September 30, 2008 at 2:28 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event, Road
I am such a social cretin before an event and watching the city boys arrive at the coach station in their pin striped suits and titanium s-bar bikes didn’t go anyway towards making me feel at home.
I cheered up a bit on arrival at Blenheim when friendly faces appeared out of the crowd and I was reassured that Emma’s Dave hadn’t abandoned me to do the race on my own. Shame Trinny and Susannah weren’t there though; they would have been able to advise me that the short and dumpy tie style wasn’t going to do much for my physique. They might also have mentioned that a thick woollen jacket wasn’t the best sporting wear for the hottest day of the year.
I had received tie training lessons some months ago, in a pub and even through the Stella haze I could remember some of the specifics of the double Nelson knot. Or maybe it wasn’t a Nelson, that sounds like a wrestling move and that was another night and a completely different sort of pub. Anyway, my tie, it ended up in some form of quadruple knotting affair which may even have been stylish if only I were tall and lanky.
So with the race about to start we’d had to lay out our bikes in the folded position, on numbered markers. I was going in the first wave, with Dave two waves and 4 minutes behind me. With the horn sounded we ran to the Bromptons, unfolded, pushed to the track and then set off.
I can’t believe that I’ve gone to so much trouble, practically having my gps surgically embedded in my wrist, and yet “forgot” to set the flippin thing off for the race. Now you are just going to have to take my word for it when I say it was HILLY. Big, long hills!
I may have mentioned before that I don’t do hills, not uphills anyway, but with Dave a mere 4 minutes behind me I didn’t have a lot of choice and had to keep pushing. When I finished the first 6.5km loop I came really close to throwing up on the corner, I thought it would be a slip hazard though and with Dave still behind me it could be seen as unsporting.
One of the guys in my wave had a video camera on his helmet and captured some of the beauty of the course. I was breathing so hard, sweating gallons and concentrating too much on the waves of nausea that I didn’t notice my surroundings.
It’s a bit noisy so I suggest you turn the volume right down, but before you get bored, pull the slider across to 4 minutes and wait for me to appear like a bat out of hell. He managed to capture almost a full minute of my backside flying down the hill with my coat tails flapping in an aerodynamic fashion.
I crossed the line in front of Dave but the gap could be measured by Brompton lengths rather than minutes but we both looked rather worse for wear.
The results are just in:
Lap 1 15:48
Lap 2 16:57
Total for the 13km 32:45 (Dave’s time was 30:26)
In terms of positions I’m 268/364 overall or 21/44 for the women. So I’m actually in the top 50% for a sport! It beats swimming.
September 23, 2008 at 1:19 pm · Filed under Running
I was so excited by today’s proposition that I forgot completely that I always procrastinate for at least 3 hours before leaving the front door with my running shoes. By 8am I had crammed two mini cheese and cucumber pittas, 1 half bag of American jelly beans (I’d raided the other half the day before), a mini tracker bar, an emergency tenner, an emergency switch card and an oyster travel card into my tiny bum bag/water carrier.
I was gone by 9am, jostling my weeks groceries along the Thames path.
There’s a definite nutritional “issue” going on here. Take me away from my fridge and the cortisol levels start red-lining. Imagine if I was ever unfortunate enough to get a place in the London marathon, with my predicted time of circa 7 hours, I would miss both lunch and afternoon tea, the temptation of a mid run burger and pint would be too strong to resist.
As it was, I reached 4.22 miles before I felt the need to bolster glycogen levels. As a note to self, I think jelly beans are best avoided at public events. They cram about 30 different flavours in each pack and one of them is vile, of course you never know which one. I started patiently popping them in my mouth, savouring each individual nuance and then got bored and shoved 6 in at once. Of course the nasty one snuck through and I started spitting.
I started again, reading the labels this time, pink and beige spots – bubble gum flavour, a bit odd but I can keep it in my mouth. Dark green – liquorice, again not too bad, but possibly an offender in combination. I sensed the need for a scientific experiment, paired flavour combinations, perhaps I should have bought more packs.
I was busily testing watermelon and chocolate pudding flavour when I tripped over a bike wheel. I don’t know whose idea it was to combine bikes and runners on towpaths but you’d think he might have shouted or tinkled on his bell, it was clear I was pre-occupied with jelly beans and my iPod was playing full blast. I wouldn’t have minded if I’d been running at the time but no, I was in the middle of a walk interval. I wanted to shout after him that I wasn’t a greedy ox – I was on runabout!
Anyhow, did I mention the plan? I was to leave the front door, heading in a north-westerly direction towards the capital ring, running 1 mile then walking for 1/2 a mile until I could go no further.
By 6 miles, still feeling in fine fettle, I had left the canal and my workplace behind and was heading into unknown territory. I’d picked up the little capital ring arrows but almost immediately faced my first hurdle as it tried to direct me through a flooded tunnel. What with the excess pitta baggage I hadn’t made room for my wetsuit and decided to divert over the Uxbridge Road.
Back on track again I meandered for ages along the Brent river, ducking under the viaduct and avoiding flying golfballs somewhere in the region of Greenford. It was 10 miles before I reached roads, and houses and general city stuff, Celeste’s fear of getting lost in bush could almost become a reality.
