report on swim club sessions #15,16 and 17!

Three for the price of one today – sorry about the very long gap but other things seem to have interfered with both swimming and blogging about it. The swimming quality definitely deteriorated over the last few weeks – hope the blogging is up to standard!

Session 15 was just me after 2 weeks with no swimming. I just about struggled through 36 lengths, and the two lengths of front crawl I threw in just about finished me off. It’s scary how quickly you lose fitness for different sports. 

Session 16 was me, Orlando and Danny; I managed 40 lengths this time, including four lengths of front crawl! I was still not in the zone at all. I think Danny did about the same, plus some treading water, and he spent half the bptt bbq that afternoon asleep! Orlando started off well but then got a cramp in his leg and had to be heroically rescued by Danny as the lifeguard couldn’t really be bothered.

Session 17 went much better. David and Sharon were back from their holiday and joined me and Danny. David swam like a man on a mission, but then is he apparantly half man half machine. Sharon thought she would only manage 20 lengths, but did at least 30, if not 36. I was trying to do some research into whether I can possibly beat Danny in the aquathlon at Club La Sexy. However as he refused to race me over 200 metres I am still not sure. I don’t think it’s very likely but I will have fun trying! Anyway he stayed in the pool after the rest of us for some secret extra training.

I did 52 lengths and they felt easier than last week’s 40. And included at least 8 lengths of front crawl. Phew.

No tea and cake this week, so still not back to a traditional session of swimclub. Ah well, maybe next week….

Derby Day

Today is my birthday and I celebrated with an outing to the Derby with several friends. Nothing to do with swimming I hear you say, but we missed swimclub for it, and most swimclub members were there, so I feel it has relevance and must be blogged!

After a week of very dodgy weather it somehow managed to get it’s act together today and was absolutely lovely – sunny and hot. A quick blast round bptt this morning as usual followed by some very quick showers and we were off to the station. No dressing up was involved as our tickets were for the cheapest part of the race course – except the bit that’s actually free.

We timed our arrival at the station perfectly and didn’t have to try and make the ticket machine go faster at all! Honest… Anyway we caught the train and I spent the journey unwrapping lots of lovely presents.

We arrived at Epsom to be confronted by 2 huge queues, one for taxis, one for buses. Being the fit and healthy people we are, we decided to walk. This turned out to be a rather massive uphill trek in the boiling sunshine, but we got there, went in and found a lovely picnic spot.

Having bought the cheapo tickets I was expecting there to be hundreds of very tall people between me and the action. However I was pleasantly surprised that in fact we were right on the rail, also with a great view of a very large screen. We scoffed the picnic and started placing our bets for the first of the 7 races. In addition to my usual strategy of choosing jockeys with pink, purple and/or stars on their jumpers, I decided to go for horses with names that sounded like porn stars- of which there were a surprisingly high number!

Rufus and David seemed to do rather well on the betting, the rest of us not so well and proceeded to make our nearest tote ‘Rich Racing’ considerably richer! At least Frankie Dettori won and made us some cash.

In between races we studied the form in The Racing Post (ie checked out jumpers and names), scoffed more picnic, and did lots of people watching. There were some very scary sights to be seen, hot weather always brings out the worst sartorial decisions in the Britsh public!

So when it was all over we briefly considered visiting the ‘chav-carnival’ that Danny had walked through from the station. However as the rides we could see looked extremely vomit-inducing we decided to go home instead

A really enjoyable birthday, thank you to everyone who shared it with me.

Triathlon day!

The day finally arrived, and it dawned very VERY early indeed. I awoke at 5a.m to be greeted by traditional bank holiday weather – wet, windy and cold. I mean really cold. I believe the temperature was hovering around 8-10 degrees this morning. I’m not sure what the weather gods have against runners, boiling sunshine for the London marathon, this today….. anyway, I put on my pirate outfit, ate my porridge and set off across the park on my bike, very grateful to David and Sharon who were bringing the rest of my equipment by car.

