Skidmarks

The kids are packed off for a sleepover at Nanny's, and in time-honoured fashion we head immediately to a local bar for pizza and a pint.  That's about as raucous as it gets - an hour later we're back home and talking about going to bed, and not in the fun sense.

At 5am the alarm goes, and Emma hops out of bed ready to face the day.  As always, I'm a little more sluggish, but it makes a change from having to sneak out quietly.  For today I have a companion in my tri adventures, as Mrs Piper faces her first triathlon. It's been a little while coming - the event she originally targeted in May was cancelled late in the day - but the next instalment of the Salty Sea Dog triathlon series offers a perfect chance to have a go at the Super Sprint distance (375m swim, 10k bike, 2.5k run), while I tackle the normal Sprint event as a prep for the London Tri.

The car park at Boscombe Pier is already filling up when we arrive shortly after 6am.  It's hard not to start looking around to compare yourself to others, and I definitely feel a little smug when someone tries to enter the car park (height restriction: 2.1m) with the bike on their roof.  They already have the attention of a number of people who have guessed what's coming, but if anyone hasn't noticed, they do when the sound of bike against barrier rings around the car park.

An hour later, and we're on the sand waiting for the hooter to sound.  There's a breeze, but the sun is shining and the water is warm, and definitely calmer than it was last time out.  Heading into the water, I'm somewhere in the middle of the pack, and for a couple of minutes I'm fending off other competitors all around, buoyed with confidence from last week's Pier to Pier swim that I can put in a good showing.  By the time I reach the outmost orange buoy, I'm starting to worry that I'm being overtaken by rather a lot of people, even those breaststroking by as they take a bit of a breather.

The water is beautifully clear, and even at a depth of 10-15 feet I can see the sea bed.  I can also see the jellyfish swimming just a few inches below me.  Its little grey face - I think it was his face, hard to tell with these lads - beams up at me as he floats on by.  I catch sight of a few more over the rest of the swim, thankfully at a bit more of a distance than the first, and I wonder what Em makes of them, given how much she'd worried about them in our training, without ever actually seeing one.

The swim seems to go on for ages, and people continue to easily overtake me, despite my best efforts.  I reach the end thoroughly demoralised, and thoroughly glad to be out of there. Transition is made easy by the new tri suit - wetsuit off, bike shoes on, helmet on, sunglasses on, go.

The cycle goes straight up the steep climb from the Pier, but I've climbed it numerous times in the past few weeks and it's relatively straightforward.  Like the last Salty Sea Dog, the wind is blowing from the west, so the ride down to Hengistbury Head is fast.  I overtake a number of other people, which starts to make up for the disappointing swim, and even on the return I manage to keep up a reasonable speed into the headwind.  Nearly back at Boscombe, I catch up with Em, but while she's nearly back at T2, I have to navigate the roundabout at the Pier and head up that hill again.  Pleasingly, I overtake a couple of more serious-looking athletes on the way up (and the Strava data shows I set a new PB for the climb), but I pay for it at the top as a wave of nausea comes over me, and the two I passed come flying by me again.

The rest of the ride passes without note. Until.

I'm finally heading back down the big hill, 200 yards until transition, head down, arms tucked in, trying to maintain an aerodynamic position.  Even though I've had slight success with wearing my bike shoes a bit loose, my feet are a little bit numb, so I decide to give them a wiggle to bring some life back before the run.  I twist and turn my feet, still clipped in to the pedals.  Suddenly there's a thud, and before I know it my back wheel is skidding down the hill.  The heel of my left shoe has connected with the spokes, and is now well and truly trapped by the force of the wheel straining to rotate.  It's taken a couple of seconds to understand what's happening, and things are now in slow motion.  I'm still upright at least.  The marshall at the junction at the bottom is watching quizzically, wondering what on earth I'm doing. My first thought is to unclip and put my foot down, but with a couple of tugs it's clear that the left shoe - the one I always put down first - is going nowhere.  It's a blessing that I was going so fast, because it gives a couple of vital extra seconds to think about what I'm doing to do.

(at this point in the documentary, cut to adverts for added suspense)

My solution to the problem is sheer genius: unclip the other foot. Actually easier said than done. Whilst unclipping itself is fine, as the bike slides to a halt every bone in your body has a natural desire to lean to the left and put your left foot down.  It takes a lot of concentration to shift weight to the other side - enough to make the bike drop on that side, but not so much that you fall off before you can get the foot down.  Finally the bike loses it's kinetic energy, my right foot goes down, the bike leans steadily to the right, and I've survived.

