Trains, Travels

Honestly that’s not the reason I’ve been quiet the past week. I’ve had plenty of time when I could have written something, but not much inclination. Partly because life is simple and repetitive right now – I get plenty of sleep and train quite a bit too.

Finally I made myself stop and take a picture with my new phone. When I got the new phone there was a plan behind it – get a decent camera and then you can take pictures out on your rides. The reality is I’m not big on random stopping when riding. What tends to happen is I think a view would make a good picture, but then I don’t really want to stop. I make deals in my head to stop at the next 5 minute mark. Then when I get there I decide there’s no where good to stop or more likely the good view is long gone! Today’s picture of some sheep was made possible by looping back on my route and timing things so I could stop for a pee at 2 hours and get the photo. Cunning!

I’ve been pretty lucky with the weather though. I mean it’s not hot, but it’s sunny and not so cold. Despite that I routinely go out wearing slightly less than I ought to. I’m reminded of a coffee shop owner on the Gold Coast telling me how everyone there would moan it was cold in the winter, but nobody wears more clothing. Living in shorts becomes habitual! Still I’ve enjoyed the weather and been getting out on the bike plenty.

Even open water swimming has been fine. My fourth time in the lake since I’ve been back, no idea what the temperature is, it’s colder than Oz for sure, but fine. It amuses me to see so many people putting on thermal caps or wearing base layers under their wetsuit. Really, it’s not that cold, if I can cope I’m sure it can’t be. I braved all of 50m without the wetsuit at the end of today’s swim then decided that if I swam the 200m to the buoy it just meant I had to swim another 200m back and it was cold!

I have been very carefully doing hour long runs over the past week. I seem to have worked out most of the calf problems I was having and currently my only concern is a tight ITB and hamstring. My run focus hasn’t been much on pace, but more on keeping up a high cadence and good technique. The result has been no drop off in pace, but some comfortable running. With two more weeks of training prior to the taper I hope to build this up well and maybe even thrown in a little bit of run focus.

It’s four weeks today that Lanza happens. I fly out there in 2 days time and get to practice on the course for the following few weeks. Hopefully that’ll work as well for me as it did in Busselton. I’m keen to get out there and really focus on training for a couple of weeks. Not expecting much in the way of internet connection so updates may be sporadic and brief. Might stop me rambling!

And to avoid that I’ll stop now.

I’ve had a few days to settle in to life back in the UK now. After six months away things haven’t really changed much, except for all the little things that are different. But then a lot of that is just me and what I’m used to now. A few more days and once again not coating yourself in suntan lotion before going for a swim will seem normal. I’ll come back to swimming shortly as it’s one area where some differences will never feel right!

The weather has been pretty nice (though that seems to be about to change). A little bit colder than I’m used to and I have to admit I keep making mistakes with clothing either a bit too much or too little. Once out there I’m riding well though, nothing too long yet, but at a decent pace. Not having had a chance to properly buy food yet I’ve been fuelled by Hot Cross Buns mid-ride. Pleasant, but possibly not the best energy food!

I’ve been exploring some of my favourite short routes in the area. It’s nice to discover some of the roads have been resurfaced. On the other hand for all the repairs there’s a lot more potholes than I remember. I’m no longer certain that Aussie roads are worse than UK roads. Whilst we don’t have much open chip roughness we have massive potholes all over the place. Traffic is definitely higher and so far I have a few close encounters with other road users. I particularly appreciate the business removal truck who needed to get past me so much it was happy to nearly push me off the road today.

What is fun though is how some of the steep sections I remember don’t seem so steep anymore. That sort of difference I like. My hill climbing and particularly my ability to handle short sharp rises improved a lot down under. The local rolling terrain seems a lot less rolling now – I guess after kiwi rollers most other terrain is flat!

I’m sneaking running back into the training. It’s the easiest way to get to and from the pool each morning whilst I’m too lazy to fix up the fixie. It’s not too far, about 3km each way which is ideal right now as it’s too short to do any harm, but gets me running. New trainers too which means all of a sudden I have cushioning again!

Once I enter the pool this is when I really miss Oz. Firstly there’s the cost of swimming I’m paying at least a pound more a session here. If that got me amazing facilities I’d not be complaining. As it is I’m back at my local Victorian pool which I’ve used since I was a child. I forgive it some of its flaws out of sentimentality. There’s the quirk of it’s 27.4m length meaning I do 110m reps rather than 100m. You have to get used to adjusting everything by 10%. It’s temperature a little bit too high sometimes, cold others or like today with a nice strong gradient one end to the other. The poor guttering and lane lines ensuring the water is constantly choppy. I could go on…

However what really makes the pool are the inhabitants. In fairness so far it’s been fine really, not as busy as I feared. Labelling lanes according to speed seems pointless as a few people seems to choose entirely on a whim. They’ve not complained if I swim by though so that’s fine. The oddest experience so far is the old man obsessed by my watch.

Usually I don’t wear a watch in the pool. Shamefully this was for an even tan in Oz! Really yeah, I was that vain! Aside from that I just prefer swimming without one. For some reason I ended up swimming with it on yesterday. Not a big deal.

