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!