9.8 metres per second per second

I can’t believe it has only been a week (and a couple of days) since the Prudential Ride London. It seems such a long time ago. After the race I had a week off, I had hoped to go for a small run or a ride to get the legs moving again but I ended up with quite severe pain in the outside of my lower calf. Dr. Google said it was in my soleus and it was down to overuse and not properly stretching after the big ride, but then on Friday the pain mysteriously went away.  I think I have actually identified the problem being down to my current obsession with Pokémon. I have been doing a lot of walking at lunchtime in my work shoes to catch those elusive pocket monsters and on Friday I had no pain in my leg, the only difference is that I was wearing trainers for dress down Friday rather than my unforgiving leather shoes. Since then I have been mostly fighting fit again.

On Saturday we went Parkrun tourist, this week was to Queen Elizabeth Country Park in Horndean. It is a beautiful parkrun with a beast of a hill in the middle of it. Every time I run or ride a hill I decide that I need to do more hill work during my training because the Parkrun locals whizzed past me on the incline. The actual reason we were being parkrun tourists was because I had a parachute jump in the afternoon and Parkrun was a good way to break up the two hour journey. While skydiving isn’t exactly running or riding or actually anything to do with getting a medal, I have to add it to my blog because it was awesome.

I am finding it difficult to put the experience into words (which is a shame as I am trying to put it into words for the blog) but I will try my best. The flight up to altitude was fun, I have flown in light aircraft a few times and it was a bit like that except I wasn’t facing forward in the co-pilot seat, instead facing backwards in the cargo area strapped to my tandem instructor. We got to 10,000 feet and levelled out, the side door opened, a light turned green and no one seemed concerned that with a whoosh we were missing a few people. The door was closed again and we began another climb up to 15,000 feet. This was my stop. The side door opened, a light turned green again and my heartrate went up a few beats. I was the last one to go and when I got there a solo jumper was hanging onto the outside of the plane just chilling out in the airstream. I was positioned outside the plane by my instructor and got a good look at what three miles off the ground looked like (if you’re wondering, it’s mostly like google earth except it is a bit windier). The solo man fell off and I was briefly concerned for him but then I fell off too.

It wasn’t scary; it was all too intense to be scary. The ground was just there almost not rushing up towards me, I was just there hanging out in the sky, the wind was getting louder and breathing was a bit of a chore but apart from that I was enjoying the adrenaline soaked, wind buffeted, terrifying views of a lot of ground. My freefall was interrupted by a bit of a racket behind me and then an abrupt jerk as the chute opened; compared to the previous 60 seconds this was now calm and tranquillity despite the fact that I was still hanging 5000 feet above the ground. We swooped and turned, pulling a few G’s each time as we aimed for the landing circle, we touched down with a run (rather than sliding in on our bums) and I felt awesome. One amazing experience. 

Sunday morning was quite pedestrian by comparison. I was up early and took my lime green racing kayak out for a paddle. I’ve owned it now for the best part of 10 months and have only paddled it a handful of times. I had hoped to spend the summer training in it as she is a tippy boat and falling in when it’s cold is no fun but I once again filled this year’s summer weekends with events so haven’t been out in it half as much as I would have wanted. I was able to keep upright while paddling which is an improvement from last time but once again I fell in while trying to get out. At least the weather was warm.  

The weather’s looking good for this coming week and I have an Olympic distance triathlon at the weekend, so I should have something to talk about next week.

Prudential Ride London 100

This weekend saw 27,000 riders take part in the Prudential Ride London 100 miler. I was one of them.

Turning up in London after a short night’s sleep and an early start I was experiencing a bit of that nervous excitement I sometimes get before a big challenge. Driving into London It was easy to see how big this event was going to be. We had to park a short(ish) distance away from the start and along every road hundreds of riders were streaming in one direction, to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Once the bike was ready to go there was a nice little warm up ride to get to the event hub, and after negotiating bikes and riders intent on going every which way I arrived at my start bin. I was about an hour early (because I am always early) and was told by the Man that I wasn’t allowed to go early because... ‘rules’, despite the fact that the loading pen was half empty and other riders were slipping by him left right and centre. I stood around (im)patiently for a bit and then, I did something I wouldn’t normally do. The Man had wandered off to leverage the authority his high-vis jacket afforded him onto someone else who was infringing a rule, and I slipped into the loading pen as stealthily as a Lycra clad ninja. Within 15 minutes I was away with thousands of other riders.