(cue music)

I untangle my trapped shoe, and roll on the down the hill slowly.  The marshall starts to jog up towards me - I try and explain as I pass, but it's possibly gibberish.  Looking down I see that my wheel has taken on a slight buckle, so taking it very cautiously, I turn onto the promenade and head towards transition.  It's only after the race that I see the state of my tyre.

After a pleasingly pacy run, final time is 1:39.50 - a couple of minutes quicker than the last Sea Dog.  I'm pleased to go under 1:40, but disappointed that it's not a bigger margin.  On reflection, the swim was long, perhaps as much as 1200 metres according to Strava, and everything else - T1, Bike (even with the incident), T2, Run - was quicker than last time.  Not to mention, Em meets her targets of a) surviving, b) finishing and c) not coming last, so I think we can chalk up a success.

Onwards to London.

We need to talk

We need to talk.

It's not you, it's me.  Over time, well, things have moved on, things have changed. This isn't just a phase, this is me, it's who I am.  And I know it's hard to face the truth, hard to accept the obvious, but we have to face it now before it hurts us more.

I am a MAMIL.

This is confirmed by my purchasing of a tri-suit.  For the uninitiated, a tri-suit is a one-piece lycra affair, combining cycle shorts with vest, in a quick-drying material.  On the bum, just enough padding to be comfortable on the bike, without being like a wet nappy after the swim.  On the vest, cut-away arms to show off the guns.

I've resisted the tri-suit until now, but they're just so darn practical.  No need to flap around in transition with drying off and putting a top on, just whip off the wetsuit, shoes on, and away you go.  They also have seams in the right places. Until you've done a tri in shorts with a seam up the middle, you may not appreciate what a difference this makes (also in the package from Wiggle: Bodyglide).

Having lost a few more pounds, it's now just possible that I could wear such a thing in public without getting arrested.  That said, it's tight.  No-one will be under any illusions about where I pack my spare pounds (no, it's not there).  Nor do I have the muscles to carry off the sleeveless look - it's mostly sidemoob and hair in unwanted places.

I feel very self-conscious wearing it around the house, let alone running around the streets.  Emma reminds me that I'm always telling her, in her own moments of sports clothing dilemma, that no-one at these events either notices or cares, and mostly just appreciate the fact that you got off your bum and achieved something. Which is entirely true, but still, one can't help feeling a little uncomfortable.

But I have worked hard to claim my place in the pantheon of sporting greats, and surely those washboard abs and bulging biceps can only be weeks away.  On Monday I run 7k at my fast 5k pace, around 7:45/mi, and on Tuesday take a 20 mile route home from work on the bike, hitting an average of 18.4mph, which is great considering that there's a few small but signficant hills in there.

Looking forward to seeing what I can do with the next installment of the Salty Sea Dog on Saturday.  Total 1:41 last time out, hoping to take four or five minutes out of that.

Progress

"Have you lost some weight?"

"Why yes I have!"

Alarm bells ringing from the Salty Sea Dog, I set about a life of purity and cleanliness.  My body is a temple, my desk a shrine to fruit.  I teach myself to scorn biscuits; to despise chocolate; to look disapprovingly (but affectionately) at beer and wine.  Remarkably, it starts paying off.  Not, perhaps, quite as spectacularly as one might hope or expect, but definitely.  Six weeks later, and I sit here half a stone lighter, and feeling pretty darn pleased with myself.

That said, I fail to make many in-roads into actually improving my times.  My training plan is still ad-hoc, whatever happens to spring to mind that morning.  Then again, it doesn't cause me too much cause for concern.  I figure that just having a level of fitness that will let me get through an Olympic distance triathlon is just dandy - either way I won't be first, and I won't be last, so why worry? We should never forget to enjoy the moment.

The Pier to Pier swim is the milestone for my swimming, 1.4 miles west to east along the coast from Bournemouth to Boscombe.  As the 12th July date approaches, Emma and I (for the reigning Mrs Piper is signed up for this little adventure too) keep an eye on the weather, which slowly worsens as the week progresses.  Sun turns to sunny spells, which turns to overcast, which turns to thick cloud, and then rain, with 20mph winds.  It comes as no surprise when it's postponed a couple of days beforehand.  It's also unsurprising when the rearranged date is announced as the 9th August, the very same day as the London Triathlon.

