Christmas au Argentierre

The view from the piste Nordique

Stuggling up hill - not that down hill was much quicker on my arse All work and no play... one of my rare vertical moments

Role on rest week

What's that I here you cry faithful blog reader, "John, your witty insightful opinions and views keep me entertained on these dark, cold, windy nights, but it's been months since I've seen a photo of you! Put me out of my misery...". Fear not, I'll be uploading my X-Country ski photos this evening so those of you with weak stomachs may wish to avoid logging on until that post is relegated to the next page.

Until then another Garmin trace to keep you entertained. I've got a rest week next week (thanks coach!) so thought I'd make it all worth while with a big run today. I'm only in Sheff for a couple more days and won't be back until summer so it seemed only right that I do something hilly. 21 miles and just over 3000ft of ascent later I returned home with 6:56min/mile splits. I was pretty chuffed, when I'd recovered from the hell that is ice bath.

Ignore the first bit on the elevation graph, Garmin was obviously still in France mode.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7341604

How am I supposed to breath with no air?

No, seriously, please tell me how. I laughed when my bro told me running at this alititude might make things a tad more difficult. "I'm a seasoned performer", I thought. "It's a 45 minute run!". 42 minutes actually and the first half was the hardest I've ever done. In 2.7 miles I gained about 1000ft in height and it was bloody tough going.

OK, apperently you need to hit about 8000ft for the oxygen content to be significantly less (thank you Wiki) so the post title isn't totally scientifically accurate, but apperently barometric pressure is reduced thus making it harder to train (Wiki again). 7:06min/miles would normally be an abomination, but in the circumstances I think I'll take it...

P.S. Apologies for the typos, the spell check is in French... bof!

Give-a, give-a, give-a Garmin (other GPS systems are available)

I write this in bed, in a chalet, in Argentiere looking out of the window at 3 feet of snow. Christmas holidays are here! After a really rough week where I've had to miss my first training sessions due to illness it is a fantastic feeling to know I don't have to get up before 8:00am for 16 days. If you'd told me this as a student I would have wanted to know how I had wronged you, as a teacher 8:00am feels like midday.

As the title of this post suggests I am now the proud owner of a Garmin 305. Having used this piece of kit before I was impressed and now that I own one I spent most of last night playing around on motion based uploading and analysing a mass of data (the one run I've completed so far).

The data tells me a few things, mainly that Sheffield is bloody hilly (nearly 3000ft of climing in 15 miles) and that wearing a GPS will also tell people when you visit Sheffield station to relieve yourself (round about mile 4)

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/email/accept.mb?senderPk.pkValue=264649&unitSystemPkValue=2&episodePk.pkValue=7305225

I now need to learn to X-Country ski in order to fulfill the remainder of this weeks training. No doubt more Garmin routes will appear very soon.

Later...

Return of the TT

Saturday saw the welcome return of Rosy (my TT bike) following several months of gathering dust. From the 5 hours and 15 minutes of riding I was able to conclude 2 things:

1. Things are going well in cycling terms.

2. It'll take a few weeks before my crotch doesn't turn to pate after 60 minutes of riding.

Apart from that it's been a tiring week. I try to avoid talking about work here but as we approach the Christmas break the workload is increasing, the sleep is decreasing and the morning HR is going up, up, up! Some sluggish swimming and some lacklustre biking has been the order of the last week and I had to end my long run early as my anterior tibialus was feeling very tight, and repeat of summer is not needed now.

In 2 weeks I get a bit of a break so the next 10 days or so are all about training hard to reap the rewards from a well earned rest.

Happy festive training...

1 year older

Saturday was my 23rd birthday (celebrated with a 19 mile run and 30 minutes of core) and it seemed an appropriate point to think about how far I've come since I turned 22.

I distinctly remember being sat at the Hillingdon triathletes Xmas 2007 shindig discussing my aims for the season and mentioning IMUK. When asked what I hoped to achieve I said I'd be happy if I finished. When pushed to give a time I said 12 hours would be OK 11:30 would be great, sub 11 and I'd be ecstatic. It seems strange to think that 9 months later I was writing how disappointed I was with a time of 10:58.

This year at the same Xmas shindig I won the club duathlon series and also got on the club's honourable mention list for my silver at Nat Champs, if I'd have been able to race in Rimini that would have been another accolade to add. Thinking about this now these seem modest achievements, especially considering my lofty aims for this season, but 1 year ago I would have said a top 10 finish in Milton Keynes was pie in the sky.

It just makes me think that when we apply ourselves, are disciplined and train hard, a year is a huge amount of time if used productively. On my 20th birthday I was a rower who had problems running more than 5 miles, on my 21st it was a good day if I covered more then 1500m in the pool without sinking and on my 22nd I was just hoping to cross the finish line at Sherbourne. What will I be thinking when I turn 24... Only time will tell but if the last few years are anything to go by hopefully it will be reflecting on a successful Kona debut.

Thank you to all of Hillingdon for a great evening, especially Dave Wardle, without whom a hell of a lot of things would never get done!