Riding with so many riders on a closed road is awesome and terrifying at the same time. Everywhere there are people on bikes, you pass some, you are passed by others, you hop onto the back of a train of faster riders and draft for a bit, you have conversations with other likeminded folks, and on a closed road it is even more fun as you don’t have to worry about cars. But putting riders of vastly differing abilities in the same space can lead to some near (and not so near) misses. I nearly came a cropper a couple of times when other rides did something I did not expect, and some riders exceed their ability or luck. Unfortunately at about the 60k mark it went terribly wrong for a rider ahead of me. 

I had been stonking along. London is mostly flat, and with the slipstream and pace of the other bikes around me I was averaging over 35kmh and was on target for a sub 7 hour time (even with the Surrey hills taken into account). But the traffic ahead began to slow and then stopped completely. A sea of helmeted heads is pretty much all there was to see. Word rippled down from the front that there had been an accident and the road was closed while air ambulance could get to the stricken rider. We were held stationary for about 45 minutes before we started to shuffle forward in a slightly frustrating stop start way; I was surrounded by Garmin’s beeping as the auto pause turned on and off. As we walked that mile or so of the route it became clear  as to what had probably happened, the road dropped into a steep descent and narrowed, there was then a sharp right hander which was blind until you arrived at it. I can’t know what might have happened had I been riding but I too might have gone in too fast and run out of stopping power, had I not been pushing my bike instead.

Getting back into the saddle after such a long delay was quite hard actually, my legs had become leaden and my bum was starting to feel sore, and the Surrey hills still lay ahead. Leith Hill was the hardest incline of the day in my opinion, Boxhill might get all the glory after it’s Olympic spotlight but the short sharp kick of Leith is a much more demanding test. After the long hold we arrived with all of the riders bunched up. With the weight of traffic and less experienced riders resorting to walking pretty much before the climb had begun it became really congested. Trying to ride was difficult but I stayed clipped in and was able to spin to the top.

The support on the event was excellent. There were hundreds of spectators out along most of the route, whole villages turned out with barbeques and drinks, and once we got back into London the streets were pretty much packed. They all cheered the riders on, picking out something from the riders jersey like a club name and yelling their support. With the charity riders though it sounded a bit more sinister. “Woo. Alzheimer’s. Go get ‘em!” or “Yay Kidney Disease. Not far now!”, “Awesome work Blood Cancer. Keep pushing!”. I wore a retro but obscure Tour De France team strip from a decade ago so I didn’t get any name checks but the people raising money for charity deserve the applause so I don’t mind. 

Finishing on the Mall (Or was it Horse Guards Parade?.. As I write up each blog I am concerned with how much detail I don’t take in) was a bit underwhelming for me. I’m not sure if I had built up the anticipated spectacle too much in my mind, or if I have seen these sights of London a few too many times, or if I was just too tired to care, but despite the fact that I had ridden further than I have ever done in a single day the best I managed was a half-hearted victory punch as I crossed the finish line. There was no savouring the moment, no selfie holding my bike aloft like so many other people, just a slightly pained hobble as I pushed my bike to collect my medal.

The Medal though… I am a bit of a medal connoisseur and I have to say that this one is a bit special. Definitely in my top three favourite medals, it looks great with two different metals, the rear has the map of the course on, and it is huge. 

Brownsea

I didn’t blog last week for a few reasons, one of which was because I didn’t really get up to much. After posting about my last few events, and the potential to do the channel crossing by kayak, it didn’t seem worth it for a single post about a single parkrun (which wasn’t particularly fast either).

Saying that I did visit a physio for my ongoing rotator cuff injury. She identified so many bits of me which are tight, misaligned, or injured. With everything that is apparently wrong with me, I’m surprised that I am able to physically function at all. After a few tests and exploratory prods she pummelled my back and shoulder until bone and sinew had been suitably loosened up. It was quite uncomfortable at the time but did do a lot to improve the injury… And then this weekend happened and I now need to go and see her again.

