Athlinks.com

I've recently joined up with athlinks.com after listening to the guys from IMtalk going on about it all the time. I've added in a couple of races and some information on me as well.

If you've done any races recently, go join up and keep all your results in one place.

I ran into work today too, here's my route mapped out on gmap-pedometer. They have a nice new thing where it automatically follows the roads for a runner or a cyclist so you don't have to click on each corner as you map out your route

Some photos of my damaging experience

I was thinking I could put up some photos of my injuries but then I thought that might just be tempting fate to give me worse ones, so I held back on that. Instead, here are a few photos of the small bits of damage that I did to the bike.

First up, the grip tape



And now the back skewer




And finally, the saddle




Luckily, I seem to have enough grip tape to replace the one that I used as sandpaper.

One last thing. Does anyone know if there is supposed to be a cover or something on this part of the crank?

New bike

Finished building up my new bike on Saturday morning and went out for a spin with Peter and Waggers to test it and see if anything needed tweaking. We decided to go up to Howth and all the way up the hill. Then to turn around and head down to Greg's house for coffee. It was all going well until we turned to head up the hill. I had to stop and fix the gears, I couldn't shift into the large cog on the front. After 5 minutes or so, I figured out it was because the cranks were slipping apart. Got them fixed and then headed off. Had to push it a bit to try and catch Peter who had gone on ahead.

Then disaster struck. I ended up on my head with the bike skidding down the road. Waggers was right behind me and he came off too after running over my back wheel. I was pretty shook up and it took another couple of minutes before I could go on. Made it to the top of the hill with no more problems. On the way down I took it easy for the first section and then decided to push it a bit for the last part. It felt good to be able to cut loose, hopefully I can do it properly next time without falling off!

We headed over to Greg's for coffee and stayed to watch the Ireland rugby match before going back to Antioch. I brought Peter back to his house and helped him to fix up his kitchen. Some more people came over and we watched videos for a bit before I headed out to the van to go to sleep. And to top off the day, I had been clamped! I had one wheel on the double yellow lines because I couldn't go back any further. Gits!!!

It turned out that if I had driven into the spot, instead of reversing in, I would have been fine even though the van would have been in the exact same position!

Runnity run

Went for a run last night to get back into the mood of exercising again. I'd been feeling a bit lethargic recently. Went out with Louise and ran for about 43 minutes.

Then today I found a challenge on slowtwitch.com
It's a challenge to run 200 miles in December. I'm not going to sign up there to do it, but I think I will try it out and keep track of it on here.

A video of me and Junior

Greg got some video footage of myself and Junior going hard at it in Manchester last Saturday night

See it here

Revolutions

No, not the communist type, but the track racing type. I went over to the velodrome in Manchester last weekend to watch Revolutions 21. There was a gang of us that went over, Louise, Junior, Waggers, Sparky and myself. We went with a group from the track in Sundrive and met up with Greg, Pauline, Peter and Carys.

We arrived over on Saturday on the ferry and didn't get a lot of time to chill out in the hotel before we had to go to the velodrome. Got the tickets and in we went. When we got in, there were a load of people warming up on the track before it all started. The most organised chaos I have ever seen! Some people were running pacelines and others were sprinting around and others were just moseying around having a chat and not a crash in sight!

There were 19 or 20 races over the course of the night and an expo type thing in the middle of the track. In there they had set up some bikes on rollers where you could go head to head over 500m. Most of us tried it out and I finished in 22.17 seconds for 15th place overall. Greg came 5th, Waggers 10th and Junior 19th.

After the track we went out to town where a small plastic snake entertained us for a number of hours. Then it was food and back to the hotel to sleep before the long journey home on Sunday.

Overall it was a good weekend, great to see the racers at the track and it was Bradley McGee's last competitive outing, so it was good to see that too.

A run

I jogged into work yesterday morning because I didn't get anything done over the weekend. I only just made it into work. I had a dull throb in my left hip and my left knee was in agony. I could only just hobble around the place but climbing stairs was excruciating. Louise came around and picked me up from work because I couldn't face walking anywhere.

I stretched it a bit this morning and after the sleep as well it was good enough to cycle to work on. It was still a little tender but I could move around. I stretched my legs out a few times during the day and it seemed to have made it feel better. I'll try it out in the pool tomorrow evening and see how it fares to some paddling and lepping around.

Congrats to Greg on graduating yesterday from DCU as well!

Next year

I want to do an Ironman distance race next year but I can't decide what one to do. Switzerland was lovely last year for the half, but I feel like I would like to see somewhere else now.
I have kind of narrowed it down to Challenge Roth, Ironman Switzerland, Ironman UK or Ironman France.

Help me decide, what do you think would be a good race to do as my first full distance Ironman