the 400m lap, so I'll just count that, and my swimming total is now 13.40km.

We still had a bit of time left in the session and some people set off for another lap, but quite a few of us decided to call it a day at that point.  In the changing room, there was quite a bit of chatter about why people were there.  A couple just wanted to give open water swimming a go, but most were triathletes or triathletes-to-be and one lady is even doing the same race as me.  The slightly early finish meant we even had time for a cup of tea before setting off for church.  The cycle back was a bit more strenuous than on the way - partly because of the tiredness from swimming, but mainly because it's uphill nearly all the way back!

The sessions run every week at the reservoir, and I'm sure we'll be back for more at some point.  They are run by Capital Tri, in case you're interested!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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 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...