zzzzz.........

Sitting here at 9pm on Sunday night I'm in the nice position of looking back on a great seven days of training, eating and sleeping :)

Last week I committed to achieving two goals (which I have never before managed) over the five weeks (now four) leading up to the national long distance triathlon championships at Rutland Water on the 6th of September.... I'm happy to report that with one week down my dream is still alive :)

My first goal is to get 56 hours sleep per week and having not managed even two of these during the initial 50 weeks to Kona (although I was very close a lot of the time)... as of this morning I'm currently tied with my 'pb'! By last night I was on 49.5 hours, however with our alarm set for 4:15am in order to get down to today's London Triathlon (I'll come to that in a bit) I found myself staring at the clock wishing myself to sleep like a child on Christmas Eve! Fortunately I nodded off around 9:30 and avoided falling at the first hurdle....

talking of the first hurdle... my other goal is to abstain from refined sugar for the entire five week period and with a Sainsbury's organic granary bap wedged in my mouth on Monday morning I nearly managed to blow it in the first 24 hours... fortunately a last minute check of the ingredients saved the day! A bit like Bill Clinton in his student days .... I tried an organic granary bap but didn't 'inhale' and won't be trying one again ;)

If I remember, I'll come back to my reasons behind those two goals during next week's blog entry but with the alarm now due to rudely wake me up in just over seven hours, and therefore see me start the week at least an hour down, I'll move swiftly to today's events...

H and I made our annual trek down to the Excel exhibition centre in London where a load of our friends were competing in what (I think) is the largest triathlon in the world. To cut a long story short everyone did really well and plenty of swim, bike and run pb's were set. Regular readers of this site will know however that it isn't super fast split or finish times which motivate or inspire either of us... what really gets us fired up is seeing people step outside their comfort zone and challenge themselves to achieve something which, even on the start line, they don't believe is entirely possible. Giving our Team Southerns (more details of this will follow in the coming weeks) team mate Andrea KJ a good luck hug prior to her first ever Olympic distance triathlon this lunchtime brought back vivid memories of 'our' first attempt at the same distance. Three years ago at the same venue with neither H or I having ever done a triathlon Helen had become a last minute 'volunteer' for the swim leg of a Leukaemia Research relay team. I remember looking at the swim and thinking it seemed more like 600 lengths of a pool than 60, along with 'rather you than me'! Today, just like H did three years ago, Andrea stepped up to the plate in style and 1.5k of swimming, 40k of riding and 10k of running later she carried 'The Religion' over the finish line to the cheers and whistles of friends and family.... reminding us all exactly why we do it... and once again I can't wait to dive in to the pool at 6am tomorrow ;)

Finally, talking of the pool... I managed 20k this week, and feeling good may well have a crack at my mile in the morning. It'll depend on how hot/busy the pool is and how I feel in the warm up but with my current mark set at 24:19 I'm confident I can get close to holding six minutes per 400m for the 64 lenghts... watch this space ;)

See you next week,

T.