Enjoy the rest...

What on earth do I write about while I'm not really training...or rather while I'm injured... or actually bored of being injured and bored of the boring training that I've been doing???! Tom's stolen the England topic and is typing his merry little fingers away while I appear to (for once) be lost for words. It's not like this week has been dull or in fact boring but you don't want to hear how many turbo sessions I've endured nor how many times I've ran a very non-environmentally friendly full bath of hot water to do my stretches in. So instead I thought I would feature my other favourite thing (the first being Tom and training!!!) but now that I'm in a period of relaxed training my appetite for the brown stuff (see above pic) has just accelerated and I LOVE IT!! It's the one time when it doesn't matter and my races are too far away to start worrying about but in just over a month the whole regime starts again. From December 1st I will start training again in anger and the whole chips and chocolate thing will go right out of the window being replaced by discipline and hard work.

Don't get me wrong I haven't turned into a lazy lard arse, I've still been averaging at least 2hrs a day, a mix of the pool and... the Turbo!!! and today we went out on our first Winter ride. It was absolutely freezing, but such a beautiful day. Tom and I met with our club and went out for a 100km social ride around the Arkendale area and it was fantastic. I don't get any pain at all when I cycle so I can pretend that I'm not injured. It was lovely to be out riding without worrying about whether I was in the right heart rate zone, pushing it too hard or not pushing it enough and to actually ride for the reason that I enjoy it and to chat for a a few hours getting to really know other Leeds & Bradford Tri Club members. The sun came out, the sky was blue and my little legs were happy to be spinning along. On our return (a puncture and a few wrong turns on route kept us out a little longer than anticipated) we were starving and rewarded ourselves with a bag of chocolate, mmmm, if there's one time to indulge, for me I do it best when I'm not really very focussed and now that Dublin is off my race calendar then my focus doesn't start again until December, so I compliment my relaxed training with relaxed chocolate eating and I'm very good at it. Is there a Chocolate World Championship event anywhere in the world? Maybe I could qualify for that too?

A few more things to add before I finally get to bed at a decent time for a Sunday eve (still got to be up at 5am for a swim session.) Firstly congratulations to our mates Tony, Sean & Ruth who all ran in Amsterdam today. Whenever Tom & I have picked an Autumn marathon, Tony & co have always been running either the week before or the week after so we eagerly follow each others progress and it's fantastic news that Sean pb'd, broke 3.30 (I know all about how hard that demon can be!) and did 3.27. Brilliant. Well done to Tony & Ruth too who both had great races 3.02 for Tony and 1.46 for Ruth (who did the half). It's Dublin for us a week tomorrow and although I won't be running it :( ...did I tell you I was injured!!! I'll be there willing everyone of our mates on through the toughest miles.
Secondly, our good friends Ian and Emma-Kate are off to Oz for a few weeks (lucky things.) EK blew the ladies field apart at the London Tri this year and her prize was entry, flight & accommodation into the Noosa Triathlon in Australia (not bad hey!) so Eekster, I expect you to be giving those girls a taste of the old China Town treatment, have fun out there, and good luck.

So my lovely people I shall sign off and get myself to beddy-kins ready to start the week thrashing out some hard 200's in the pool tomorrow, a turbo in the evening and then pleading with the physio tomorrow late eve to make a magic spell to heal my ankle!

Go, on have some chocolate, you know you want to...

H. x