It sure as hell ain't going "bikingly"!

Well, the view I had as I was pootling along on my bike on Saturday morning was nothing short of glorious. It was a cold, crisp Peak District morning, the grass was flecked with frost and I was flying, metaphorically rather than literally. If my verbal picture isn't quite enough, here's a photo.



Thirty minutes or so in, the numbers a looking good and the brisk breeze has just turned into a tail wind when I here an almighty crunching noise. After pulling over my rear derailleur is completely totalled, the spokes of my bomb proof (but clearly not rear derailleur proof) are pretty much trashed and cabling is strewn across the road. Despite an attempt to set the bike up as a fixed gear and ride home it was pretty clear my ride was over.



All this resulted in a slightly longer ride than I should have done today (having recommissioned the bike I had decommissioned about 5 days earlier. A mix of being slightly pissed off and some more remarkably good weather meant an hours spin turned into just over 3 hours. Ooops!

Plenty of photos to follow as I head to Bangor, Wales for my bro's birthday, assuming it isn't raining 24/7 as the current BBC forecast seems to suggest.

It's all going swimmingly

Today is an easy week. My legs are getting a break before I begin my first proper build of the year but the arms are getting no such luxury. I've found that after 12 straight weeks of swimming 6 times a week totalling about 20k a week in the pool I've made what could, at a stretch, be called a break through. To use a topical comparison, it feels very much like yesterday's announcement that we are out of recession... by 0.1% The improvement is tentative, could be revised at any moment in a downwards direction and, most importantly, there's still a hell of a long way to go, but none-the-less, improvements have been noted. My 100s have hit 1:24, my cruising pace is now somewhere around the 1:45/100 and I can actually hold my form for upwards of 5k.

This "rest" week challenge to try and hit 30k in the pool, something I have never achieved before, it'll take 8 swims of between 3.2k and 5.5k including some damn hard sets. Will I survive? Not sure, only time will tell but to even be thinking about having a go is testament to the improvement I've seen in recent weeks/months and takes me just a small step closer to my goals of being well under 60 minutes at Roth.

Snow fun

Monday is long run day, normally around 90 minutes (the looong stuff will kick off in Feb) and 12-13 miles. I usually explore some of the trails in the hills around my house in Sheffield and usually love every minute of it. The recent snow has provided some of the most interesting running and beatuful views I have ever seen around my home town. Today was different...

Setting out at 8:00am I trudged through the slushy snow around my house knowing things would get decidedly fluffier as I ascended a few hundred meters. I couldn't know how right I was. As I got higher and higher the snow got thicker, the drifts got bigger and the light got flatter. At the highest point of my run I was faced with the horrible combination of drifts up to my waist and light so flat I could not tell what was a couple of centimetres of snow and what was a couple of feet! I was falling over every 20 paces and had a HR of ~160bpm whilst walking.

I seriously considered turning back, something I have never had to do in 8 years of running this road, but soldiered on eventually making it to the turn around and the descent back into Sheffield. This was not before having passed four abandonded off-road vehicles, most buried up to the windows with frost crystals having formed from the wind and ice making them look more like ice sculptures than modes of transport.

As I ran back into Sheffield I was reminded of a scene from the 1980s post-apocalyptic drama "Threads". Set in Sheffield it imagines a world where nuclear war did take place and at one point, as the residents of Sheffield flee to Bakewell to escape the fallout (probably over a route similar to mine today) the effects of a nuclear winter begin to take their toll, it didn't look all that disimilar today with a couple of notable exceptions:

1. Unlike the characters in the film I am now eating porridge typing a blog, something they were unlikely to manage even if they did make it to Bakewell.

2. I, unlike the lead character in "Threads", was not forced to eat a dead sheep to stay alive.

As said, notable exceptions.

Another decade down

Another fairly average New Year's Eve (everyone gets drunk, I get tired and wish I was in bed) means 2010 is here. Having decided to start the resolutions early I had a dry 31st, all part of my goal to stick to the "help or harm" eating philosophy until July 18th 2010, at which point I will consume my body weight in bread, cheese, processed grains and continental strength larger. 4 days down 150 odd to go. Only problem was that I had to drink so much coffee to stay awake I awoke the next morning with a worse headache than anyone else. Bleedin' typical!

I have really enjoyed catching up with many family members over the last few weeks but all those who read the blog have complained about the layout and colour scheme so a new, fresh look for 2010 has been implemented. I'd love to say the minimalistic design represents a fresh new stream-lined view for the "twenty-tens" and the fresh new colours represent the current climate here in the UK... I'd love to say this but the truth is this way it's easier for people to read and blogger chose my colours!

My brother has also ventured into the realm of blogging, check out the links on the right to read all about his climbing exploits from around the world. This year alone he'll be visiting Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France, Wales, Sctoland, Spain and Nepal. Puts my list to shame.