A late one this evening. I left around 9pm and did the route I was supposed to do last night. 55 minutes and 11.7km later I was back and ready for a warm shower. Boy it's cold in these parts over the last few days. The first proper frost we've had this year anyway.
I managed to keep to an average HR of 153 today which is about 30 below what I would usually have at this pace. Short, quick steps definitely have something going for them!
So the total now is up to 27.5km.
That's right, the December challenge has started. Run 200 miles in December. That's 322km give or take.
Went out for a run with Waggers this evening and it turned out to be a bit longer than I expected. I was looking for a nice 10k to try and ease myself into it, but we ended up doing 16km instead. Spent a while stretching and cooling down after and then ate a lot of food :)
On with the compression tights now and we'll see how tomorrow is.
Heh heh heh.
There was a very very short triathlon in Glenfarne on Saturday. Glenfarne is a small village down the road from Blacklion, and they were having a festival. So some people decided to organise a triathlon for it. It consisted of a a 2km cycle, 200m swim and 2.5km run, in that order.
The cycle started off with all 6 of us (yes only 6) on the start line. I got caught in some traffic, and had to wait for a few hundred metres until one guy tired out. Then I shot past Pauline and caught up closer to Greg. No more fun on the cycle until it was time to get out of the shoes. I saw Greg unshod himself and followed suit, it was a little hairy, I think the forks on my bike are loose!
Then the swim, nice out and back. I passed Greg shortly after the turn and just managed to stay in front of Pauline. On with the shoes and bam! I was away. Nice run course through the forest and up some hills. Then back down them and around to the finish. Finished in a total of 25:43.
Pauline came in second with Greg in third, coincidentally also the order of our entry numbers.
I had training then in the evening, but was a little bit tired and full of food, so it was quite hard.
Went into Enniskillen to watch some of the polo tournament and then back home before heading to Bawnboy to play a tournament match against Templeport. We were beaten by a point in the end. My legs were starting to seize up at the end after being moved from midfield to full back. I'll have to find some ice for the rest of the week and probably give the physio a ring on Monday.
Tuesday turned into a day of running. After going mountain biking on Monday evening and falling onto a sharp rock with the palm of my hand, I decided that running to work would cause less stress on it. So off I headed, with my new Polar foot pod.
I took it nice and easy, 50 minutes for the trip, and the foot pod was pretty accurate, giving the distance as 10.7km. Then after work it was a quick jog to Louise's house. From here, Pauline came over and gave me my bike. Then I cycled to tag rugby in Tymon Park and afterwards back to Louise's.
Overall a pretty good day of workouts. Oh and we wont the tag rugby match too.
Yesterday I went for a short 30 minute run with Louise and Junior. It was Junior's first time out in a long time and it was at a nice slow pace. Managed to keep my HR under 140bpm for the run. A grand wee recovery run.
It's time to take it easy. Ish. I'm not a good one at taking it easy. On Thursday last, I went for an outdoor swim in Malahide with Waggers and with Louise as our lookout in her newly repaired boat.
Friday was drinks out with work and then drive home on Saturday to play a league match. We were beaten by two points by Templeport in a lousy match :(
The B team were beaten today by Cornafean and after that I went on back to Dublin. Just back a short while now and going to head off for a swim shortly. It'll be Gráinne's first proper time in the open water. Luckily Malahide isn't too deep at all.
I had a quiet weekend. On Friday, I drove to Cavan and then on to Knock. I got there in time for lunch :) Didn't do a whole pile, but got out "The Flying Scotsman" on DVD and watched that. It's the film of the Graham Obree story. Really good film, he went through some tough stuff to get to the top! I slept until 1pm on Saturday then, I think the max test hit me!
Went for a short 20 minute run with Louise and then headed to Easkey. We took the wrong road and ended up going to Strandhill instead. We got out Ratatouille and watched that in the van. Good film, quite different to the one the previous night. We tested out the van and picked a good night to do it, there was frost around in the morning when we woke up.
I'm back in Dublin now and getting an earlyish night before the second max test tomorrow. At least that one is in the morning, so I might be able to go and relax in the sauna afterwards.
Oh, I entered the Fingal triathlon over the weekend too. That'll be on the 18th of May. Greg has entered one the week before that in England, have to get the details from him on that one too.
