Will's Blog....

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Graham Smedley and his Herbalife gang, who are on board with their new H³O Pro sports drink for our Castle Combe 10k, are holding a webinar this evening. If you can get online from 8pm to 8.40pm and want to know more about the products and opportunities Herbalife offer, click www.bemybestnow.com. 

Well I have been doing a bit of training folks. Just nothing to write about. Can't quite nail this bug and get back to normal so can't give it everything in training yet. Still at least I'm able to something - Jess's Dad has had it for four months now, so I'm fairing pretty well if I shake it off in the next few days.

Decision time on Wednesday about this weekend's Big Weekender Training Camp. If I do make it, I won't be the man I was hoping to be and if you do kick my butt, it doesn't count..... 

Only two weeks to go now until the  with Driven to Tri and the Tri-Monkey.

I signed up at the beginning of December and it's coming round quick now, so I need to get my butt in shape after the Xmas lurgy. Training for a training camp!

Dates are 23rd to 25th January in Tavistock in Devon for a tough weekend, giving it some on the bike and run. If you're interested in coming too you can check out the details here. Be a busy couple of days on the blog!

Did a short easy run today. Well it should have been easy at least. Not firing on all cylinders as yet.

Has anyone else got Call of Duty World at War on the Wii..? Send me an email if you have and we'll link consoles and set up the DB Max 'Free for All' Death Match. I've been running round getting blown away all over the place for the last couple of days, but I reckon I'm playing 14 year old game geeks who do nothing else. Time to set up a private match for 'mates only' so we've got a chance...

Obviously you've got to have done your training for the day before you play....

Blimey, I can't shake this bleedin' lurgy. Seems it like to linger. Sounds like Lee Rankin had it even worse than me though. Wish him a speedy recovery too but at least I'm not losing any ground to him on the bike at the mo'. 

On the plus side, given me plenty of time to get into the Wii I got for Xmas over the last few days. The only exercise I'm getting is Wii Tennis and Wii Bowling....

Happy New Year folks!

No training since Christmas Eve unfortunately. Been proper ill with a couple of days in bed.

Perhaps shouldn't have shown off earlier in December that I was immune to illness and perhaps should have got some more Herbalife supplements when I ran out. Bah, humbug!

Santa, you utter barsteward. I said carbon race bike not man flu. What's going on....?

Merry Christmas folks! 

Unfortunately I'm sick. My sister was ill in bed the whole time we were in Wales and I've come down with it today. Plenty of pills got me through the morning and dinner but dog rough this afternoon.

Intervals on the bike today. Two minute hills with a five minute rest. Five reps.

Found a great spot with some tough inclines on the Angle loop and set off on the first effort. Managed about 730m and went slightly further on the second and third reps. Obviously feeling it by the fourth as only managed 710m and despite my determination to do a PB on the final rep, managed a mere 705m. Fair to say I gave it my all!

Back to Trowbridge for Christmas this afternoon.

Had a one hour bike to do today and set off on an out and back bike ride along the B4320 from Angle. Pretty good road for cycling and I turned round after half an hour near Hundleton. The wind must have been with me on the way back though as I was 4:30 quicker, enjoying great views of the welsh countryside and Pembrokeshire coast. Felt like you were out in the sticks - apart from the oil refinery at Rhoscrowther.

Slightly quicker pace today for a shorter run around the Angle loop.

Rest day yesterday after a big night out on Saturday. The tour took in five of the local nightspots and if I have the pleasure of never visiting at least three of them again, it'll be a result. Maybe I'm getting too old for nights out in Trowbridge (even once a year) or maybe it's just true what people have been telling me for years and the town really is sh*t.

In Wales for a few days now after travelling up yesterday. Did a 40 minute ride on the mountain bike which gave me a chance to look round. Used cleats and bike shoes too which was a first on an MTB and luckily the only place I fell off was soft. 

Had a 6 mile run to do as advised by Mr Hayes, so as the light was fading by the time I was heading off, my mum came out on her bike to help light the way. Decent run with a few good hills.

Last interval session of the year with the Avon Valley Runners this morning. New location in the fields by the River Biss. Ten reps of 300m and a 200m cool down with the coach Alan Hayes.

Out on the road today which made a nice change after the recent turbo sessions.

Thirty minutes at full whack on a loop Xav found in Steeple Ashton. Great little course and a top ride. The Garmin map is below and the route can be viewed at . 

Had a session on the turbo today of 8 min intervals. Set the laptop up in the garage with the i-Magic and warmed up ready to go.

