My feet hurt.....

When you're just standing still minding your own business and a lump of dog poo clonks you on the head you know it's just one of those days! Annoyingly today was my second 'just one of those days' in succession :( More of this in a minute...

Fortunately this weekend has come at the end of one of the best weeks of my life so I guess I need to take the rough with the smooth. I'll start with the good stuff...

This Monday was mine and H's 4th anniversary and I decided to seize the moment. Having just been to the Roudhay Park bonfire night fireworks display it seemed like the perfect time to ask her to be my wife... 30 seconds of shocked silence followed by another 60 of high decibel screaming wasn't quite the response I expected... but once everything calmed down she said YES! It's a funny feeling knowing that you're going to spend the rest of your life with someone, if we both live to 100 then I've just made a promise which will last nearly 70 years... that's 25,550 sleeps for those of you who think like that! I've never quite known if I would love someone enough to share the rest of my life with them... until I met H. The last four years have been amazing... the thought of repeating them 17 times over was more than I could resist. We haven't set a date yet but it's looking like a bonfire and fireworks theme sometime next December... watch this space...

Back to the poo...

Following such a great week I was really looking forward to the perfect weekend... Saturday hanging out with our great friends Ben and Lies... shopping for triathlon gear (and UGG boots for H) then on to dinner before watching our mate Jeff in a play at the Bolton Octagon. Then a little lie-in on Sunday before tearing it round a 5 mile cross-country race and spending the rest of the afternoon asleep in front of the telly... what could go wrong??? To cut a long story short (ish)...

I woke up on Saturday with a bad case of Delhi Belly which for the first time in a long time saw me off my food and turning down breakfast. The HPTT went well with 87 competitors but I was slowly going downhill... by lunchtime I was swinging from hot to cold and back within moments and still couldn't face eating! The play was great as was the company but frustratingly all I could think about was curling up in a ball and feeling sorry for myself... by the time we crawled in to bed at about 11.30 I was on my last legs and had pretty much given up any chance of running today. Fortunately (or so I thought) waking up this morning I felt great and as we drove over to Idle I was confident of a good run. Within 500 metres of the steep downhill start I knew I was in trouble, having not worn my trail shoes for nearly a year (schoolboy error) something wasn't right and with every step I could feel increasing pressure on each of my big toe-nails, after about 800 metres it flattened out and I thought I'd be ok but as soon as there was any kind of incline I could feel the skin being 'sanded' from the back of my ankle. I've never DNF'd (did not finish) a race but have to say that had I not been representing my club it would have been a serious consideration. The pain (see today's picture, taken at the start of Ironman Austria 2006) was unbelievable, up there with the most I've felt in a sporting event, and as the miles went on my stride got shorter and I went backwards down the field. Seeing H for the final time (she was on photographic duty due to her injury but hopes to be back for the next round in December) I thought about chucking her my shoes and going barefoot but with only a few hundred metres to go pushed on to cross the line in 41st place out of about 200. Taking my shoes off as quickly as possible I found that both of my toe nails had gone completely black and there was no longer any skin on the back of my right ankle and to make things worse I don't think I scored any points for the team as I finished outside the top 7 LBTers (I think I was 12th)... It was at this point that someone banged their shoes together in order to clean the soles only for a golf-ball sized lump of dog poo to fly off and land on my head!

So you could say it's been a mixed week and with both my toes feeling like they're going to explode I'm not sure that I'll even manage my 5 x 1 hours this week. Still, Mum and Ray are coming up on Thursday (till next Wednesday) and the four of us are going to completely redecorate the whole house, do the garden and fix my car all of which is part of the plan to minimise 'turbulence' in the non-athletic areas of our life in order to focus 100% on the 32 weeks (12 week base, 20 week specific) of Ironman training that are nearly upon us.

Sorry I've not got round to posting our swim videos but it's been 'one of those weeks'... I'm on the case ;) We have uploaded the photo's from today's race to our gallery though... you'll find them HERE.

Take care,

T.