I was at the Shannon Gaels dinner dance on Saturday night and was presented with the Senior Player of the Year award. It was a surprise, and I was so shocked, I couldn't even make an acceptance speech!
It was one of my goals for the year from early on (the other being to win the championship) and it's nice when it comes to fruition like that :)
On Sunday, I went for a ride on my new steed, a Giant OCR with proper tri bars. It was only a short spin, about 27km, but it was cold, and the saddle was a smidgen too high.
That will have to be sorted out soon. Tonight, I am off to the gym, a weights session and then back to the pool tomorrow night.
I went for a run this evening, a nice long run. I decided to test myself a little and ran down to Louise's house. From there, I ran with her for about 30 minutes and then ran home. An hour and a half in total and it felt pretty good. I had no trouble keeping a pace and even managed to surprise myself on the way up the hill on the Swords Road.
I have been busy training recently, I was running on Saturday night, swimming on Monday and had a weights session last night. Tomorrow is back to weights, with a swim session planned for Friday. Then off home to Cavan. I'm going to try and get out on my new bike on Saturday before the Shannon Gaels dinner dance. Then on Sunday, I might go for a paddle on the lake.
That's all assuming that Dad hasn't got loads of work for me to do! :)
Don't forget your cycling shoes when you go to work.
I never realised how difficult it is to cycle in the rain in runners on clippy pedals. And then the tyre that was threatening to burst all week started leaking air. So I had to walk home from the post office on Griffith Avenue. But the reason I was there was that my new cycling gear came in. Good old TRIUK and their sales! I got me a new pair of shorts and a windproof cycling top.
I raced the first of the Punchestown Duathlons today. It turned out to be a nice race, despite the threatenings of the weather. It started to spit before the race started, but once it was on, it stayed dry.
I brought Greg out as well and we met up with Louis, Sean and a mate of Seans. There was quite a bit of faffing around before the race as the registration closed 30 minutes before the race was due to start. Despite this I still managed to make a hames of the start. I was using Louise's watch to time myself as mine is away getting a new battery. When the start came around, I was still messing with it trying to get the stopwatch started!
I managed to beat my way to nearer the front and finished the first run in 12 minutes. Then on to the bike. I was passed out on the first little downhill section out of the race course, but then managed to make up quite a few places on the uphills. At the turn around I was in 11th place. On the way back, I had a tit for tat race with two other guys until we got back to transition. Out of transition, my time was 50 minutes, so I reckon I was on the bike for about 36 minutes.
I passed one of the guys early in the run, but was caught by the other one. I stayed with him until 400m from the finish, when he put on a bit of a spurt and I dropped off. I finally finished in 1:04:22, taking 4 minutes off my time from last year! Yay!
It also meant that I finished in tenth place.
The next one is on February 10th, but I won't be able to make it because I have to go to the Shannon Gaels 30th anniversary dinner dance the night before.
I don't like dirty roads. I'm just back from a short spin with Waggers and my bike is all dirty again! Ah well, it'll distract me later on from the work I have to do :)
This has been a good week. I got two weight sessions in, a run session and now this morning a mini brick session.
I went for a run on Wednesday evening and decided to try out a Fartlek style one. I went on a 10K loop and used street lights, cars, traffic lights and even counting my steps to break up the bits. I made one mistake though. Going down Ballymun Road, I decided to jog to the first traffic lights and run to the second one and so on. It wasn't until I got to about the fourth or fifth one (yes, there are lots of traffic lights on that road) that I realised I was jogging the short ones and running hard for the longer ones. Ah well, it still worked out in the end.
I had DCPL last night so that was my kind of break from the norm, we beat Kamikaze 4-3 and I scored 2 goals, yay me! :)
Today I went for a lap of the airport and out to the far side of Swords and then straight back again. On the way back I thought it might be a nice time to try out going from bike to run. We did one lap of the park and came back. So that was todays easy session, just over an hour in total.
Tomorrow there is the start of the Wheelworx Duathlon Series. A 3.2km run, 12km cycle and 3.2km run to finish it off. I'm looking forward to it. It'll be my first race using Pauline's tri bars. I'm so glad I got them for her :)
I think Andy might have uncovered something that I was trying to hide for a while :)
And now that Una wants to stick magnets (http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~canoe/minibb/index.php?action=vthread&forum=1&topic=2553) on to myself, Greg, Pauline and Waggers, our circuits might not take it.
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