This weekend was a trip to Brownsea Island organised by a group of watersports coaches who are closely associated with the Scouts. Brownsea (as I’m sure you already know), was where Baden Powel chose to hold the first ever Scout camp, and this trip is an annual pilgrimage by canoe. The diamond channel crossing team saw this as a good training opportunity and were generously allowed to take kayaks rather than canoes this year. Four of us took two double sea kayaks.

As a camping trip we had to take everything we would need for an overnight stop, including our food, tent, clothes, and other must have essentials for surviving a night in the wild (mainly wine, and insect repellent). Which meant the boat was loaded with probably an additional 20 or 30 kilos of equipment, added to an already weighty plastic K2 I would guess we were trying to shift upward of 60 kilos. Over recent months I’ve got used to glass K1 boats weighing less than a quarter of that.



Brownsea by Kayak, Day 1

We set off from a campsite near Wareham putting in onto a tidal section of a river (I think the Frome but like normal, I wasn’t really paying attention). We then paddled down through the tidal mud flats keenly sticking to the channel (I did this trip a few years ago in canoe and got stranded on a sand bar as the tide went out) and then we headed out across a wider expanse of sea to the island. The conditions were beautiful, the weather was with us and there was not much in the way of wind which meant the water was so calm.

On the first day we covered the twelve kilometres in about two hours which was not bad considering the weight of the boats. While under power the weight wasn't much more noticeable as momentum just punched the boat through the water, but getting them going in the first place was really hard, even the loss of one of the paddlers effort made shifting the boat a huge strain and the steering was so vague.

We were ashore and setting up camp by midday but my shoulder was giving me some warning signs, and despite an impromptu deep tissue massage I decided that I shouldn’t go back out for a bit more kayaking as planned. Instead we roved around the island looking for Geocaches and Pokémon. (Yes, I too, like pretty much everyone else in the world, am playing Pokémon Go!).

Brownsea by Kayak, Day 2

Day two we broke camp, loaded the boats again and put to sea. The second day was a much shorter trip back to mainland for the canoes, but as our kayaks were much quicker and we needed to get training mileage in we did a circuit of Brownsea before heading to the get out. Day two was about ten kilometres and another hour and a half of paddling strain on my shoulder.

So here I am, Monday, tired and sunburned, with a shoulder that is worse than it was two weeks ago. I was told by my physio that I had to rest it and I know now that I am going to have to do just that if I am going to be available for the crossing in August.

 

Excuses

I’m not sure if I should start this week by whinging about how bad the weather has been, claiming that I was recovering from the Giants Head Marathon, or admitting to myself that I went into a bit of a lazy slump last week… I’m going to go with… Weather. It has been a rotten week weather wise so I have been forced to stay dry inside, to recover from the marathon and in no way was I being a lazy turnip.

I do have a new thing in my diary which I very much must train for now though. I have one of those friends that has a way of making crazy things happen; almost always involving a kayak. She is half the reason I ended up doing DW a couple of years ago, she involved me with the Abbotsbury Swan Drive a few years back as well, and now I am on a team of four to kayak across the channel for the Diamond DofE challenge.

I have been drafted in as a replacement for someone who has been forced to drop out. All of the preparation seems to have either been done or is in hand and I think I am just going to be the stoker for one of the K2s. If I’m honest I feel like a bit of a fraud, swooping in after the work has been done to simply claim the glory.

Anyway,  I am going to be paddling a K2 and I’m going to have to get used to working as a team so I joined one of their training sessions this weekend. It made me realised that this challenge was going to be a bit greater than turning up and paddling for a few hours. The boats we will be using are very heavy, not particularly fast and I found the seat really uncomfortable. The idea of having to drive one for 8+ hours at sea is losing its appeal. I should be able to sort out the seating position to make it a bit more comfortable, but it is still going to be a hard slog: We were out for two and a half hours on Saturday and only managed 14kms. By comparison, in the racing K1 I would have doubled that distance.

At some point during the session, I’m not sure if it was while paddling or lifting the cumbersome boat, I aggravated a shoulder injury I have been carrying for a little while. It was an annoying niggle last week but I think it’s fair to say it’s a full blown injury now. I might need to seek professional help to get it fixed before the crossing attempt.

The next medal event for me though is the Ride London 100 in not very many weeks time so I also went out for a training ride with a couple of friends on Sunday. In total I covered about 60kms with quite a lot of climbing which was good to throw at the legs, I did struggle a bit but I think I can still blame the marathon a bit for my lack of peak performance.