At registration I didn’t have to prove who I was, but then quite frankly if anyone gets up at that time on a bank holiday and pretends to be someone else, they deserve to do a triathlon really for sheer dedication! I racked my bike and laid out all my items in transition. Actually that’s a lie, I left them all in a big box as it was raining at this point.

Time seemed to zoom by in a flurry of toilet trips and bike-computer confusion (never did get it working) and before I knew it, it was the race briefing. After which the first swimmer was straight in the pool. The starts are staggered by 15 seconds, starting with race number 1. I was number 123 (I think they were trying to teach me to count) so had about half an hour to wait. I hung around in my jumper and shoes for as long as possible before giving them to one of my support team (more on them later).

I was very glad to finally get in the pool, partly because the waiting around at the start is always the worst part of a race, and partly because it was soooo warm in there! I set off at a less than blistering pace and half way up the first length realised I needed to start my watch….

A few lengths in I felt the inevitable tap on my toes and so duly stopped at the end of the length to be passed. The man who tapped passed me, but then proceeded to swim about an inch in front of my nose, and I realised I was actually slowing down to accomodate him. So I tapped back, but at the end of the length he didn’t stop for me! So I kind of swam under him, got in front again, and the extra adrenalin produced by this little escapade helped me overtake 2 or 3 others as well.

At the end of the swim I felt fine, and not too cold (very glad I decided to wear a swim hat). I ran to my bike put on socks, shoes, helmet and 2 tops and got on with the cycling.

I knew this was going to be my least favourite part of the event. Firstly, I am rubbish at cycling! I am sooooo slow no matter how hard I try. Secondly it’s long, lonely and boring compared to the rest of the event.  Nevertheless I got on with it as best I could. The real route turned out to be far more pleasant than mine and David’s alternative one, and it was nice seeing Suze and David zooming back the other way. However I found it quite demoralising to be constantly overtaken by people so much better than me, I kind of felt like I was in the wrong race for this section. Also it was very windy, that annoying kind that is always in your face. My hands and feet especially got really cold but the rest of me was fine. I didn’t regret the 2 tops though.

Eventually I got back and enjoyed the 7 minute time out. Then it was back into transition where I got momentarily confused about where to go, but soon set off running. As I started I discovered an interesting phenomena – it is possible to run despite having no feeling in your feet whatsoever! They were so cold and numb from the bike ride it took a whole km to warm them up.

Obviously the run was the ‘easy’ bit for me and I felt I kept up a reasonable pace, except for the third km where I was confronted with another strong headwind. I even manged a bit of a sprint finish, despite being beaten to the line by Peter, a bptter who started about a hundred places behind me!

There I was met by my fabulous support team, plus David and Suze who had finished ages ago, and we went back to the pool for the loveliest hot shower I have ever experienced, tea, sausage baguettes and flapjacks.

Through the power of Mctinternet, I can tell you I wasn’t last! My overall time was 1.41.28 and I was 217th out of 233 finishers. In the swim I was 212th (14.37) and in the run I was 131st (26.30). Only 3 people biked slower than me – I am very grateful to those 3 people! My bike time was 1.00.21. Those splits include transition times too, these are not timed seperately.

Did I enjoy it – yes! I feel like I achieved something and would do it again. I quite liked being an honorary pirate for the day too! However I think I could get more excited about aquathlon – like a triathlon but without all that silly cold cycling! Watch this space……

Two huge thank yous – firstly to my awesome support team, I am truly overwhelmed that so many of you lovely people were willing to get up at a ridiculous time and then hang around in the cold and wet for hours, cheering, yelling, taking photos, looking after my stuff and generally being massively supportive. Massive thank yous go to Sharon, Danny, Mike, Nicola, Stuart, Keiran, Wayne and Jo; thank you and well done to my team mates David and Suze.