Eight minutes is a fair old time to go hard and aiming for 340 watts for the first rep was a little over zealous. I managed about 325 watts instead and 310 watts for the second rep and was just cooling down when the laptop battery died. Aaaagh!

So not only did I lose all my stats, but I had no evidence to give Xav to show that I'd done the session. Hopefully he wasn't thinking 'that old chestnut' as I made my excuses and I learnt the lesson that the laptop power lead is an essential for my future turbo sessions.

Obviously took a whole lot out of me though as I was pants at run club with no gas at all for the 6 mile run.

Rest day yesterday. Was feeling pretty groggy after an afternoon and evening of superb hospitality round at James Hart's house on Sunday. The man just kept topping my glass up. If he invites me round the day before the Bath Half I'll be suspicious....

Great to see four cyclists in the top ten at Sports Personality of the Year too. Big up to the 2500 watts man!

Back on it today though and back on the i-Magic for the 'Cardiac Laps' session this morning. Keeping the power constant was still a tall order but average power for the course was up 14 watts to 224 watts for a similar average heart rate to last time (151 bpm). Guess that's progress but still about seven minutes slower than Hywel Davies' time - but as I keep being told, training is not racing!

Bit of a problem with the i-Magic as the cadence keeps dropping out and and each time it happens, it messes up the power until it kicks back in again. Can't work out why it's happening so if anyone else has experienced this problem with their i-Magic, I'm all ears.  

Hit the pool for a quick session tonight and was joined by Nigel Evans in the lane. That man can swim. He was banging out 1500m so I tried to stick with him for sets of 4 lengths and recover for 2 lengths in between. Nigel was still putting at least half a length into me every time I swam four, so I didn't last long.

And then it was off to run club. Alan Hayes was back for this week's session, looking very spritely having reached the old 'three score and ten' last week. 

1k reps with a 3 minute rest around Trowbridge Park and not a glue-sniffer in sight. Five reps had us all blowing and just when we thought it was all over, Alan gave us a couple of fast 100m sets to get our leg speed going.

Speed and heart rate graph below. Rest day tomorrow I think.....

No proper session today but I learnt to ride a TT bike fast, about 1m behind a moving car.

All part of a photo-shoot for a bike mag and was pretty good fun. Must have totalled around 16 to 20 shortish, sharp rides so got a bit of a workout too.

I'll post news when the magazine is out - very nice bike too!

Well I felt like giving myself a big pat on the back after today's session. Just for completing it really.

Last night was a Christmas reunion with a group of mates from school. Top night in the bars of Bath that finished up in an Indian Restaurant and saw us out on the tiles until 2.30am. Either the beer or the curry or both left me in all sorts of trouble for the rest of the night and well into Saturday morning though.

Somehow I managed to pull myself together towards the end of the morning and turned up up for the 12.30 run session with James Hart and Chris Atkinson. We were supposed to do a steady off-road run around Southwick Country Park but the previous night's weather meant it was too water-logged, so we changed the session to hill intervals.

Fairly boggy intervals with huge puddles to negotiate and extremely slippery ground, but a great session. Chris was very strong and scaled the 250m intervals quickest, but I was close behind which was pretty pleasing, though somewhat surprising after the events of the previous night. The Lift-Off drink I took an hour before must have performed a minor miracle and the longest hot bath in history was just reward on arriving home with tired legs and completely covered in mud.

Nice heart rate peaks for the session below:

Short sharp sprints on the turbo today. Start as hard as possible and try and hang on for a minute. Best average was 471 watts with a peak of 575. A minute lasts a long time when you're trying to keep the power at almost maximum. Heart rate was peaking at a little over 170bpm.

I'm surrounded by ill people!

Just a swim today as far as training went but blimey, everywhere I go today, people are sick. I need the old Herbalife nutrition to step up and protect me big time.

My girlfriend, mates and sister have all gone down hard this week and odds-on there's something in the post for me. Fingers crossed......

December 10th

On the turbo today for an interval session.

4 reps of 3 minutes with a 4 minute rest. 

Xav's guidelines for effort level were ' go so hard that you can't see afterwards'. Might be why I put the session off until about 8.30pm.

Not sure that I quite needed a white stick as I finished but it was tough. You can see the power versus time for the intervals in the graph below.

Definitely seems harder to hit the power targets on my i-Magic than it did with the PowerTap but we're going to set them both up together on the same bike soon to see how they compare. Xav's already looked at the heart rate scores for tonight's session though and he said the intensity was spot on.

You can now make comments on the blog by clicking here.  I suspect that primarily it will be Mr Rankin with his humorous insults, but the rest of you can feel free to comment, ask questions, or offer advice on any of the regular blog updates.