I don’t usually talk too much about my times and speeds and other metrics on this blog as I think it can get a bit boring but this number is a concern. In total on this weekend’s ride, my average speed was 20.2km/h. The Ride 100 has a cut off time of eight and a half hours, and is 100 miles long. Assuming that my average speed will be similar on the day, I will finish the event in 8 hours. That only leaves thirty minutes for feed station stops, toilet breaks and potentially any mechanical issues. Having completed a few sportives I know that a lot of time can be lost at feed stations. I’m either going to have to ride faster… Or miss some of the feed stations.

The weather looks to be on the turn for the better so I am down one excuse for not doing any training this coming week…

The Giants Head Marathon

I have a big five in my events list this year. These are the events that really stand out for me as the ones I truly look forward to, and this Saturday was the second of them. The Giant’s Head Marathon. I put this event up on a pedestal when I first discovered White Star Running a couple of years ago as the medal was great (it got better for this year), it was winning awards for being the best Marathon (quite rightly it turns out), and I didn’t think I could ever do a marathon. Then last year I accidently did a marathon and though it was time to step up to see what the Sydling and Cerne Valleys had to offer.

The race start was an early Saturday morning, so we headed up the day before and camped. While sleeping in a tent the night before a tough race isn’t everyone’s ideal preparation, I sleep like a log under canvas so I woke fresh and ready to take on the hills in the morning.

My trail marathon kit is pretty much sorted now, fine tuned over the last couple of years running. Trail runners, sock type gaiters to keep the stones out, compression socks which are there to partly to apply compression, mostly to fend off bugs and nettles, and obviously my shorts and t-shirt. On top of that I have my water bladder which has enough pockets for my phone and some gels. A bit of surgical tape is crisscrossed artistically to protect myself from runners-nipple, and some Vaseline is applied liberally to bits of me which protects from the worst of the blisters. I was also taking music with me for the first time because I knew there would be some dark moments on the course.

I have been blessed so far with the weather on event days this year, and again the sun was out with the perfect amount of cloud to knock the temperature down to make running pleasant. We were gathered for the usual pre-race preamble which is always a bit more light-hearted with White Star events, and then before I really knew it, I was off to take part in my second marathon.

I have done a number of endurance events now,including multi-day kayaking and cycling, I’m even starting to consider myself an endurance athlete, and I have learned that the moment I start, I am in a race against the dispirits. These shadowy specters will catch up with me at some point, usually during another stupid hill or when I haven’t seen another competitor for ages, and sure enough at about the half way mark I started to seriously not enjoy myself.

I found myself clock and distance watching, and it didn’t seem to matter how much I tried to run, I didn’t seem to cover any more ground. It was hard, I had been going for about three hours and I knew there was at least another three to go. I had pretty bad blisters on both of my feet (I forgot to Vaseline a couple of bits). At the previous water station I hadn’t put the lid on my bladder properly and didn’t realise until most of my water had soaked my back, and there was another hill... Fortunately I've faced the shall-I-just-quit? demon before and come out the other end... And I also had a secret weapon this time, the dispirits cannot outrun The Phoenix by Fall Out Boy. Before I knew it I was bouncing along again.

There are three things that I will take away from this race.

Giants Head Elevation

Number one. The route always went uphill. I don’t know how that is possible, I'm sure we should have come back down at some point but all I remember is up. The race started, we ran about five hundred metres before facing the first of what was claimed to be nine hills. Most of us were reduced to walking, a couple of runners who had done the route before said that the first one was the worst. I agree with them! It was the first and only hill I remember. I didn’t count any of the others because they all just blended into hill number one.

Number two. The Scheduled Monument that is the Cerne Abbas Giant, while gloriously endowed with a thirty five foot erection, was a little underwhelming from ground level. From the air, after his chalk outline gets a renovation I’m sure it is an impressive sight, but if you’re planning on making a trip to take a selfie from the closest layby I would suggest there are better photo opportunities to be had (with a humongous willy or otherwise).

And the third thing is cramps. I have never suffered from particularly severe muscle cramps before but I was literally twice tripped over by my own leg going into spasm. It came on usually after I tried to start running again, after either stopping at a water station or after walking uphill, a final spasm again nearly tripped me over just as I was crossing the finish line.

