Trains, Travels

Well here I am, in Australia now enjoying warm sunny weather and clear blue skies. It’s a little odd to think this is where I’ll be for the next 9 months or so. Having been stuck on a plane for most of a day there’s not much to blog about.

The movie selection let me see the new Indiana Jones film without having to pay for the privilege. It really wasn’t as bad as I expected, which is to say I expected it to be dreadful. In Bruges was pretty good, quite dark and quite funny, but not worth the hyperbole used to sell it on the poster. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was also a lot better than expected, amusing in places and not just because I have an inexplicable weakness for romantic comedies.

However I’m not going to review movies as a means to generate blog content, back to books. Whilst climbing in the Alps I was recommended a book by Michael the other guy on the course. Actually I was recommended 2 books but this isn’t a review of the one on the secret techniques for picking up women. Instead I looked for a copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho at the airport bookshop.

Michael had recommended the book as life changing. A story of a boy following his dreams above all else. Whilst I’m inclined to be cynical about claims that something might be life changing, the theme seemed relevant to me and the trip was about to take. Also Michael was following his own dreams with similar dedication and to me demonstrated an admirable focus towards this. If this book as claimed had influenced him into this state then it seemed worth some consideration. Having bought it I was a little shocked and discouraged to read a positive review by Madonna on the rear.

So the novel itself is quite short and a quick read. It has characteristics of modern parable both for the good and bad. Characterisation is weak, they’re just tools to move a simplistic narrative forward. The language is quite simple and whilst this might be an artefact of translation I suspect it’s more likely a deliberate method to invoke the feeling of parable. Taken at it’s most literal it reads like pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo and initially I found little positive in it.

As time went on I found that I could enjoy it much more if I considered it metaphorically and instead looked to see the view the author was expressing about following our dreams. I was perhaps helped by the author’s note preceding the story which stated the 4 obstacles to achieving dreams. As events unfolded I tried to see how it referred back to these four. I came to largely dismiss the spiritual aspect of events or their explanations, instead looking for approaches to life.

Essentially the parable suggests the world is set-up to support those who chase their dreams, but to do so you have to be in tune with the world. Here meaning to be able to communicate with the Soul of the World, in fact with the essence of anything. For those of us who prefer an analytical approach over such things I read a parable that following your dreams requires a focus on the details to reach a level of adeptness to survive and advance.

Personally I didn’t find it life changing, in part because I am already following my dreams to an extent. Perhaps it’s a little affirming of the choices I’ve made and even reflects some of the experience I have had. It would be fair to say some of the doubt and fears mentioned as obstacles in your path were relevant. The story itself is a bit too heavy handed and simplistic for my taste and whilst appropriate for a parable it just felt a little artificial. However it was thought provoking though not in the way I think it’s expected to be. Rather than inspiring I looked to see how this fitted to my own views on life and the choices I’m making now. Oh and it’s also short and bloody expensive considering that!

It’ll be back to training and life in Australia from now on. I’m already enjoying things starting my first day with an hours run to the beach and back. Warm weather, sunshine and beautiful views!

Miscellaneous post time, I’m not going to keep up this one a day posting thing much longer. Sure I’ve got the time, but things aren’t really that interesting round here.

I aim to get this post done quickly, I’m knackered thanks to my easy ride turning into a bit of a nightmare. It looked pretty good when I set out, in fact I saw a bit of sun, then it turned out that I was pretty low on energy and then it turned out the weather was going to really turn. Spent 20 minutes hammering out a hard pace trying to get home in heavy rain. Heavy enough it actually stung on my bare arms! Then having got out of the rain, a puncture… At least it had stopped raining, but by the time I’d done the change I was cold, wet and running on empty. No gels in my pockets it was a bit of a slog home. All in all, oops.

Also got in a swim this morning over at the Copthorne hotel. In keeping with the other training sessions I felt like crap, really tight and sore in my right shoulder. But hey, at least I’m being consistent in performance. Times for laps in the lake seemed really poor, but partly that’s down to the wind shifting one of the bouys 50m down the lake. The other part of it is me swimming badly after 3 weeks away from water. Someone nicked my bodyglide too leaving me with nothing to stop neck chaffing, it’s not cheap either!

So now the tangents… Firstly brief book review - Peter Falk’s Just One More Thing. I loved Columbo when I was younger, still enjoy it now though it’s pretty rare to find an episode I haven’t seen, but a Peter Falk biography had limited appeal. Actually the only reason I had any interest in the book was the surprising regularity I’ve seen it being read whilst passing through airports. I know Columbo was popular, but were there really that many people that interested in Peter Falk. I succumbed this time on the route out to Switzerland and finished the book off whilst out there (it’s a very quick read). The brief review - it’s OK. Peter Falk has led an interesting life, he recounts bits of it as short stories. It’s not a biography in detail, it’s just highlights. I’m not entirely convinced they all stand up to outside scrutiny much as they may have been of great interest to Falk. All that said, it is enjoyable and Falk is likeable in his attitude to life. Don’t buy it if you’re interest is Columbo though, there’s not much about it in there.