Congratulations to our run coach Alan Hayes who is out celebrating his 70th birthday today. Didn't stop James Hart, Andy Grist and I doing his run session though.

Twelve reps of 300m with a pretty steep climb at the end and a jog back to the start. Looked like being a struggle after the first three reps, but we all managed to finish the session and Andy was particularly spritely up the hill.

Garmin heart rate belt is back in action so speed and heart rate graph below.

Average speed for the work sets was 16.7kph, peaking at 21.4kph in the final set and average HR for the session was 160bpm, peaking at 185bpm. 

Back on the turbo tomorrow for the first of Xav's interval sessions.......

Set the i-Magic up today for the first session on the turbo. Seems to be working OK despite being thrown in  box for a fair old while. The garage was absolutely freezing, but I soon warmed up having a crack at a course call 'Cardiac Laps' that Hywel Davies sent me some time ago. I won't tell you how much slower than him I was over the 33k....

Some decent hills on the course so I had a crack at keeping the power constant..... and failed miserably.

Put my combined body and bike weight in as 92kg, which is probably being a little kind to my old Trek 1200, and my average power came out as 208 watts and average HR as 157bpm for the 58-minute ride.

If you've got an i-Magic and would like to ride the course, give me a shout and I'll send it over. I think you can put past rides in as competitors too, so you'll be able to go against me.

Blimey, I've only been chatting to top triathlete and multi-sport athlete, Harry Wiltshire. Harry was at the Trybike Chilly Duathlon a couple of weeks ago and is one of the guys behind the team that won the club challenge, Driven to Tri.

Anyway, turns out that Harry and his team are running one of their coaching weekends in January and with my new found enthusiasm for training, I decided to investigate their website.

Apparently it's big. A weekend of serious training and it's a challenge to even finish it. Red rag to a bull that one though. I signed up before I'd even read the rest. I've already set myself the goals of giving Lee Rankin a run for his money on the bike at the first duathlon of 2009 and beating James Hart at the Bath Half Marathon in March.

So from the 23rd to 25th January I'll be in Tavistock in Devon for a tough weekend, giving it some on the bike and run, in preparation for my goals. Two nights accommodation, all the coaching and the evening meals are included and it's only 150 smackeroonies. Get in! Check it out here.

Yeah so more about the cycle coach. Well as most of you know, I took on my first coach earlier this year to help me get  in shape for the Rimin Duathlon. A great introduction from Rich Brady and now that I've started to knuckle down into training once more, I've started to look at coaching again.

Avon Valley Runners have sorted the running coach out, I've got my swimming sessions from Rich who did wonders for my 400m time, so today I met up with my mate Xavier Disley, who's also a bit of a cycling guru.

We started with a chat about goals which went something like:

- So what are your goals Will? 

- Smash Lee Rankin on the bike.

- OK, any kind of time goals or distance goals?

- No, not really. Just want to smash Lee on the bike.

Pretty tough task for Xav but he got straight on it and hooked up a PowerTap to my bike. Training with a power monitor hey. Where's that been hiding...? It's awesome. 

The session involved a steady ride, then a hard 20 minute piece where I had to try and hold 300 Watts, then a hill climb, then an easy ride home with a peak power test on the hill.

Check out the power to speed graph below for the 20 minute piece. First thing you'll notice is I didn't quite manage the 300 Watts average. 286 Watts was a touch low but Xav immediately pointed out that my power is low on the descents. You'll see on the graph that wherever a speed peak (blue) exists, the power line (orange) drops right off. So, first tip is to keep my power up on the hill descents. 

Peak power on the hill test on the way home was 933 Watts. Pretty good with tired legs and I look forward to having another pop at that with fresher legs. Apparently Chris Hoy peaks at 2500 Watts!!!

Plenty tell you about folks, so I'll spread it over a few posts I think.

Another Saturday morning run session with Alan today. Some of the boys took it easy as they're running the Bromham 10k tomorrow, but I was on full beans.

Eight hill reps in rather wet and muddy conditions made for a testing session. Very chuffed to be on good form as picked up the cold that everyone else seems to have suffered with this week, but started on my new nutrition supplements from Herbalife the same day and seems the cold has hardly affected me. 

Speed and gradient graph below.

No rest following the session though. Straight off to Bristol to meet my new cycle coach, Xavier Disley. Turned out to be a cracking day - more about that coming soon.

Second session with the new coach Alan last night and another top workout. 500m intervals this time out in Trowbridge Park.