A couple of turns later I was back in the wilderness and starting to get a bit lost. I am a little mentally deficient when I run but it wasn’t all my fault, someone had twisted the arrow around and sent me a mile of course. I almost bailed at this point but fortunately I had taken the precaution of downloading the audio guides of the separate sections and was soon back on the trail, cursing only slightly.
I climbed Horsendon Hill (site of WWII anti-craft guns) past quality Capital Ring walking cows and reached the summit to find the historic site was now home to a group of semi naked coca cola drinking Armenians.
I didn’t take a photo, although I would have loved a sip of coke, I thought naked men cavorting on ancient woodland were best avoided.
Down hill and vale and past other stuff that I can’t remember because I’d turned into one of the shuffling undead.
Suddenly Harrow Hill appeared, a veritable oasis where I could buy bona fide revitalising lucozade and admire this fine flint constructed church, not exactly on the route but almost worth the diversion, after all what’s another mile when you’ve already done 15?
Lost yet again, I found myself in the unusual position of being able to ask a topless, chainsaw weilding log carver if he knew where my style was. He pointed back the way I had come and said it was just after the bridge and river I’d crossed. What bridge? What river? Obviously my mental faculties were on a go slow again, the jelly bean effect was wearing off. Never one to go back when I can plough on regardless, I tipped myself over a barbed wire fence and stumbled back on to the right path, giving myself a nice sore graze on my back.
The walking intervals shortened from here on in, as it became easier to propel myself forward in a quasimodo style lurch than the alternative upright semi-graceful walk.
The audio guide informed me that a tube station lay beckoning like an exotic belly dancer and I staggered happily from the track like a weary desert traveler. I was not quite so happy when I arrived at South Kenton station to find the Bakerloo line was closed for the weekend. Public transport mayhem ensued and as a sweaty, irritable, broken and cantankerous woman, I probably didn’t make the best of seat buddies. It took me 3 hours to get home.
All in all, that Capital ring is a damn fine route for running along, I managed almost a quarter of its length and would be tempted to try for a bit more. It’s a bit of an omission that there wasn’t a single pub enroute, although that probably worked out well as I was convincing myself that I deserved at least a shandy by the 13 mile point.
Summary:
18 miles
5:35:00 (which includes an inordinately long time sat on a toilet seat resting)
I read Dean Karnazes’ new book the other week, “50 50 Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days”.
I’ve already flogged it on ebay so you can be sure that I am not going to recommend this as a good running read. It’s full of trite running tips that you all know already, stuff along the lines of never do anything new on race day.
Yawn.
It’s sold as a “fascinating story” and how can it not be? The guy is pretty much a wonder, he ran back to back marathons and covered off most of the US in less than 2 months. He should be shot for producing such a dull account. Out of the almost 50 race reports not a single one could hold a candle to the daily reports coming from the blogs over there on my sidebar ——>
He kept going on about the “feminisation” of the marathon world which made me picture hoards of men with man boobs jiggling around the course, and then sang the praises of the AMAZING women (who were also mothers) that managed to find the time to run a marathon.
I don’t want to be too mean about the book, there were two positive things that I took away with me, the first was not to be such a baby when I get a cold – you can run with a snotty nose and the other was the concept of Runabout.
Runabout is Dean’s take on the Aboriginal Walkabout. It’s the kind of free running that he is famous for and does so well (see Ultramarathon Man which actually is a fascinating read). He’ll open his door, take the decision to head E, N, S or W and then just keep running until he can go no further, at which point he catches the train home. When he goes on runabout he may run for days before deciding he can go no further but he recommends that a similar toned down tactic might work for those in training for marathons.
So the plan is to head out running in any direction and then keep going until you need to walk, then run again and keep the cycle going til the day has gone and its time to head home. The trick is not necessarily to run the whole time but to just stay on your feet and keep moving, so if you stop to pickup drinks and food, you must eat on the go.
I’m off on Runabout today, heading in a north westerly direction. I’m hoping to pick up the Capital Ring a 75m loop of London – lets see how much I can cover before collapsing.
September 16, 2008 at 3:05 pm · Filed under Event, Swimming
How cold?!
I eased myself gently into the lake until I slipped on a hunk of plankton and ended up bobbing some where near my ears with a foul expression on my face. The lake was freezing and I had the pleasure of sitting in it for the bizarrely named “warm up”. There’s only one way this could be termed a warm up and the thought of 220 swimmers peeing in unison didn’t improve my look of disgust.
Actual temp was 15.1′C or 59 ‘F for those that understand these things.
I started shivering so got out pretty sharpish but then wished myself back in the water as I now had to hang around in front of the film camera feeling naked or at least a black rubberised version of naked which isn’t much better.
I was in the final wave so with no swimmers following up the rear ready to lap me, I faced the decided risk of coming in dead last. Or just dead, which I suppose would be marginally worse.
Not being a terribly confident drowner, I thought it would be best to steer clear of the main body of swimmers, so swam wide and started at the back. Speedracer keeps terrifying me with tales of swimming right over the top of slower obstructions and I couldn’t trust myself not to start fighting in the middle of the lake if anyone tried that technique on me.