Unperturbed, we decide to stage our own Pier to Pier the following Sunday, along with Karen, who is also doing the London Tri.  Emma and I have had regular sea swims to work up to this, so I'm actually feeling well prepared, and it helps that the morning comes with bright sunshine and relatively calm seas.  The water is about as warm and as clear as you can hope for in the English Channel.  Clad in wetsuits, we weave through the tourists to the water's edge in the shadow of Bournemouth Pier, cap and googles on, and in we go.

If there is one thing to be said about swimming, it is that there is little to say about swimming  But the water and the company and the sunshine make it - whisper it quietly - pleasant.  We maintain a steady pace and a steady course, although on the couple of occasions I start to breathe to the right I veer off line alarmingly quickly.  In the latter stages the ladies also show that they're more competent swimmers than I and leave me trailing somewhat, but I'm happy enough to prove to myself that the distance I'll face in London is perfectly achievable.

Less than three weeks, bring it on!

A New Hope

Time ticks inexorably on. Winter begets spring, and spring begets summer, and yet the green shoots of prose fail to sprout on the barren tree of this blog.  But, dear reader, the forest of triathlon is not entirely bereft of life, for in a quiet corner of the wood the gentle deer of running still drink from the sparkling stream of athleticism, and the soft fungus of cycling clings to the mossy face of swimming in a life-giving symbiosis.

The London Triathlon approaches fast, and it's debatable whether I'm prepared.  Remember that this is going to be Olympic distance, twice the distance I usually race. But then, none of the distances involved are alien to me - in the past 3 months I've set PBs for the 10K run (49:54) and the 40K cycle (1:23).  The goggle-wearing elephant in the room is that, even in a pool, I've only managed a 1500m swim once. When I say "managed", that's largely in the sense of "managed to bear the outrageous boredom of".  Goggles with built-in LCD screens surely can't come quick enough.

I make a last minute entry into the Salty Sea Dog triathlon - sprint distance - and it sets a few alarm bells ringing.  For starters, the swim is every bit as nasty as I expect it to be, and I spend most of the time simply dreaming of getting out the disgusting brine and onto the bike.  The bike is hardly more pleasant though, a stiff headwind making me glad to have decided to fit clip-on aerobars, but still a challenge for the legs.  By the time I get to the run, my feet are once again completely numb, and I spend most of the 5K trying to coax some feeling back into them. Banks of sand across the prom make the going even tougher, and by the time I cross the line in 1hr41m, I'm relieved to have finished.  My position of 75 out of 89 tells me that there's plenty of work to do, and evaluation of new cycle shoes needed.

This isn't entirely surprising. Glancing back at my resolutions from the start of the year, I've completely failed to fulfil even a single one of them.  The time for action is NOW. Or maybe tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow, I'll feel more like it then.

Friday the Thirteenth

The week holds very little time for training. Work is busy enough to quash notions of doing something during lunchtimes, social events put paid to doing anything in the evenings, and if you think I'm getting out of bed early to run around, you're sorely mistaken. The highlight of the week is Em and friends raising over £6000 in under 7 days, getting their hair shaved off in support of Hayley - undergoing chemo less than a year after this post was published.

Friday the 13th arrives. It's foreshadowed very last thing on Thursday, with the receipt of an email at work that requires me to put aside any plans I had for Friday in order to deal with an urgent matter. It needs to be done by Tuesday, but as I'm out on holiday the following week, it has to be dealt with in one day. By the end of Friday, I'm more than ready for a drink, so I jump at Emma's suggestion that she and Ella (Alex being on a sleepover at his Grandma's) meet me at a bar next to the railway station for dinner.

Pokesdown Station, that most unpromising of railway stations, is largely deserted as I lock up my bike on the bike rack. Security conscious, I remove the mildly expensive front light before I leave. Ninety minutes later, it's the only bit of my trusty bike that I still possess. 