Unfortunately my heart rate belt has packed up so I can't produce any graphs of that, but the speed graph from the session is below - always give a bit extra for the last one....

Out running for the second day on the trot, with a training run around the Bromham 10k route with James Hart and Andy Grist. Legs are hurting now....

If you're doing the Bromham 10k and want to check out the route profile, go to the Map Player at the link at .

Back training at last today..... and I've got a new run coach! Well at least Avon Valley Runners have got a new running coach and we had our first session with him today.

Alan Hayes was a top, top runner a long time ago and has been coaching for many years now - a quality coach to take things forward in 2009, is exactly what a few of us at the club needed. We've already emailed him our goals and he's going to be on the case to help us achieve them next year...

So, first session was held at the Southwick Country Park and after an extensive warm-up, it was down to business.

2 sets of 6 x 250m hill reps at 10k run pace. 

Stung a bit but a top session. Couple of us are starting to get pretty enthused about what we'll be able to achieve with Alan on board and we've also heard that some of the club's top runners are coming back to training now that we've got a good coach. Standard should be going up..........

Well after timing the Cirencester Duathlon on Sunday and with our Chilly Duathlon at the weekend, training's gone out the window this week.

So not much to write about unfortunately. Did find time to throw a stir-fry together tonight though and that turned into a bit of an ordeal itself. Had a killer chilli in the fridge and feeling pretty brave, I chopped the whole lot up for the pot. Tried to get some of the seeds out and as Jess arrived home, I stopped for a chat...... and rubbed my eye.

Oh my god. How could it hurt that much...? My eyes were watering more than they did after my one and only (ill advised) tequila stuntman episode some years ago. Jess handed me a cloth soaked in cold water, but as I stuck that on my eye it just made it worse. I was in 'proper' pain and I remembered something about chilli and yoghurt. The only thing in the fridge was a tin of custard though, but without a second's hesitation, I grabbed a handful and to Jess's disbelief, shoved it straight in my eye. Surprisingly, the relief was fairly instant.....

With the pain subsiding, the funny side of the incident presented itself and this was further increased as the custard dried solid, setting my eye permanently open. The humour began to fade however, as attempts to wash the custard away, pushed it into my eye and set off a second (milder) round of stinging - the elevated heart rate from the experience possibly produced the only training effect I've experienced this week....

Wet and windy this morning but we hit the road for a long ride nevertheless. First hour was Lee Rankin and I and then we were joined by Matt Brett too. Meant I was a sole rider for much of the next 90 minutes, but managed to just about stay in touch.

Fair few hills over the 81k course, which took us about 3 hours 20 minutes riding time. So not as long or far as last time, but scores on the doors can be viewed here (you can view stats etc. on the dashboard and there's a map player for the route too).

Back in the gym for a James Hart session tonight. This time it was 3k sets with a 250m recovery. We set off at 16kph for the first rep and dropped it to 15.5kph for the second. 16kph again for the third was an absolute killer and I was a spent force by the end of it. James managed a fourth rep at 15.5kph so that's my challenge for next time....  

Lee Rankin phoned tonight too and he wants another five hour bike session on Saturday. Oh joy!

Been a bit slack this week, but burned a few calories with some weights in the garage and a short circuits session plus managed to get to the pool for 800m on Tuesday. Now that my work life revolves mainly around organising and timing events, it's ironic that there's weeks and weekends where I'm so busy doing it, I don't get to train for the events myself. 

Hooked up with James Hart and Andy Grist tonight for James' session on the treadmill. Ten 1k intervals at 16kph with a 200m recovery. Haven't done much running just lately and it was tough. My heart rate agreed, hitting a 196bpm max! 

All three boys finished the session though and it's in the diary as a weekly training meet.

Well I left it until Saturday to get back on the bike, but we didn't do it by halves.

Lee Rankin and I met up for an early start, by our our old mate Phil McConnell's house near Chipping Sodbury. An apt location to kick off the ride, almost three years to the day after Phil passed away.

Lee had set the route and as we set off - boy, was it cold. We must have broke some kind of record for the number of pee-stops in the first 30 miles. As we pressed on and passed the 56 mile mark, I was grateful that I could use my bike for the next 13.

After about 70 miles, I really started to struggle and was lagging some way behind Lee. He mentioned that he'd noticed this as he overtook me free-wheeling on a flat road.

We pressed on to the finish though, completing a cool 77.4 miles in 4:48:29 and according to my Garmin, burned 4320 Kcals in the process. When we finally stopped, we were very grateful for the hot chocolate Di Rankin had sent us and I was fairly chuffed to discover I had a pretty flat front tyre - must have slowed me down when Lee was pulling away.....

