Unscathed

Another training run today, this time from my parents’ house at Aston into work. This is about 5.5 miles, it went surprisingly well and I think I came through it unscathed. I just now need to do it again in reverse at 5pm, as that is where the car is parked.

As I run onto Pride Park I am met by, for some reason, a sea of Orienteering controls peppered all over the place. No idea what that’s all about. We ought to have another go at the big O one day. 

The nomadic Beechdale-ites confirm to L that the changing rooms at the new pool are bisexual (e.g. mixed). That should make them hurry up in the showers.

L receives the same dodgy email that I had last week. That her application to enter the Olympic Tri at the World Triathlon Round at Leeds next year has been successful. You have to be careful what you sign up for.

I hope she is pre-bragging to her resident Ironwoman, who may have done Ironman UK this year and may be considering Ironman Austria next year but has she swam in Roundhay Park?

I do my second run and then go to the match with my folks. It's another draw. We aren’t exactly playing like Real Madrid yet. Well we are, we knock it around beautifully and have recorded over 60% possession in all our games so far but only in our own penalty area. 

(Tuesday 18^th August)

Never Mind The Cheese

My final pre-event bike to work today. I will then taper a bit more properly for the rest of the week, maybe. Well, I'll try to.

L is in London, working down Harley Street and having the usual fun on the trains getting there. She isn’t tapering except when being in London forces her to. She claims that her event is only a piddly little tri. The same piddly little tri is also a qualifier for ITU Sprint Distance World Championships and ETU Sprint Distance European Championships by way. So it’ll be piddly, little and full of very very quick people.

In the evening, we’re at dog training and another solid training session from MD. More solid that my triathlon training, that’s for sure.

L has gone to bed when we get home ‘to stop the cheese calling to me from the fridge’. Never mind the cheese, she needs to beware the chocolate lurking in my bedside cabinet.

(Wednesday 27^th May)

This Is More Like It

Today I have to register for the half a***d and attend a race briefing, of which there are four sprinkled throughout the day and I aim for the 12:30 one. I take the dogs with me whilst L runs there.

As we wait for her we watch the Nottingham Triathlon that is going on all day. This is merely a sprint distance event 750m swim/20k bike/5k run but the buoys in the rowing lake look well spaced out to me... and that is only 750m! It’s going to be 1900m tomorrow. Gulp.

I go to registration and get my race numbers, timing chip, swim hat, tattoos etc. Yes I did say tattoos, this year they are using ITU style tattoo numbers that you stick onto your skin.

Then they hand me a pint of beer as I head into the briefing. This is more like it. Sadly it turns out to be non-alcoholic.

The briefing is more or less what is in the published race guide, only with added humour and photographs that you can’t actually see because it’s too light in the tent where they’re holding it. No matter, we’re all hyped up now. Although I feel some of my fellow ‘athletes’ are contemplating not coming back tomorrow.

Then I go for a pre-race massage in the capable hands of the former landlord of one of our local pubs. I kid you not. It’s a small world as they say.

Back home, L says she was once told that you should drink alcohol the night before a race because it helps you sleep. So I have a beer, a real one, to go with my pasta and the athletic looking Bakewell Tart that is lurking threateningly in the fridge.

(Saturday 31^st May)