I'm not even surprised. There's a painful inevitability about returning to find an empty bike rack and my cable lock (an admittedly cheap backup) severed on the floor. I simply swear under my breath and turn around to go back and find Emma and Ella, who are waiting at the bar for a taxi as the rains pours down outside. I'm not sure if I'm more annoyed at the bike disappearing, or that I blame myself for being so stupid as to assume I could leave my property in a public place for just over an hour without some little bollocks stealing it.

It is, at least, covered by insurance, so by Monday morning a replacement - the 2015 version of the same bike - is arranged for delivery on Friday. Who knows, might take a couple of minutes off my time.

Maybe it's the pent-up rage, or maybe it's the carbs from the booze I ingest to take away the pain of having the bike nicked, but Saturday morning rolls around and I post a parkrun PB of 23:44. My first sub-24 minute 5k, by a healthy margin, although it's far from easy. It's a helpful reminder that I can and should be thinking about training to get faster, not just doing rote 5k/10k runs at the same pace.

Sunday Roast

(with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut)

Winter mornings don't come much finer.  The sun bursts through strings of cirrus clouds, in a blue sky above a land delicately touched by frost. It's the sort of day that screams at you to get out the house and *do* something while it lasts. And so it goes.

Everyone else clearly has the same thoughts: whilst the car deck of the Sandbanks Ferry is barely 1/3 full, the pedestrian areas are packed with runners and cyclists. We're on our way to Rempstone Forest, which fills the short gap between the sandy beaches of Studland to the west, and the rise of the Purbeck Ridge to its east.  As we head off the ferry towards Studland, we pass local running hero Steve Way, who as it turns out, is just finishing the first of two 17.5 mile laps of the Purbecks, taking in all the hills along the way. You know, as you do.

The Rempstone Roast MTB duathlon starts at the Burnbake campsite.  As we head along the road towards Corfe Castle, I realise that I didn't really get a good look at where it is on the map, so I desperately hope that it's signposted.  By the time we near the end of the road, I'm positive that we must have missed it, and turn into a narrow entrance to turn round.  As always happens, my plans are scuppered by another vehicle, a VW van, turning in right behind me. I don't have much choice but to continue, through a gate, pull in awkwardly on the grass verge and gesture to the van to come past.

"Are you doing the race?" says the woolly-hatted lady in the driving seat as she passes.

"Yes!" I reply, "I think I've missed the turning.  I'm pretty sure it's further back up the hill."

"Sat Nav says it's down here actually," she says, and continues down what turns out to be a driveway. At the bottom, we encounter some posh looking country cottages, but no sign of a race. We both turn around and head back up the driveway. Back at the main road, the sign for the campsite is blazingly obvious in front of us, at a junction no more than 20 metres further along the road.

Burnbake campsite, at this time of the year, is actually just an empty field, rendered white by frost.  The kids pile out the car and run down to a solitary tree to investigate. Meanwhile, I set about trying to wrestle the bike off the car and fit various accessories to either the bike or myself.  Being an offroad duathlon, this requires a mountain bike, duly borrowed from my brother.  It's not too long before a marshal is shouting "5 minutes to race briefing!" while I'm still trying to sort myself out, and I get to the transition area just in time, suddenly panicking that I haven't had any time to actually ride the bike this morning and make sure it's all working.

This is a pretty low key event.  Transition is just a couple of lines of bike racks in the field; race numbers for the bike and helmet are hastily scrawled on stickers; there are no timing chips to worry about. In fact, there are only around 40 competitors, and as we mingle around the start line, I have the usual realisation that most of them look a lot fitter and more athletic than I do (note to self: get some clothing emblazoned with a sponsor's name). I suspect that everyone else will sprint away from the line far quicker than me. So it goes.

The start of the run heads along a lane up a long hill. To be fair, not everyone is ahead of me, but I don't dare look back to see just how many or few are behind.  I concentrate on just settling into a rhythm, as the paved road heads down a steep hill and turns into stony lane with grass down the middle.  The leaders have disappeared off into the distance, and I join on to the back of a group of 3 or 4 who are setting an 8min/mi pace, which is pacy but not exhausting.  Through a gate, the course turns left up a steep bank, and changes once more to a grassy forest track.  Along the way are large patches of thick mud, which require some deft footwork and daring leaps - safe to say I wouldn't want to do this course after a period of rain.