The route we took can be viewed below (you can click the icons in the right hand corner for a better view of the route) and apparently we're going for another monster ride in a couple of weeks. I'm still wondering what it must take to finish an Ironman..... 

Well as expected, two weeks wasn't enough and I got third after struggling on the bench dips and preacher curls - having never done an event with these exercises in, they were indeed my nemesis. I'm not sure exactly how long these two stations took me, but it's safe to say it's where I dropped from 1st to 3rd place.

Back on the bike this week!  

Well I've taken up the challenge laid down by my friends at Fitness First in Dubai and have travelled out here to have a crack at their X-Fit challenge this coming Friday. Been doing a bit of weights now (since causing myself all sorts of pain with the first session back on the 12th October) and my strength seems to be coming back quite quickly.

Two weeks isn't enough time to get in shape for an X-Fit event by any stretch of the imagination and if I was racing back in the UK, I'd get my butt well and truly kicked. That may well be the case out here too, as all previous winners of this challenge (1994 to 1998) have been invited back to race. Showtime is Friday afternoon so we'll find out then.

The course is detailed below and with my weight at around 80kg, that gives me 40kg for the squats, lat pull-downs and bench press.

I've never raced an event with squats, dips or preacher curl stations before and they're tough. The dips and preachers look likely to be my nemesis. Just can't get the reps out and they're bleedin' killing me! 

Newspaper out here featured an article on the event today along with a picture of X-Fit legend Darren Robson going head-to-head with me last year in the Best of the Best. I've heard he's not racing this year though... which is a good job as he'd whoop my skinny duathlete ass!

DB Max Tri turned out to race at Thruxton Mass Attack Duathlon today and managed to take the team prize for the second year running.

Lee Rankin flew round the course and won by 2:30, with myself and James Hart finishing 11th and 12th respectively. Results available here.

Good result for me off three weeks of rest, in my final duathlon of 2008.  

Lee, James and Will with some well-earned beers!

Mentioning to James that I'd won our season long head to head battle proved unwise, as his deft ninja strike took my arm clean off.

Can it be done.....?

I did a sport called X-Training or X-Fit up until November last year. I only did two events in 2007 and 2006 but did one in Dubai both years which I won.  As a result they've asked me to go back to compete in a similar type of event on October 24th.

So, can it be done? Can I get half-decent at weights in two weeks and compete in a fast and furious X-Fit event..? I would estimate the answer is no....  

Two weeks off training now. Think I needed it and the Tri-Monkey advised it. Definitely wasn't firing on all cylinders in Italy. 

Did a few weights on Thursday for the first time this year. Couldn't move my arms until this morning. 

September 29th

The results are up online at www.duathlon.it.

Couple of photos from the big day. 

Before the race, stood with Lee Rankin. Lee started the race superbly and was looking good for a medal until his back tyre blew part-way through the bike. Gutted!

And running with Marius Kwint as we went through 2k in 7:20. Wish I could have kept that up!

September 28th

The big day arrived and the race kicked off at 11:30am. The course was pretty long with a 10.7k run followed by a 450m transition, a 42k bike and a 150m transition before a normal 5k run to finish.

Still no results up at www.duathlon.it but my finish time was 2:15:03 and my splits are below.

The final run which is normally a strength for me, went to pot unfortunately and I pretty much went backwards through the field. 

The first run went OK and I went through the 10k mark in 39 minutes. Started the bike feeling strong and picking up lots of places but for some reason my feet and especially my lower shins really hurt. As soon as I got to T2 I knew I was in trouble as my legs cramped up all over the place and I fell on the floor trying to get my trainers on. The run was a painful experience and I had to dig deep to keep going, hobbling along and attempting to run without bending my legs.

So pleased to finish and a learning experience indeed. I'll stick some more information up soon and a link to the results as soon as they're online.

September 21st

Total training for week - 4 hours

Up to the Westbury White Horse early this morning for the last little organised event before the big one next week. Couldn't resist having a go as it was held on Matt Brett's 'Tame the Horse' route. The race bike was already packed for Rimini so the trusty Trek came out fitted with my old Zipp 303's for a fast and furious hill climb.

Smooth, straight-forward organsiation as ever by the Frome & District Wheelers and as first man off I crossed the line in 3:49. Good enough to get me 2nd place, though a long way down on Rob Gough. 

Speed and elevation graph below and the course was 110m climb in 1.10km. Full results here.

September 14th

Total training for week - 9.25 hours

A birthday PB! 