My second thank you goes to the Thames Turbo Triathlon club – the event was fantastically well organised and every single marshall, who must have been absolutely freezing, not only did their bit to keep me safe and on track but was unfailingly supportive and cheerful. I hope they realise how much the competitors appreciate this.

Can I go back to bed now?

Report on swimclub session #14?

I think it’s session 14, last week I was running the Green Belt Relay  www.greenbeltrelay.org and I don’t think anyone went to swimclub. I could be wrong….

Anyway, today there was only Danny and I and we were both suffering from a case of CBA, eventually we managed to drag our lazy butts out of Costa (not that lazy really, we did do bptt first) and down to the pool.

We were glad we did for several reasons. Firstly we didn’t swim last week, and won’t swim next week because it’s my birthday and we’re going to the Epsom Derby, and so did not want to get into  too much of a habit of not going.

Secondly, it’s triathlon day on Monday, and I wanted to get one last practice in. More importantly, Nicola has kindly lent me her very cool pirate kit for the tri and she said it would be a good idea to try it out in the pool first. So I did and I really liked it. Very comfy and didn’t look too silly. Probably cos it’s not a ‘onesie’ as Orlando described trisuits this morning. This one has two parts!

Thirdly it was a strange experience in the pool today! There was something wrong with their technical equipment so the water was 33 degrees instead of the usual 28. It was actually warmer than the baby pool, quite weird to swim in but very good for stopping for a chat after a few lengths!

Fourthly, we felt better for going than we would have done if we’d missed it, same as every exercise session that you don’t particularly feel like doing. A combination of endorphins, adrenalin and smugness.

Not a massive amount of lengths were swum today, about 36 each, no cake (except the ones in Costa) but nevertheless a successful swimclub.

report on swimclub session #13

Wot no session #12 I hear you cry. Well it did happen (alledgedly) but I was not there to record it. I went out with some *whisper* other friends. And my ghost/guest blogger has been too busy training to write anything either. Or maybe without me it just wasn’t worth writing about!

Low key and brief swim club today, Sharon was at work (boo) the rest of us (me, Danny, David and Orlando) did a mere 35ish lengths as Danny and David have a half marathon tomorrow, and Orlando and I are lazy! We did a bit of treading water too, still not quite sure what it is after doing it for 5 minutes!

David timed himself and me over 400 metres again, we have both improved since last time. I did 10.06 so am sticking with my prediction of 10.55 for the triathlon. David lapped me and did some massively quick time – 8.18 or similar.

No cake today – the clubhouse was shut due to the slackness of the maid. So we went out for lunch in one of Teddington’s less bourgeois cafes. Orlando drank a lot of smoothies, we had some baguettes and stuff and I repeat no cake was consumed by anyone. A historical day in the history of swimclub.

Bike Ride

Yesterday David and I arranged to meet up after work and cycle the bike route of the TTT triathlon, all part of our meticulous research for our race in 2 weeks time. Obviously normal people spend Friday evening in the pub getting wasted, but no, we know better apparantly.

We met up in good time at 7pm, there was still plenty of daylight and the rain was a mere drizzle for a nice cooling effect on the bike, it was quite warm at this point. David was wearing his trisuit (and a t shirt to protect his modesty) being a girly I put on a jacket over my bike shorts and stragglist top. David was in charge of map, haribo, phone etc, I had been instructed to bring myself (could just about manage that).

We set off across Bushy Park to the start point, although we didn’t bother to backtrack 10 metres down the road to the official  bike-mount point. While we were debating whether this was necessary or not, a passing man gave me a funny look when I used the words ‘mounting area’. Obviously not a triafferlete.

The first part of the ride went very smoothly. Along the road to Hampton Court, round the roundabout, back again and heading in the direction of Sunbury. Four or five miles in I was thinking it was actually quite a pleasant way to spend Friday evening, David hadn’t dropped me too much, the route was pleasant enough if a bit trafficky (but it was rush hour)……. then we unexpectedly arrived at Sunbury Cross and almost cycled on to the M3.