The run eventually rejoins the tarmac road back to transition, which I reach just a couple of seconds behind the runner in front.  Transition, when one doesn't have to swap shoes or rip off a wetsuit, is a simple affair - helmet on, grab the bike and off you go.  I'm alongside the guy in front, with a couple more people just up the road, and with the bike usually my strong point, I'm confident of overtaking a handful of people. My ambitions are soon ripped to shreds as I struggle to get my legs going on the chunky tyres, and my rival eases away into the distance and around the corner.

As the bike course hits mud, on an uphill section, I'm cursing mountain biking. It's certainly not what I'm used to, and it's bloody hard and slow going.  I'm certainly not used to the grip of the tyres, which perhaps results in me being overly cautious on downhill sections, and a couple of times come to a halt lest I end up bouncing off rocks or spoke-deep in mud. At one point, someone comes flying past me, just as I think I'm starting to make progress.  I realise that I haven't really drunk anything all morning, and I'm a bit dehydrated - the main problem is that taking a drink whilst juddering along over sandy gravel is easier said than done.

A glance at the watch shows that I've done 5.5 of the 10 miles, and I feel relieved that I'm at least halfway there.  Then I figure that I'm actually nowhere near the end of the first of two laps, and looking again reveals that this is the total distance, including the run, so I've actually only done 3 miles on the bike.  Disaster. I might just cry.

The second lap is a bit easier.  I've understood that I'm going nowhere particularly fast, and finding a smooth line through the detritus is often quicker than simply trying to pedal harder. I don't see another rider for the whole of the second lap, until the last couple of hundred yards, when a older lady suddenly appears over my right shoulder.  She passes with a nod and a smile, and I follow her into the second transition.

The second run takes us up the long hill for the fourth time today.  Out of the transition I pass the lady who overtook on the bike, but a minute in my shoelace comes undone, and I have no choice but to stop and tie it, at which point she passes again. I start off again, running alongside her.  It's awkward. Given her friendly appearance just a minute ago, I decide that a bit of chit chat is in order.
"It's fun this, isn't it?"

In hindsight, this is a stupid thing to say in any circumstances. My companion's visage has changed. She stares straight ahead, blowing her cheeks, before slowly shaking her head.  I quickly take the hint and push on ahead before she beats me with my own Garmin.

The leg muscles are aching, but after a mile they've got back into the running, and the rest of the run is uneventful, although the fatigue makes the leaps over muddy puddles a little less springy than they were first time round.

The finish would be a welcome sight, if I could see it. The run comes back up the lane to the car park, past the timing marshalls, diligently taking times and numbers on a clipboard, but it's not really clear if that's the finish or not. As I come through, past the cheering Emma and kids, I'm pointed back into transition, where I eventually spot the finish banner next to a desk where a woman hands out finisher t-shirts. I run up to the desk, she hands me a t-shirt, and I guess we're done. It's something of an anticlimax, just like the end of this blog post. So it goes.

The stats:
Run 1 (2.3 miles): 18:41 (8:01/mi) - rank 23rd - happy with this!
Bike (9.7 miles): 46:33 (12.5mph) - rank 24th - should have done better
Run 2 (2.3 miles): 20:09 (8:29/mi) - rank 21st - not too shabby I guess

Resolution #9

Right, where were we?  Last year's (non-)resolution was to get fit, with the side effect of blogging about it on the way.  This year's resolution is to continue my journey, and put more effort into the blogging again.

It is true, dear reader, that I have left you somewhat wanting for the past few months. In some ways, I dare say I felt a victim of my own success - folks telling me they enjoyed my posts so much I stopped writing for fear of not being able to produce the goods everytime.  So, resolution #1: write crap more often. Not deliberate crap you understand, I wouldn't do that to you, but just to write more stuff down for the purpose of capturing it, versus trying to be witty or clever or observational or whatever.  Starting with this post.

The Strava stats show that for 2014 I recorded 994 miles of combined cycling and running.  I thought 1000 miles was a shoe-in, but a nasty illness over Christmas has meant a 10 day hiatus from exercise.  Still, with a 5 mile cycle round trip most days to work, I can probably add at least another 800 to that anyway.  Resolution #2: do more miles in 2015.

Other things to be doing: more strength training, more swimming, lose more weight, more high intensity intervals, more bike miles (eyeing up turbo trainer or rollers).

Less: wine, browsing Reddit & Facebook.

Target is to lose another stone before the London Tri,

Next event: the Rempstone Roast