Chippenham Half Marathon went well today. I ran it exactly as instructed by the Tri-Monkey - the first 8 miles at a steady effort, picked it up for the next 4 and then pretty hard to the finish. 1:26:07 on my watch which is a PB by around a minute and a half. 

And I was even seen smiling with 4 miles to go! Loved the route and there was some great support along the course. A good confidence boosting performance with just two weeks to go until Rimini!

Full results available here and you can view all the stats and the map player here.

Now.... when I say I ran exactly as instructed, I did leave one little incident out. I was ticking along nicely at mile 6, thinking 2 miles to go and then it's 'pick the pace up' time. Shortly after this though, nature started to call and by the 8 mile point I was in pretty dire need of a pit stop. My thoughts turned briefly to Paula Radcliffe as I pressed on, but luckily soon after, the countrified route did me a big favour and a little left turn diversion presented me with a big field and a very friendly looking hedge.  My 'time-out' is perfectly illustrated in the speed graph below. This could also explain my smile in the photo at mile 9.....

You know what I'm thinking though. 1:26:07....... 8 seconds....... damn that nature call.

September 13th

Weird experience last night/this morning. Everything was fine following my bike ride yesterday, but last night when I got up after watching the film, my knee hurt when I walked. Tried it out lots of times, getting a little concerned and always on push off with my right foot, I had a sharp pain down the inner side of my right knee.

Couldn't understand it but Jess said it was God punishing me, because I laughed so hard when she asked me if the sniper in the Rambo film was using tranquiliser darts. 

Anyway, went to bed and got up at 7am to let the cat out and the pain was still there. Grabbed my sports injury book and had a read in bed, trying to work out what it could be, but when I got up to test it at 9am, the pain had totally gone. Whatever I did, I couldn't make it hurt.

Left my final run session from the Tri-Monkey (before tomorrow's Chippenham Half Marathon) until the evening -  a short easy run with a few short efforts and my knee was completely fine.

The weirdest thing...................

September 12th

Easy two-hour bike scheduled for today so I hooked up with Matt Brett for a ride. Mentally it wasn't that easy as the heavens totally opened up on us.... and I got a puncture to boot. Character building though and with the two hours clocked up, I enjoyed Friday evening on the sofa with a huge feed and watching Rambo swedge his way through about 50,000 Burmese soldiers.

September 11th

Good run tonight over with the Avon Valley Runners for their 5k Handicap Challenge.

Jones Hill put a sting in the route right from the start and a final flat section along the canal, meant there were no excuses for not giving it some at the finish.

My heart rate hit the mid 190s with a 19:11 finish for the route. Check out the elevation below.

September 6th

Total training for week - 6 hours

Well I didn't get all this week's easy sessions in but two races, a TT, three swims and a few more sessions prescribed by the Tri-Monkey, added up to a pretty full-on week.

Newbury Triathlon today and I was looking forward to it after missing out on the Malmesbury Triathlon a couple of weeks back.

DB Max Tri were just three-strong amongst the 358 competitors that raced, in the shape of Andy Grist, James Hart and myself.

Sterling performances all round saw Andy get the fastest swim from the three of us (19th overall), James get the fastest bike (4th overall) and me get the fastest run (6th overall). Add to that, a third place overall finish for me and a 2nd place finish for DB Max Tri and it turned out to be a pretty successful day.

'Match of the Day Man of the Day' has to go to James Hart though. The bloke couldn't even swim a few months back, yet he finished the 300m less than a minute down and pulled off a 6th place finish overall in his first triathlon. Awesome stuff!

 Full results available here and there's a graph of the elevation on the bike course below.

So it looks like Rich was right about my running and I've not lost as much as I feared during the early weeks of August. Need another session with him to get a few pointers on my swim again and other than that, I'm almost looking forward to a winter of work on the bike already..... 

September 5th

60 today! Not me, my mum. Huge congratulations! 

September 4th 

Final TT of the year tonight. Is summer over already..? Don't really remember is starting. I'm seriously considering emigration.....

Anyway, the Thursday night series with the Frome District Wheelers has been a great addition to the calendar over the so-called summer. One final blast to finish tonight, with 5 miles in windy conditions.  

Managed to shave a couple of seconds off last week's time despite the wind and there's a speed comparison below.

Full results available here.

September 3rd 

Final Castle Combe Duathlon of the season and my 3rd crack at the standard distance event, having missed the June race.

I was also attending in my capacity as the man behind the new DB Max Precision Timing service and doing a demo of our bike timing capability, so after setting up the equipment, the warm-up didn't quite go as planned, but a decent first run saw me into transition in 11:25.  

