Great week off though, found it harder to get motivated for training mind. Hasn't helped with the abundance of cycle racing on such as Tour of Flanders, Basque Tour & some other obscure races and sportives
Not to mention my favourite classics race today, the Paris - Roubaix, Hell of the North. This is on my sportive list for next year & will be one of my main events. 53 kilometres on cobble stones, either my bike or I will fall to bits.
Paris - Roubaix was a great race with the favourite Fabian Cancellera winning, after a cheeky trip back to his team car making it look like he was in trouble, only to then catch up the packs and breakaway. Was left with Cancellera, Stybar & Vanmarke heading up the race until Stybar was hit in the face by a spectators camera on the penultimate cobbled section.
Cancellera & Vanmarke arrived at the Roubaix velodrome together, which ended in a finish resembling a track cycling sprint.
Prize for the most spectacular crash goes to Offredo who managed to ride straight into a road sign, do a swan dive over it and face plant into the tarmac. Thankfully he was OK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1k76zwuRvU
Training
Calories burnt for the year = 122,132
Training hours this week = 13 hours 13 minutes
Monday
Swim 1 hour 51 minutes
Swam the Ironman distance tonight. A, because i wanted to make up for lost swim time last week & B, because i wanted to see how long it would take me now.
Pretty pleased with the result. Managed to do the whole 2.4 miles in front crawl, furthest i have ever swam front crawl. Plus, took 18 minutes off the last time i swam the 2.4 miles. So, happy to know i should have a good 30 minute cushion on the cut off time for this section. 5k swimathon in 3 weeks so also good bit of training for that.
Tuesday
Bike 1 hour 33 minutes - http://www.mapmyride.com/workout/252393002
Should have been a 45 min bike 30 min run brick session but due to the ongoing calf issue i decided to go for a 75 minute bike ride. For a change it was a gloriously sunny day, although the wind was quite strong. Went early as i had to get back home to take Arleya to the cinema. (Jack the Giant slayer, pretty good film but not enough giant slaying in my opinion)
Totally misjudged the ride and it ended up taking an extra 17 minutes. Went a bit further than intended and because i didn't check the wind situation before leaving i had a head wind for the journey home. Still, nice to finally get to ride in the sunshine.
Wednesday
Swim 56 minutes, went with Arleya. Swam 72 lengths. Had a 50 metre race and i did it in 57 seconds. She wasn't far behind me at 1 minute 7 seconds. Arleya was actually a quicker swimmer than me for ages so another sign I'm getting better.
Walk 55 minutes, thought it would help the calves out rather than cycling.
Thursday
Bike 1 hour 1 minute http://www.mapmyride.com/workout/253575682
Grim all day, snow in the morning, 21 mph winds. Weather forecast said sun in the afternoon so i took a punt and waited just in case they were right. Thankfully they were and i managed to get out for an hour in sunshine.
Still windy and cold, especially on my freshly shaved head. Wasn't half as bad as the majority of my rides this year though.
Friday
Rest day
Saturday
Bike 3 hours 26 minutes - http://www.mapmyride.com/workout/254461246
Hooked up with my friend Jim for this ride. As usual it took me a good 10 minutes riding round estates trying to find his house, not sure why i always struggle with this one??
Was a bit windy, 12mph but route had been planned heading into it so we could have a nice tail wind to bring us home, or so we thought. Only seemed to have head winds for the whole journey so not sure what happened there. Sun was shining though & by the halfway point I'd realised i had too many layers on. Shaved legs & cycle shorts in the not too distant future by the looks.
Discovered a new nutrition item that i like. A squares bar. A chewy rice crispy type thing. Although one large mouthful pulled my false tooth out & i nearly choked on it.
Beat the gel i had which was quite warm by the time i had to force that down, making it taste worse than these things normally do.
This was a lovely scenic route & i will do it again. Nothing really exciting happened although Jim had a bit of a moment. We had to pull up sharp at a junction where he failed to unclip & ended up lying in the road. Was a nice controlled fall though. I didn't laugh, yeah i did. Makes us 1- 1 on the unclipping fall offs.
Picked off 5 more churches. Could have got another 4 or 5 during this trip but needed to get back home for domestic duties that needed doing. http://thecyclingnorfolkchurchspotter.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/norfolk-church-count-106.html?spref=fb
Sunday
Bike 31 minutes - Nothing special. Quick ride up to UEA and back. Wound up in the middle of an Iceni Velo peleton on the way back round the ring road.
Swim 1 hour
86 lengths done in an hour, had the lane all to myself for the whole session.
Run 2 hours
Went down to Whitlingham country park to do the full two hours. Again, this will be my only run of the week. Calf muscle was pretty tight and annoying for the most part. Still, i guess there cant be anything seriously wrong if I'm still able to run for 2 hours.
Lovely run in the sunshine & was a fairly warm afternoon. Warm enough to get the legs out for a change & also not bother with a jacket. The country park was packed, BBQ's smoking away in abundance. Guess it has been the first decent weekend weather wise in 2013.
Will do a lot more calf stretching and foam rollering as i think this has helped more over the past couple of days.
Old Photos
As i haven't put many pics up recently thought I'd add a few olden goldies. With 2013 events starting again in two weeks time there should be an abundance of new ones coming for the rest of the year.
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| My new swimming coach, Flipper. |
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| 16+ stone Andy.This is me finishing the London Marathon in 2006. As I hadn't been able to run on the road due to a bad knee I had done all my training on a cross trainer. My feet were not ready for a 26 mile pounding on the road. Spent a week off work with my blackened feet in ice. Raised over £1200 for Leukaemia Research though. |
The next pics are from my time as a diving instructor in Thailand. Great times & great friends.  |
| Andy, Roz & me |
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| IDC group. We all became Instructors & partied hard to celebrate |
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| Underwater somewhere in Thailand |
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| My work colleagues at Dive Asia. |
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| Wembley Bar, Gibraltar. Late 80's |
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| Skinny Andy in the Army. Think i was 20 in this one. One of the numerous occasions in Lathbury Barracks guard room. |
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| My time a lorry driver. Think this would have been in the late 90's |
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| Aftermath of one of my bike crashes, late 90's. Was gutted, this was one of my best ever bikes. This was at my parents house in Smallburgh. Lovely huge place in the old workhouse grounds, was just too big to maintain when dad got ill. |
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| Climbed Scarfel Pike one Christmas with my brother. Turned into a total white out. We had to bring another group down who had got a bit lost. |
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| Had really started piling the pounds on here. This was in Cuba a few years ago |
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| Mucky Races. Think this was my first event. Was a nightmare. Still drunk from the night before, split my head open on a bridge as well. |
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| Just finished The Great Barrow Challenge in 2012 |
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| Ran my first Half Marathon. Norwich 2012 |
Bit of a warning, I bought a pair of sunglasses from a website which have turned out to be fake (doh). I confirmed this with the official customer care people at Oakley. They are aware of these sites & are in the process of getting them closed down. You will find these type of sites advertised on Facebook. I have also notified FB as well. Whether they will do anything about it, we will see.
http://www.oakleystore-us.com/oakley-sunglasses-half-jackets-light-black-hjlb006-p-3222.html
http://www.oakley-ukstore.net/oakley-sunglasses-half-jackets-light-black-hjlb006-p-389.html
Will just have to keep saving up for a pair of real Oakleys.
Watched this again last night. Certainly gets be buzzing for doing this race. The footage of the 2012 Slateman Triathlon, will be my first tri for this year. Judging by current temperatures its also likely to be my first open water swim.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdqai8RJ3UA
Think thats it for this week
cheers
Andy
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