Actually that’s the only tangent I can think of, which is great I can have a nap before my run and dinner. I did mention writing about mental focus issues at some point, but not today.

Ok, so let’s get it out of the way. Back from the training camp and off to the Tour of Wessex. Day 1 and 2 weather was fine, day 3 pissing it down and strong winds. I didn’t take much convincing that it was too much for a ride and pulled out. People did ride, I’d like to think when they headed off earlier the weather didn’t seem quite so bad, but basically I failed to man up on this one. To make up as best I could I did a 3 hour turbo session at home which was a fair strain after all that cycling.

That was the view from my window at Font Romeu, pretty nice to wake up to. You can just see the track in that picture, I ran round it once, then I ran back to my room. It was getting towards the end of the camp and we’d had a mini aquathon at the start of the day. Result was dead legs so when I got to the track and struggled to hold my easy pace round it I decided to save further embarrassment and leave it to the real runners. Similarly at the pool it was best not to wonder what the real swimmers must be thinking.

So rest of week in France went well and I’ve come away feeling pretty confident about my cycling for sure. Flew home on the Friday for the Tour of Wessex, on the plane happened to sit next to a woman who ran the logistics for an adventure racing team. It was interesting chatting to her about the races they’d done and all my plans for the coming year. Always good to meet people who understand the urge to test your endurance. The team has a website, which is unsurprisingly in French, but still interesting even if your French ability stopped somewhere at GCSE. Hopefully though I’ve picked up another contact to help me in my travels and training!

So the Tour of Wessex was mostly good, I don’t really feel too bad about dropping the last day. The first 2 days went pretty well for me, not that I’d have said this had I been asked in the first 3 hours of day 1. Tired legs and fresh friends made for a few hours of hell as I tried to hang on. Then magically the legs came back and I was flying in the last couple of hours. It was great to be riding so strong and really pushing with one of the other guys. Day 2 I felt good from the start, when we did start that is, having planned to get off early I managed to leave my bike shoes at the cottage and a ‘quick’ trip back ensued. It was only fair after putting my friend out like that that when he felt weak on the bike I dragged him round in my draft. I was pretty pleased to be riding strongly again and towards the end it was back to the more aggressive riding of the previous day. I made myself do the turbo on day 3 simply as I’d planned for this 3 day finish to my big training week and I was going to have it one way or another. 3 hours on a turbo isn’t quite the same as a big ride outdoors, but in the circumstances it’ll do. Unsurprisingly my legs are feeling pretty wiped out now…

Book review time! Actually, possibly 2 book reviews. Firstly, before going away I read Flow in Sports as a first step in addressing the mental side of racing. It’s an easy read and I would say fairly useful in terms of provoking thought, but it doesn’t give answers. Essentially the concept of flow cannot be taught - examples of its benefits can be given and of how individuals have achieved or used it, but it’s a personal thing. At the least the book has made me consider the importance of focus and visualisation for me. I have more in the field to follow up with and will see if it leads to anything more concrete. Second book review - Running with the Buffaloes which follows a cross country team. It’s a pretty inspiring read I find, though like many sports books it’s not something to read if quality of writing is a key concern. It’s not going to appeal massively to those outside of athletics, but it’s an insight into the level of commitment at the top end of sports (for similar reading Gold in the Water is worth picking up).

I’m back to a couple of weeks of work before another training camp, I’ve got a race in the middle of all this which I’m starting to look forward to now. I’m replacing some of the nervousness early in the season with a bit of confidence which is good. The urgent tasks on my agenda this week are recovering, getting a bike service sorted out and planning a trip to the dentist. After boasting about 9 years without dental treatment a tooth has decided to start falling apart. Guess that’ll teach me. All in all though things go well and I’m excited to see if I can build a little bit more on the fitness I’ve achieved so far.

Warm weather has arrived and with it the benefits of training in the sun. Also the downside as I become human fly paper, every insect seems to aim for my face. I suppose I can’t really complain I’ve spent so long asking for this weather.

Training has gone well this last week, I did a weekend of lots of cycling, over 400km in total. I felt pretty strong throughout it too, power did fall off after the first day as fatigue took some toll, but still I could hold a solid effort. I’ve followed that big biking weekend with a bit of a focus on running this week, up to around 50k run over the last 3 days and the weeks not over. Whilst the volume is fairly high, the pace has been pretty easy my aim has been to keep the overall daily effort down for a few days before this weekend. More biking this weekend and then a few more days hard work before I’ll take it easy in preparation for Iron CAMP in France.