Now, who was it...? Come on, own up. It took me nearly a minute to locate my helmet which had been booted out of transition and down towards bike out. I thought it might have been Lee Rankin but he said if it was him I would have found it in a nearby field.

Once my Giro Advantage was firmly in place, I hit the bike some way down on Andy Grist and James Hart but pedalled hard to catch them. The bike went pretty well in very blustery conditions, but back in transition afterwards, I fell victim to a lack of elastic laces - I'd left my race trainers in Malmesbury and so was using a different pair with the old bow and double knot method to keep them in place. A tangle and blaspheme later and I was out on the run, again having lost time on Mr Hart and chasing him hard.

So needless to say, it wasn't a PB performance and I could understand if the Tri-Monkey thought me a bit of a plonker, but like he said, it's better to get these sort of problems out the way in 'B' races.

You can view the bike splits for those that wore our new timing chips here and the full race results from the Bath Amphibians Website are available here.

My splits from my Garmin, showing my comedy transition times were:

That's it for that series until May 2009 so plenty of time to practice transitions..........

September 2nd 

Just when you think you're getting somewhere with this swimming lark, something comes along and bites you in the bum.....

Went over to the 50m pool at Bath Uni tonight as James Hart wanted to try a bigger pool before Newbury Triathlon on Sunday - we've got to do 4 lengths of a 75m pool for that one.

Anyway, there was two lanes for us and a load of kids doing swimming club in the other lanes. I'm swimming along doing my front crawl and I start getting overtaken in the lane next to me, by kids doing backstroke. To make matters worse, when I get to the end of the length, I realise that not only are they swimming backstroke, they're balancing cups of water on their forehead at the same time.

How can kids swimming backstroke with cups of water balanced on their head overtake me...? I had to get out the pool, hit the shower and take a long look at myself in the mirror. Clearly my 6:15 for 400m was a fluke. A bunch of kids doing circus tricks have left my confidence shot to bits...... 

August 31st 

Total training for week - 7.75 hours

That's more like it. Seems like an age since I managed over seven hours training in a week.

Awesome session today with Mr Rankin. Stopped off in Stroud after working in Nottingham yesterday and despite the rain, we went out on a tough two hour bike session followed by some pretty hard fartlek running. Was great to be out giving it some, especially on the seriously nice Trek bike Lee loaned me for the ride. There's a map of our route below.

And to thank the 'Stats Man' for his top session, I've introduced a new facility to the blog today. Click on the link and you can view stats galore including distance, speed, heart rate and time and you can even watch the route for our bike and run on a map player. See 'Training with Lee'.

Managed to get a good swim in yesterday too, between timing events at Nottingham University. The pool was amazing. Big wide lanes and I had one all to myself. The Tri-Monkey had given me my biggest session to date of 1900m but I got it all done without any worries. Swimming is feeling pretty good. Hopefully it'll be too hot and dry at Rimini for a duathlon so they'll have to change it for a triathlon and swap the first 10k run for a swim J.

August 28th 

'One ridiculous second. Just one ridiculous second.'

Yep that's all it was but I think James Hart knew how Frank Shleck felt this evening. We both turned up to the Frome & District Wheelers 5 mile TT tonight and with me going off before him, the minute separating us at the start had grown to 61 seconds at the finish.

Pretty amazing how close we are on the bike this year. There's one more chance to even the score next week with the final TT of the year. 

August 24th 

Total training for week - 2.5 hours

It probably looks like the wheels are falling off a bit hey. Work is getting in the way of training a bit I have to admit. Couldn't actually race at the Malmesbury Triathlon today as I was too busy chip timing it. Bit of a gutter but on the bright side the chip timing worked a dream.

I did manage to exert myself a fair bit though as I had to load  steel racking for 300 bikes into the van on my own and then played football for an hour at my Dad's 60th birthday party. Adults against children ...... and we didn't feel at all bad about beating them.

Anyway, the tough weeks with work are really out the way now and the Tri-Monkey is back from Beijing this week too so I'm sure to get things back on track......

August 21st 

Was it the other day I said I'd be picking up the training this week..? Did some serious endurance training yesterday. Drove to Holland and back in 23 hours for a 2 hour meeting. Why you ask....?

Well DB Max are now the proud owners of some cutting edge AMB-it chip timing kit. Same company that timed Usain Bolt's world records. And the good thing about driving to Holland is that you're close enough to the coast  to pick up Radio 5 all the way. 19.30! How good was that...?!

August 17th 

Total training/racing for week - 3.5 hours

Hmmm... well yeah another poor week as far as total training goes but I did get up this morning and do a hilly run, despite working and racing at Reading yesterday. The superb support from my race crew meant that I got away at a decent time yesterday evening, with special thanks owed to James Hart for packing and transporting the rowers.

