Malmo Substitute

Well it could have been Malmo but it wasn’t to be and now here we are in Lincoln instead. Malmo was a tentatively plan for my 50^th Birthday running teat but it just proved too difficult to get over there for a weekend. I need to start planning further out next time and by which point L should be fit enough to play a full part.

My entry to Lincoln went in very late and at first it looked like they were going to make me drive over to Lincoln on Saturday just to pick my number up but they relented. As it turns out there are loads of people collecting their numbers on the day. It is a day that starts very dull and rainy but it does fine up by start time.

This is the second running of the event which starts at the Lincoln Showground which we know well from the many dog shows that are held there.

You can see why they held the start and finish out at the Showground but it’s a bit of a dull run in to Lincoln itself from there. It’s also surprisingly not very supporter friendly because the start was a fair old hike from race HQ as it was held on the far periphery of the showground and supporters also weren't allowed past the finish line to watch us complete it.

However, once the race got into Lincoln it was great. There was plenty of support there and an interesting section on the river front, followed by lovely big hill up to the Castle and then a nice little cobbled section.

Then there’s the long dull run back to the Showground and a final stretch along the very gravelly access road which hurts my feet. It makes me think I some less minimalist trainers for my marathon, which isn’t really what you’re supposed to do two weeks out from a race.

I cross the line in a reasonable 01:45 to be handed the traditional pint of Erdinger Alcohol free.

In the evening we tour Canning Circus and finish off with a curry from the Park Tandoori.

(Sunday 1^st October)

The Shining And Other Stories

The dogs are gutted to find that they are not going to be part of the second half of our holiday double header. They realise this I suppose when we pull up at the gates of the Premier Pets Hotel. We depart towards Heathrow as MD loudly reintroduces himself to the other inmates. ‘Career of Evil’ is still playing as we drive down.

Security isn’t noticeably tighter at Heathrow, which is a surprise and possibly a disappointment to L who had hoped to get through a novel in the security queue.

The first night (Tuesday) is spent at the Holiday Inn near Zurich Airport which is the same place we stayed in last year. Last year it took us about an hour to find it, this year I know exactly where it is but still get lost in the one way system.

The next morning we head off in our hired Ford C-Max to Laax. The C-Max wasn’t my choice, we were upgraded by Hertz and given a car that is not only larger than we needed but also an automatic. Bit of a major downgrade in my book. Somehow I suspect an automatic (and a diesel one at that) is not the best car for ascending mountain passes and I am not wrong.

We spend two days skiing in the Flims-Laax-Falera which we have visited before back in 2005 but we can barely remember it. Last time we stayed in Laax itself this time we are in Flims where we are surprised to find that we are the only guests staying in the hotel. It is scarily eerie with echoes of ‘The Shining’ as we let ourselves back into a deserted hotel after going out for a meal. All the staff have gone home and they have simply left us with a phone number of someone in the next village to call in case of emergency.

Funnily enough the next day a coach party arrives and the place goes from dead to rocking all night in a blink of an eye.

On Friday we move onto Arosa to a hotel that looks more like a hostel but is at least occupied by more than just us. We haven’t visited Arosa before but they have recently added a new cable car that links the resort to Lenzerheide which we have been to a couple of times.

Arosa is slightly higher than Flims so the snow is less spring like, however over in Lenzerheide on the non-sunny side of the mountain it’s a different ball game entirely with harder snow producing some much faster pistes.

Throughout the week the weather is sunny and the promised rain never appears. L wins ‘Fall of the Week’ with the better of her two falls which was an impressive and painful face plant, so I’m told. I didn’t see either and as I didn’t manage to muster an entry myself I had to concede defeat to L.

Throughout the week lunch is usually liquid with cake, we do have some very impressive cakes, and evening meal is usually the cheapest we can get. This is usually pizza or pasta but we also managed to discover the humble rösti, which is also quite cheap. The prices of ‘normal’ food were simply eye watering along with all but the cheapest bottles of wine. We moan about the mark up on wine here but the Swiss seem to have no problem paying £30 for a bottle of wine that they get in their own supermarkets for £5. When not drinking the wine, it was Erdinger Weissbier for me preferably the Dunkel version but this serious starts to grate after a while. Erdinger is German, the only Swiss beer I had was Calanda, brewed locally at Chur, and I’m still recovering from that experience.

Our last night is back in the airport hotel at Zurich before flying home to the boys. 