For my third ride of the long weekend I decided to do an old route I’d not used in well over a year. I headed down towards the town of Alton in Hampshire (not the home of the theme park) and then up the hill in Beech Village. I’ve no idea why I’ve not done this ride in so long, it’s actually quite nice, the hills seem to have got a lot smaller though. The advantage of villages having their own websites is I now know that the climb at Beech is actually “one of the highest points in Hampshire” which I guess is almost a claim to fame. My memory of it from a year or two back was as a tough climb after a long ride. Sure it kicks up at the end and needs a bit of work, but not that much, it’s actually a pretty easy climb. 217m above sea level just isn’t very much…

Now I’m converted to tracking my training electronically I’m starting to discover some useful tools I can use. I’m increasingly fond of the WKO+ performance manager which now has the option to save the graph as an image ideal for adding to blog posts! But it’s interesting to see how the training load has increased over time and the signs that I am improving. The concepts of TSS and CTL and ATL that are used by the chart make a lot of sense to me, but then I like to see things reduced down to numbers and data. The real test is going to be seeing how this corresponds with my training and racing - I’ll be interested to see how the taper for Ironman affects the numbers and how I race off all this. Data is great, but in the end if it tells me nothing about my fitness it’s not much use.

Additionally TSS is now utilised for the run too, so I can get a training load for each run I do. Without GPS and altitude it’s not entirely accurate, but it gives me a rough guide as to how that’s going. There’s also some interesting run pacing divisions based on threshold pace and this training load model. I’ve started reading a little into it and a lot relates to Jack Daniel’s VDOT model which I also liked. I’m keen to try to move to integrating a more data driven system to my run training. I do far too little at an easy to steady pace and nothing much above, as I get nearer to my key races I need to pick that up.

I’ve just finished reading Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear which I thoroughly recommend. Before starting it I was a little unsure if I’d enjoy it or not, the author didn’t necessarily have the credentials to cover the field and I am sceptical about journalistic coverage of science. Overall I’m more interested in the science and psychology of risk than the politics, but a very good job is done to integrate the two. I was familiar with a lot of the science from other reading, but it was well covered and explained. There’s lots of examples of our mistakes when it comes to judging risk and this is tied back to the science and the roles of the media and politics. I come away from it perhaps not shocked by the statistics or examples presented, but frustrated to see the ways our fears are abused.

I was particularly interested to read about the Cultural Theory of Risk and how in tests those categorised as Individualists tend to assign less risk to things than other groups. Interested because I would largely fit in that group and I think it would also be fair to say I don’t strongly assign high risks to things. I’ve generally been frustrated by a lot of the fear mongering seen in the media these days, sometimes as it doesn’t make scientific sense to me or sometimes simply because I do not see the point in living in such a state. Ultimately it comes back to my views on personal choice, responsibility and the need to be self-reliant. It’s not that I don’t fear things (sharks!), but I do tend to recognise or realise that most of my fears are bigger than the actual danger. Of course this will be fine until it turns out I’m wrong!

Still waiting on Blogger to check my blog, decide it’s not spam and open it up again so I can import the posts here. Seems I may have to wait a while on that one though, until it happens things will be a bit sparse on here. Next post I promise less science of training.

Back from Spain and training, spending the evening recovering from the weekend and dealing with a few things on my to to do list, including a blog post.

For a change I took a camera with me on my first day’s ride, a 90 minute warm up with a nice climb to the village of Lentegi in it. The pics are from Lentegi before I started the descent back down. Having managed to remember everything this time I could see all this too.

Weekend was good, I essentially did the same rides as the previous Spanish weekend. This time I was putting out a bit more power on each ride, especially on the climbs. Which is all good in the scheme of things. Whilst getting round to sorting out computer set-ups (bothering to install Parallels and Windows XP on my MacBook basically)I’m having to rely on PowerAgent that comes with my Powertap. Its not as good as WKO+ for analysis, but the latest version has some and looking at the trends from my workouts, it’s generally up.

On route I stayed overnight at a hotel next to Gatwick. It very nearly passed all my basic hotel quality tests, until the Channel 5 signal disappeared right as House was about to start. I should also add that 2 other important items on the hotel assessment is the quality of the shower and the comfort of the bed…

The most notable event of the weekend came on the second day’s ride. Things are going well, it’s nice and warm and sunny, I’m riding well and I’m just on a nice sweeping descent. It’s not too technical so I easily pick up speed and soon I’m doing about 70kph. At this point something small and hard bounces off my chest and then hits my knee. It’s not unusual to hit insects of course they don’t usual manage to get a lucky pot-shot and sting you on the second impact. At that point I feel the pain from the venom just above my knee, slow myself enough to have control on the corners whilst I flick out the stinger and then wonder how allergic I am to the sting. I know some members of my family are allergic to bees or wasps, not sure which, but then I’m not sure what stung me. I figure best course of action is to keep going to the next village, if I’m going to have a horrible reaction probably better with people about. Long story short, no reaction, bit painful for a while, lump on leg for next few days. I said it was most notable, not most interesting…