As it was I quickly found myself alone, paddling serenely in the middle of this massive lake enjoying the backdrop of mountains and the occasional break through of sun. It was really quite pleasant and if it wasn’t for the inconvenience of being in some kind of race I would have liked to have taken my time.
Not that my swimming was fast in any way. My overly buoyant wetsuit wasn’t playing on this outing and refused point blank to lift my legs to the surface. Thankfully I hadn’t cut the buttocks out to fashion a pair of chaps or I would have had to swim round in the walking position.
By the end of the first half I started to notice a few problems, my chest was tightening up and I developed a cough. My lungs seemed to be filling with fluid and I was struggling to catch my breath, then the wheezing started and I was convinced I’d developed asthma. There were 3 of us together at this point and the swimmer nearest me had developed a productive cough at about the same time. The safety canoeists swooped in like desert vultures and guided us home, with motivational snippets like, “only 35 more lengths of a pool to go”. 35 lengths was probably the max I’d swam in a long time so I wasn’t that convinced I’d achieve it while threatening to have my first ever asthma attack.
I rolled on to my back a few times to float and to try and relax my breathing but in the end it seemed like the best thing was to get the race over and done with so I could panic on dry ground. I thought I was proper last at this point so when I finally reached the end I thought I better put on a bit of a sprint finish. This photo has to be one of the best action shots ever taken of me – thanks Tanya.
The satellite image shows Lake Windermere in all its glory, the next day as Dan and I drove down past its banks we flushed with pride at the thought of having swum across it. I have actually drawn our mile route on the image in it seems far from traversing the lake, we managed only a delicate nibble off a small corner. One of the rescue canoeists was telling me he had swum the full length of the lake – a mere 10 miles and another woman at the Great North Swim had swum it in both directions.
It still feels good though and now my breathing has recovered I can start making plans for next year, it wouldn’t take much training to ensure myself a whopping pb.
Stats for the event:
Time: 1:12:34
Position: 1779/1796 which puts me in the top 99% or if you prefer the bottom 1%. It is almost thrilling to discover that I am quite possibly a better runner than I am a swimmer.
The faster swimmer came home in 0:17:03 which is a bit galling.
I’ve been quiet for a while but I’m still out here, running and swimming a bit.
Swimming is still my biggest concern, I made it to the pool on Sunday thinking I’d sneak in a mile but I got bored and bruised after 1 km and called it quits. I was trapped in an anticlockwise convoy and every time I made a move to overtake the breaststroker in the group she would wait til I approached her shoulder and then dislocate her hip in order to give me a good sharp kick in the tits. I suppose I should prepare myself for much worse in the open water melee.
No more time for prep though, I’m just packing my bag for the long trek up North to the start of the Great North Swim. I’m a little apprehensive but that’s no surprise, I’m always in a state of dread before the big day.
The event report will follow but in the meantime I’m going to share the latest “Here I am” video from NikeWomen. They are publishing a series of animated films highlighting the mental and physical journey of a series of high profile athletes. The one below is of the triple jumper Simona La Mantia, it’s pretty good – moving, strong and it quite makes me wish I could jump above the clouds.
I’m looking forward to the one from sprinter Nicola Sanders which will be released shortly.
Saturday evening, after entertaining my family with a slightly charred roast lamb joint but a perfectly acceptable bottle of vino (or two), I get an email from Nike. Apparently, if I could resurrect the long dead Nike+ Sportband, and push my sorry arse out of the door, complete with Sunday morning hangover, to complete a 10k of my choosing, I would soon be the proud owner of a freebie Nike Humanrace t-shirt.
Hard to resist a freebie t-shirt, so I left my visitors to rustle up their own breakfast and arranged to meet them in Kew Gardens approx 1hrs 20mins later.
Lovely day for running, providing you don’t have a pointy head or too much body jewellery.
I have a particularly round head and enjoy running through electrical storms and downpours but I was surprised to see quite so many other water babies running along the river. I searched for signs of commitment to the global humanrace but saw none, it seems that some folk don’t need freebies to run.
3 months on the sub-bench allowed the Nike+ Sportband to dry out sufficiently for me to read the screen again, but I thought it prudent to spin the screen round to the underside of my wrist to provide a little water protection. Pity I didn’t do the same for the garmin forerunner 405!
A few weeks ago I had a comment on my forerunner 405 review, warning me of short-circuiting type responses when the garmin bezel gets wet. Apparently a few reviewers had commented on the bezel bleeping and flicking through screens randomly when exposed to water or sweat. I was quick to reject that the forerunner 405 had a problem but I should have kept my mouth shut.
Running through this downpour left my watch bleeping like crazy as I tried to stop the timer and move it off the training mode. In the end I had to wait for it to run out of battery life to switch off. Serious design flaw here.
I’ve had the forerunner 405 for a few months now and as it’s pretty much rained non-stop throughout the whole of summer, I find it hard to believe that I didn’t notice the problem earlier. I’m wondering if it could possibly be related to the recent firmware I downloaded – doesn’t really sound like a software issue but I’ve upgraded to the latest update just in case.
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!