Six hours, eight minutes of running what seemed like mostly uphill was rewarded by a warm welcome back at the village, a pint of cider, and a spinning willy medal, and as I sat there back in my tent I had mostly forgotten the grim bits and was contemplating which marathon to do next.

Giants Head Marathon Medal (with spinning member)

Swim the Lake 2016

This week’s post nearly didn’t happen. Why? Well mainly because I didn’t do very much last week at all except for a Parkrun (didn’t get a PB) and a bike ride (60k, wasn’t very fast), both of which happened on Saturday. With tapering for a marathon this coming weekend and the weather being dire, I didn’t really feel like I had much to say… but then Tuesday happened and here I am all keen to share.

Quick note on the Saturday bike ride. This was the first time I have used my new tri-bars and I have to say that I am smitten. When I go into the aero position the speed difference is palpable, and they are really comfortable to lie in. I do think I need to tweak my bike setup to maximise the benefit of the bars, with a shorter stem and maybe take out a couple of spacers to make the aero position even more aero, I don’t intend to change my setup until after the Ride London 100 though as the tri-bars are not allowed for that event and the bike is currently set up nicely for sportives.

Swim the Lake 2016

I think this is the first time I have taken part in an event on a weekday. 7pm after work on a Tuesday night is not like me, I’m usually in bed by then. However I had been goaded into taking part in the enigmatically named “Swim the Lake 2016” race. The mystery lake was actually Ardingly Reservoir and I decided to go for the medium distance of 1.5km.

I haven’t exactly been working on my open water swimming, I think I have been swimming once since my tri. Coupled with the fact that pretty much every other swimmer in my wave was from a triathlon club, I didn’t hold out much hope for a top position. In fact, I was worried that I might have sloshed ashore near last but I actually feel that I represented myself quite well.

After the water warm up we were herded together to plop into the water from a floating pontoon. I had entirely forgotten about my goggles which I had on my head, and after I plopped, they pinged off and floated away. Fortunately my friend recovered them for me but I did spend a few moments contemplating how I would cope swimming 1500m without them. I need to be more careful next time.

At the start I positioned myself near the front at the very end of the swimming line so that I didn’t get caught up in the elbows-n-feet argy-bargy that I knew would happen in the middle of the pack. Right from the word go I went for it with my less than bomb proof front crawl. If I do say so myself I was actually not bad, I had to alternate between my crawl and breast stroke but there was a great deal more front crawl from me than usual. I was even enjoying it.

In the end I’m very pleased with my time. 00:33:35. Much faster than I thought I would be and I know I can do more to bring that time down (mainly by crawling more). Practice is needed.

Swim the Lake 2016 medal

 

Nothing

This is going to be a short post about nothing much at all. (Actually thinking about it, this might be considered an excessively long post if it’s about nothing much at all).

Last weekend during the Worthing 10k I picked up a bit of a niggle in my right quad, nothing too serious it just felt like someone had rather meanly given me a dead leg. I made things a little bit worse because the following day was the last nice weather day and I made the most of it by going for a longish run in the sun. Since then I have been keen to give my leg some rest, and also since then it has been raining. The rain/dead-leg combo has proved to be the perfect excuse for me to mostly play the Playstation.

I did take delivery of a set of clip on aero bars for my bike this week. I have been contemplating them for a while but have hesitated because my bike isn’t a TT bike so they might look a bit out of place, and they are banned for the sportives I enjoy. Talking to a few people over the last few months, and reading bits and pieces online, I persuaded myself to get some as they do offer an alternative riding position and in theory will give me some more speed. I have yet to take the bike out for a spin with them, but soon…

The weekend, usually a bastion of exercise for me was this week spent in Manchester to celebrate a friends 40^th. So for the best part of those two days I was either driving, drinking, or sleeping. By the time I got home on Sunday I was quite jaded and didn’t really want to do anything. I did manage to pluck up enough enthusiasm to sort out my less than byzantine kayak storage system though. Two of my boats have been blocking the side alley for ages so I bungeed them to the fence. To complete this marvel of engineering I have essentially stapled a tarpaulin over the lot to offer protection from the worst of the weather. I don’t think it win any awards for style but it is an improvement on where the boats were previously.