Holiday reading was Sir Ranulph Fiennes autobiography “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know” which I highly recommend. Sure he’s probably not the greatest writer ever (I’d point you more to the likes of Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf for that), but his life is interesting. Eventful, out of the ordinary and with themes of endurance and commitment that appeal to me. That’s as far as I’m going for a book review, I picked up a couple of other books at the airport, one on risk and one on decision making. Generally I spend my time buying books or eating when at airports, there doesn’t seem to be much else to do.

Finally, filed under gratuitous toplessness - my friend, Martin, from Masters swimming spends his time racing dressed as a camel. Not out of a weird fetish, but rather to raise money for charity. They’ve a website for Humphrey and also a flickr account… Having brought the suit along to a Masters session a couple of weeks back I’ve ended up in a few shots. I’d like to emphasises I only do this sort of thing when I think the pictures are tastefully done.

Excuse the random nature of this post, I’ve nothing specific to write about so this should be labelled under tedium.

Third race of the season arrives this weekend, the Cambridge Duathlon. The photo above is from my first time at the race… No I didn’t buy it. It’ll be my third time doing it, though they adjust the course each year to ensure results aren’t comparable it seems. I don’t really know how I’m feeling about it, there’s a bit of pre-race nerves there, but it’s only a C race in the end. I find it hard to get my mind into the first races of the year, really I need to get a good result to give me a psychological boost and feel more positive about all the training so far. You never really know how well what you’ve done is paying off until you race.

A bit of sports psychology is probably going to be next on the reading list as I feel it’s an area that lets me down. I race a fair amount I’d say, comfortably over 10 events of varying size in a year. 2 Ironmans, 4 halfs and a few other races last year for example. It worked well though with a big period of racing leading up to my first Ironman in Austria when the race came I was feeling good off the back of some of my results and comfortable with everything that surrounds a race. Western Australia was a little less ideal, whilst I was still racing quite strongly, my trip became a little too much of a holiday and my preparation wasn’t quite there.

To go back to the initial point though - I do need to work on my ability to focus and maintain effort during long races. Confidence is an issue too, I doubt my ability and plan in the run up to an event and it can take quite a bit of work to overcome this. I’m wary of the field, not enough hard science and fact for my tastes at times, so I’ll cautiously try some of the literature. In the end though if something works I’ll give it a try even if I have to struggle with spiritual/hippy garbage!

In other reading I have quite enjoyed Into the Wild this week, to damn with faint praise it wasn’t bad. It recounts the life of Chris McCandless a young man who abandoned his family, wandered America and pursued a dream of living in the Alaskan wildeness that ultimately killed him. The topic itself is interesting, the writing style is engaging, but at the same time just felt a little bland. There were elements of the theme of heading off into nature, or going off on an adventure I could certainly appreciate. I don’t see myself wandering into the wilderness though and couldn’t conceive of doing so on the back of such little planning.

When I’m in Oz I certainly plan on spending some time in the bush, camping and hiking. But I plan to have all the appropriate equipment and information to support that kind of trip. Reading books relating to mountaineering, adventure racing and survival I definitely empathise with the fast and light approach. Makes sense to me the focus is about preparation, skill and control all things I rate pretty highly. So to me the appeal of hiking, climbing and the outdoors is about going to these places with the right mental and physical preparation and the exact equipment needed. Or maybe I’m just an elitist who doesn’t get why you might do something just for pleasure and not to suffer! Admitedly it’s easy to be elitist when your experience is limited in this area, I may change my mind when faced with it! The Alps, Oz and New Zealand will hopefully provide me plenty of opportunity to test this approach.

I promised rambling and I’m delivering… Training goes pretty well this week, fair bit of all 3 sports though nothing too heavy. Been using the rollers with my bike and seeing some improvements in handling and cadence. More technique work with swimming, dredging the pool doing band work. A good 2.5 hour long run in there too to trash the legs and confirm my trainers need replacing (well it’s been about 1000km). Will be attempting a bit more intensity on the bike this evening, a masters session for intensity on the swim and a race at the weekend to round it off.

New trainers are on the way, 2 pairs to try the alternating approach that supposedly makes them last longer. I suspect running lots on a worn out pair of trainers was a contributory factor to my run injury that plagued the second half of last year. I don’t want to make that mistake again. Plain Saucony ProGrid Omni 6s rather than exciting trainers like the Grid Fastwitch 3. I’ll save the shoe fetish issues for another post…