We decided this couldn’t be right due to the sudden lack of correlation between anything whatsoever on the map and in real life. This map I speak of was printed off the TTT website and stuffed down David’s top. We couldn’t make head nor tail of it, and the rain was getting heavier, so decided to venture into the giant Tescos for a minute where we would be sure to find an A to Z. We couldn’t find one.

When we came out of Tescos (where David’s trisuit had attracted some ‘looks’) we decided to walk back up the road to Sunbury Cross roundabout to see if we had taken the wrong turning. Again nothing seemed to match the map, so we took the opportunity to eat the haribo. Across the road was a handy police station – shut. Not that we were lost I hasten to add, we knew exactly where we were, we just didn’t know where we were supposed to be. The police station did have a handy dry porch (it was REALLY raining by now) which we sheltered under as David had suddenly remembered his mobile phone could do  google maps. We found out we had gone wrong within the first mile or so and missed a left turn, which was not AT ALL clear on the stoopid map.

It was now pouring with rain, a bit dark, quite cold and we had one front light between us. First good decision of the evening – we decided to go home! By the time we got back to Bushy Park (where we bumped into Stuart out running – he could have told us the route if we had seen him earlier!) it had stopped raining and was really light again, but we were cold and wet.

After a shower and meeeting the others for a pizza we decided it hadn’t been so bad after all – at least we now knew which way not to go, and we had done a 10-11 mile training ride in far worse traffic and hopefully worse weather than we will get on the day of the race!

The London Marathon

Last Sunday we headed up to The Embankment to watch The London Marathon. I have been to every single London Marathon, and this was the best weather yet……. for watching. I was extremely glad I ran last year in the cool drizzle and was watching this year in the beautiful sunshine.

We had a fantastic viewing point just before 25 miles with a large crowd of enthusiastic Stragglers. Some so enthusiastic they had been there since before 9 am staking out the spot. Thanks guys! (I had to watch the first 5 minutes on telly before leaving home to listen to the theme tune and get me in the mood!).

I always find the FLM a very emotional experience and this was no exception. After watching the awe inspiring international elite runners and wheelchair athletes we waited to spot our friends and fellow Stragglers, Ranelaghs, bptters, adiRunners etc all the while shouting encouragement and support and handing out chocolate, jelly babies and water.

Several people were clearly suffering badly in the heat including some very talented and well trained runners. Many were well behind their predicted/expected times and hanging in there just to get to the finish. Luckily we didn’t see any serious casualties, although one guy threw up right by us and another, after stopping for a jelly baby, had to be reminded which way to go. Scary stuff.

I have enjoyed watching the FLM a lot more since running it myself (2002 and 2006) and knowing exactly the pain the runners are feeling. However I have also become more and more annoyed by the seemingly huge numbers of people who take part every year clearly with no consideration as to the massive challenge they are taking on, and with no intention of training properly or even attempting to run.

This seems to me to be disrespectful to the event and also to the hundreds of RUNNERS who are desperate to do it every year and can’t get a place. I know a lot of people see FLM mainly as a charity thing, but to my mind it is still very much A RUNNING RACE in which the idea is to finish as fast as you can.

Rant over :o)

After 6 hours or so I had developed a nice tan and a very sore throat so we packed up and set off home for our own runs, followed by the post-marathon party.

report on swimming club session #11

Forgot to write report yesterday in the excitement of going out bowling at the ‘Chavtunda’ in Kingston. We thought we might get thrown out for wearing far too many clothes, but managed to sneak past security. Mixed results at bowling, but Sharon and I were awesome on the dance machine!

Anyway, swimming swimming swimming. Me, Danny, David and Sharon in attendance today. It looks like Danny and I will be winning the good attendance prizes at the end of term. With the triathlon looming David headed straight for the big boys front crawl lane, no messing about, and proceeded to plough up and down for an indeterminate number of lengths (cos he can’t keep count of them).