In the fast lane is a young woman doing slow breast stroke, me and an old guy swimming slow front crawl. Things seem fine and I wonder if it’d be OK for me to get the paddles out. The young woman stops at the end of the length and stands in the middle of the lane. Then the old man comes down and very awkwardly turns taking the time to tell her she should stand to the side or it makes it confusing to turn at the end. Fair enough, I prefer that. I try to give him a look to show mutual appreciation for his concern. Unfortunately it seems I have made an error too.

He says to me “that’s a dangerous weapon to have on your arm”. Apparently he’s quite concerned I could hit someone with my watch. I assure him I won’t (for a start if I did I’d have also hit them with my hand), but no with people going different speeds anything could happen. I think better of suggesting with his wide kick and sweeping arm recovery I’m in more danger from him and get on with swimming. I guess paddles would definitely be out.

At the pool again this morning and he turns up. Upon seeing me he pointedly says hello and comments that I’m still wearing the watch. I agree I am and he rolls his eyes and chuckles to himself as if to say “you’ll see”. I have to admit I’m now wearing the watch simply because I know it bothers him. It’s petty I know, but in my months in Oz I have swum with all manner of pool toys being used by me or others. Not once did I see anyone manage to cause injury to another. Suppose I did manage to hit someone with my watch, I’m thinking that it might hurt, but that I’ve also hit them with my hand and that’ll have hurt them too. I can’t really leave my hands behind when I swim either. So I’m happy to be armed and dangerous in the pool and secretly enjoy worrying this guy.

I’ve spun that into a long story to say I miss the quality and freedom of the pools in Oz. When the lake warms up enough I’ll be there as much as possible. I’ll take a territorial swam over pious swimmers any day!

Looks like rain tomorrow, it may be my first time on the turbo trainer in many months! This may be the first time I’ve looked forward to that too.

A month or two ago I quite optimistically commented that after Ironman Australia I planned to practice the active recovery approach I’ll need later this year. Actually maybe I commented on this to someone in person rather than here, I can’t remember. With Quelle Challenge Roth and Ironman UK in the schedule and only 3 weeks between them there’s going to be a definite need to recover quickly. Anyway, I say optimistically because by the time it came round I had realised that a week where I migrate back to the UK with all my possessions was probably not the best time to try it out. So the end result is a week off.

Despite the lack of training to worry about it’s been a pretty hectic week. On Monday I stayed in Port Macquarie to watch the Hawaii roll down (you never know!) and for the Awards Dinner. It was pretty relaxed really as I put off doing any packing or anything particularly productive. This set me up for an early Tuesday morning rush on the packing. A tighter squeeze to get everything in than on the way out, but somehow it fitted.

The rest of Tuesday was spent driving South to Sydney. It’s not the most exciting drive in the world. The Pacific Highway is fast and clear in this section, but there’s not much to see. I planned a stop off and chose Newcastle as the halfway point. I chose poorly, the place is a bit of a dump! The weather having taken a turn for the worse didn’t help, but there was nothing there at all. OK I was missing the heat and humidity of the Gold Coast already.

I had a single plan for my day in Sydney a trip to my favourite coffee shop. I tried to throw in a bit of proper exercise with a trip to North Sydney Olympic Pool. However I failed by forgetting my goggles and there was no way I was paying out for a new pair just for a short swim. Instead I went and had that coffee and far too big a slice of Cheesecake. My exercise for the day was wandering around the CBD window shopping. Given I don’t spend out on much these days shopping is pretty pointless, but when you can’t train and your in the centre of a big city what can you do? Sure, more coffee shops – I did that too!

That was pretty much it for Oz. After 6 months and many hours of training it was time to go home. It felt a little odd to leave, I’d grown used to living there. Of course the prospect of 24 hours on a plane didn’t help much either. Checking in I learnt that not only can I fit all that I need to get by in 2 bags it all weighs less than 55kg. OK, not revolutionary, but I thought it was cool to think that in that small amount of stuff was everything I need to get by. So far since returning I’ve not actually used anything that wasn’t in those bags.

I arrived back early Friday. It was cold, grey and damp. It still is. I miss the sun. All that aside it was good to be home and to see family again. The rest of the day was spent working. Yep, for once I did some honest work to earn a little money. I’m not sure if anyone who reads this is of the right demographic, but I’ve been putting together a site for Scott Molina, his new training camp – Fitness Over Fifty. Apart from earning some cash it’s been a learning experience. My previous work rarely involved the front end of web pages so it’s taken a while to get back up to speed on CSS. Man it’s a bitch though, when I finally got to testing in IE I learnt it has it’s own way of interpreting CSS.

Today I thought I’d go to the lake and get a swim in. I went to the lake and spent an hour chatting and avoiding getting in the cold water. It was freezing enough on land, forget getting in 12C water! The ride there and back was the first proper exercise since the race. So I guess that brought the week off to an end. I’m pleased to say it didn’t feel too bad at all so I can start back into a routine over the next week. It’s good to know that even with all that travel my recovery is pretty quick these days. I now need to figure out where and when is best to go swimming. I know I’ll be missing Miami Pool, no more 50m lanes to myself for a while.

The break’s over now I’ll build back into training over the next week. I guess I should also update some of the sections of this site. It’s not strictly about training in Oz now after all! Oh and finally my race report is up on Tri247. That includes pictures of the new, very bright Jaggad kit.