(Monday 4^th April)

Vitruvian Tourist Dodging

Today is the 13th running of the Vitruvian Triathlon, unlucky for some perhaps. The weather dawns pretty good and race day stays dry throughout. This is usual for me to say the least.

Having registered last night and set up my bike in transition at the same time, I probably took it a bit too leisurely on Saturday morning and ended up rushing the few things I had left to do. Not that you can rush much when transition at 5am is a place full of zombified folk who aren’t fully awake yet but will turn into fully honed athletes once they are dipped in reservoir water. I miss part of the race briefing due to my over leisureliness.

The first swim wave is off at 6:15am, I am off in the 5th and last wave at 6.50am. Clearly they are worried about me if everyone else requires such a big head start. They needn’t have been.

The swim is two 950m laps and it's the first time I've done a two lap swim that requires a brief exit from the water and a 25m run back long the 'beach' before getting back in.

I get involved in a few scuffles in the first 100m or so which throws all my breathing and heartbeat out, which means I end up resorting to doggie paddle for a while before moving up to first backstroke and then breaststroke. Eventually I attempt to reengage with front crawl but it takes most of the first lap to do so. I also have blinding cramp in my left calf, not good. I am hauled (helpfully) out of the water by the armpits after the first lap and sent staggering on my way before plunging inelegantly back in.

24 minutes for the first lap isn’t great. The second lap is better in that I manage to swim most of it properly but with the field now well thinned out maintaining direction becomes the new problem and on being hauled out of the water by my armpits for a second time I’m appalled to find that my second lap is no quicker than the first. I will put this down to poor direction finding and the fact that I did drag both legs all the way around due to the calf cramp.

A total swim time of 50:25 is my worst yet. My transition also needs work, 4:03 is pretty terrible really. I ought to be able to halve that but at least now I’m onto the bit that matters most. The 2-lap bike course. I have done this course twice before in the Dambuster Duathlon and this is the first time it hasn't been excessively windy.

Without the wind the terrain doesn’t seem quite so hilly and I also discover to my surprise that the course has some downhills. Previously the in-your-face gale negated these and the nice smooth tarmacked roads are a joy, I hardly see anyone fixing a puncture. 

At the end of lap one I hurl by Outlaw Half branded water bottle at L before picking up a fresh one. I didn’t want my souvenir bottle to be reused and handed back out to someone else.

Lap two goes just as well as lap one and I thoroughly enjoyed minute of the 2:57:06 ride, which is nicely inside the hallowed 3 hours even if it was short. As in 85k rather than the usual 90km for a half iron distance race.

So to the 10.5km out-and-back run along the edge of Rutland Water dodging the ‘tourists’ who really didn’t give a monkeys whether they got in anyone’s way or not. In fact, I think most tried to be as disruptive as possible.

The whole run is a bit of a limp as the cramp in my calf has not eased one bit on the bike, usually it does. So it’s a case of being careful so that it doesn’t turn into a tear. I had already worked out that a 2:05 half would get me in under six hours. I review and recalibrate this at every km mark. Yes, they have km markers here which is about the only thing they did better than the Outlaw. That’s not a criticism of the organisers, it’s just the Outlaw sets the bar very high.

At the end of the first lap I pause for a brief hug with the boys and girl of the support crew before another lap of tourist dodging beckons.

I hold my pace and run a 2:02:16 half finishing in 5:55:50. A mere 1:33 behind the winner but I’m happy with that. I’m called a Vitruvian, handed my medal, t-shirt, crisps for the boys, a biscuit for L and a flap jack for me. Then I’m handed a pint of Erdinger, sadly alcohol free. After writhing in agony on the grass for a while, then being reunited with the support crew, I pass my Erdinger to L and head off in search of any available petite blondes who might wish to massage my legs. They are all booked up apparently but a hulking great male offers to do instead. Beggars can’t be choosers of course and he does a brilliant job of reintegrating my calf with the rest of my body. Then I borrow some money off L to pay him before grabbing another Erdinger, sadly still alcohol free.

This morning was Derby v Leeds which Sky moved forwards just to annoy me, rather than back as requested. Derby lose 2-1 and still haven’t won yet this season.

We have tapas booked tonight at the expensive-but-I’m-worth-it Iberico in the Lace Market. First we have a couple of Tucks in the Borlase and (to save the legs) a first trip on the tram, only eleven years after it opened. I don’t like to rush these things.

(Saturday 29^th August)