The rest of us swam in the lane too (not ‘that’ lane though) as the pool was v busy with ankle biters today. The water looked none too clean today either…. Danny did his usual 64 lengths, I did 70 (got cramp in my finger this time), Sharon unfortunately had to get out early as she had a bad headache.

My triathlon prep is slightly different to David’s – as there is zero possibility of me front crawling 400 meteres I have given up on it for now and am working on my breast stroke technique as it’s still a lot faster and more efficient than my front crawl. I will get back to it after the tri though.

Cake today was a lemon one made by Sharon (lovely but slightly lacking in the presentation department!) and some chocolate caramel crunchy things made by Mr M and Mr S. David once again won the ‘most pices of cake in 5 minutes’ award.

report on swimming club session #10

Not a lot to report today – a very low key swim club which involved a lot of lengths and no cake! Orlando, Danny and I were the only attendees today. We swam and we swam and we swam and we even swam in the lane today because the pool was very busy with pesky kids for a change.

Orlando did 36 lengths (a bit more than half a mile), Danny did 64 lengths (a mile) and I did 80 lengths (2k). We were then very tired and went home to prepare ourselves for the arduous task of watching the London Marathon tomorrow.

That’s it for today really, so I’ll just quickly tell you that David and Sharon both ran beepy teety pbs this morning. Hoorah for the (first claim (in their hearts) Stragglers) Rowes.

Report on swimclub session #9….. and The Grand National

Still no teacher at swimclub, she is recovering after being knocked off her bike by a silly car driver who didn’t realise how fast bikes can go……. get better soon Nic! We did however welcome new member Orlando to swimclub today.

We all managed to arrive at the same time today for a change, despite Orlando’s unscheduled detour to the wifi hotspots of Teddington; he only accepts the sunny ones with somewhere to sit down.

Danny got straight down to business and set off on his 64 lengths to match last week’s effort. Sharon did quite a few lengths but made sure not to peak too early as she has a big race tomorrow. Orlando turned out to be not too bad at swimming, and very good at stopping for a chat at the end of each length! David also has a big race tomorrow but he and I needed to put in some serious triathlon training.

After a 10 length warm up we timed ourselves over 16 lengths, the distance of the triathlon swim. Having both predicted 12 minutes, he finished in 10 and a half and I manged 11 and a half, so it was nice to know we’re not quite as rubbish as we thought.

We then decided to practice the foot-tapping thing, just in case a miracle happened and we need to overtake someone. My first couple of practices on Danny nearly caused both of us to drown due to my lack of technique, his extremely ticklish feet and the fact that it made me laugh while my head was underwater. David didn’t have much success either – he practiced with Sharon who promptly invented a new signal to demonstrate your wish to overtake someone – trying to pull their shorts down. However after a few more goes (thank you to our ‘volunteers’) we soon got the hang of it.

So, swimming over we returned to the cluubhouse where we branched out from the traditional cake and had some fishfinger sandwiches. Plus malteser cake. And Easter eggs.

By the time Danny arrived back from his mammoth swim it was time for the annual trip to the bookies to place our bets on The Grand National. Sharon stayed outside waving her animal rights placard, while the rest of us made good use of the idiot-proof betting slips provided specially for  idiots such as ourselves. Orlando still needed help understanding his, although his ‘close your eyes and pick a winner’ strategy proved to be successful….

By the time we’d wandered back via the Sweatshop and the ice cream place it was time for the race. A shambolic start, they really need to take some tips from bptt, but a very exciting race. Well, some people got excited, jumping up and down shouting and screaming at the tv, I obviously remained completely calm throughout the entire proceedings, even when I discovered I had made a 400% return on my bet!

Orlando and I took a wheelbarrow back to the bookies to collect out winnings, and everyone went home.