Ran!

We ran tonight. Nom and I did half an hour, probably about three miles; Corporal Odd is probably still trundling around West Yorkshire, although he may be in Margate by now. We never know.

I did my 3 mile run...

..nice steady pace, 26.32 minutes. Including the time it took to cross Cleckheaton Road: grrrrr.

At least I didn't have a near death experience like the Corporal. x.x 0.0

A whole weekend's worth of punctures

...and then some more punctures. No, really. We set off on Saturday for a trundle across to Dewsbury on as much of the Greenway as possible. Only got to Cleckheaton before my back tyre went flat (always the back one; grrrr..) The patch we chose was ginormous, which didn't help matters. It took three of us an hour to fix it >.< Then, returning to the bikes, it transpired that the Corporal's back tyre was 98% glass, 2% unspecified sharp bits. Two more punctures and half an hour later we decided to head back to Veg/Nom Towers for sausage butties and cake.

Sunday morning, Nom and myself didn't get up. One panicked phone call from outside our back door later, fishfingers and big pots of tea inhaled, we were ready to try again.

Well, we managed it. 17 miles, a puncture for Nom in Heckmondwike and another one for me just outside Spenborough. A lovely ride though, although the glacial damage to the roads from the last few weeks isn't making my tyres happy. Nom says I can have some new purple ones.

Now, Mr Odd, did I hear a mention of 'new tyres'?

My new goggles!

They're lovely!

They don't leak one bit, and the field of vision is very wide. Got a little bit excited with them, and ripped off a 8:20 400m. Was pretty quick in general, though, sub-33 minute 1500m pace. Even with a brief encounter with slow people, as well as having to take my swimming cap off halfway through (and then swim with it for a length and a half).

Then I ate a chicken breast the size of my head.

I'm a happy bunny.

New year, new season

2010? Tsk. 3 days until I have to go back to work, more like. Still, as the Roman numeral ticks over to MMX, my thoughts concentrate on the new season ahead. If I allow myself to consider the training already done as bonus work in the bank, then this is when the real training starts. Shame, then, that there's still snow on the ground and that I've got a *deleted* puncture! (Mainly annoying as I've had every chance to order new patches/spare inner tube, and I haven't. Having nobody to blame except myself hurts.)

Hm. Looks like paragraph breaks are the first casualties of wine.

So it's not the most ideal circumstances in which to kick a training programme into gear. No excuses though, Driffield Triathlon is a mere 19 weeks away. Subtracting 5 weeks for recovery time, we've about 14 weeks to become race fit. Even if it's only over 400m/20km/5km. If we can rack up 80 hours of decent training in that time, we should be OK. If not...well, I won't allow that to happen.

Personally, I kicked off 2010 with my first ever run interval session - 3 x 5:00 in HR zone 3, interspersed in 45 mins of zone 2. T'was a nice waker-upper, looks like I was pacing about 27 mins for 5K. Not that that's the point of HR training, but it's nice to know.

Really, really can't wait to get a long (2 hours+) bike ride in. Might require a slight uplift in temperature first mind, lest my toes actually fall off, like they threatened on Monday -_-. According to the BBC website, this won't be anytime soon. A really good way of ticking off a good part of my training hours though. With the possibility of cake too, which helps.

Cake always helps.