So the training total's not great for the week and the Reading Rowathlon race didn't go quite as planned but hey, 6:15! 

August 16th 

Well I'm glad that's over. Two events in two weekends has taken it's toll. Not enough training and pretty much worn me out. Haven't done the training log for last week yet but I'm well off the mark on the training hours. Should be able to pick it up again now though.

Question 1: What does Lee Rankin have for breakfast? My Garmin says I averaged 40kph for my bike rides yesterday but he went past me both times like I was dawdling......

Question 2: What's wrong with this picture.......?

Well it's got 'Will's a plonker' written on it - mainly because that 6.5 in the bottom right corner should be a 7.0. Yep, did exactly what I tell everyone not to do in the race briefing and hence had to give myself a DQ in my own race at the Reading Duathlon J

Question 3: What's wrong with this picture....?

Well not much really. Except if you've done so little rowing in a year that a 9 minute 2k gives you a heart rate of 190bpm, you shouldn't be that surprised when there's no gas in the tank for the run. Breaking 30 minutes for the Reading Rowathlon was but a pipe dream yesterday.......

So one mini goal failed but it's only a mini-goal and I don't think I'll need to count to 14 in the rest of my races this year......

August 13th 

Hold the front page folks! Hold the darn front page!

Big result tonight. So big in fact that I didn't believe it. Back on July 2nd I had my thirty-minute session in the pool with the Tri-Monkey and I've been working on the couple of points he gave me since. Six weeks of training with my twice-weekly swim sessions.

My 400m swim time at the Westonbirt Tri on June 1st was 7:29 - a pretty standard time for me from the triathlons I've done in the past. My PB for 400m is 6:51 which I achieved in a flat out clear lane swim, during my beach lifeguard exam back in 2003 - after a fairly intense course of swimming.

Yesterday evening I was scheduled to do the Malmesbury Aquathlon - a 400m swim and 5k run.

Guess what I did for the swim. Go on, just guess......  6:15! Yeah baby! Will Whitmore swam a 6:15. I had to get it confirmed with three different people before I believed it. Dare I say I could possibly go a bit faster too with a lane to myself and giving it everything....

Unbelievable! 

So, Rich spotted the key problem with my swimming and crucially how to correct it - took him about two minutes. Something that everyone before him had simply missed. Goes to show that you've got to be careful who you take advice from. Couple of years back, a bloke called Will Newton analysed a video of both my brother Ceri and I swimming at a training camp. He told us both that our stroke looked good and highlighted zero areas or coaching points for me - we laughed about it all the way home as I looked like a brick compared to him and he can break 6 minutes for a 400m swim all day long.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I'm getting on quite well with the Tri-Monkey training. Have to say though, that even if I got nothing else other than my 400m swim PB and my newfound enthusiasm for the pool......folks, it would be worth it!

My run time by the way was 19:10 and including transition, my first aquathlon finish time was 25:59. 

August 10th 

Total training/racing for week - 1.5 hours

Oh dear. Not a very impressive total that. Basically managed the Castle Combe Duathlon and a swim and that was it for the week. Had a few beers after the Gower Triathlon last weekend and that left me struggling a bit at the start of the week. Hitting the duathlon hard and then organising the DB Max event this weekend, put pay to the end of the week.

Organising fitness events plays havoc with my fitness training ironically............

August 6th 

Blimey! That was tough. I've been sofa camping again tonight. I've got to change that carbon saddle too - been feeling like I've been kicked in the nuts all evening. Might be light and look cool but probably not doing me much good down below.

Anyway, I had specific instructions from the Tri-Monkey for tonight's race at Castle Combe. Treat the first run as a 2 mile race and then hang on. Sounded a tough way to do it.... 

Went off hard and did a 3:16 for the first 1k. Very weird having people like Ben Lang and Peter Wheddon overtake me after about eight minutes rather than leaving me behind at the start. I averaged 17.1kph for the 2 miles and the heart rate hit 192bpm which was the max for the race.

I didn't feel as bad as I expected on the bike and was pretty close to my best bike time for the course from back in May, despite the wind being far stronger tonight. The second run time was OK too with an 11:46, but man did I feel bad at the end. Never felt like that after a duathlon before and I felt more like I'd done a max 2k row. My finish time of 47:19 was ten seconds off a PB too which added to the pain.

Taught me a lot though. Seems I can go faster at the start of a race without my overall performance suffering as much as I thought it would. Pretty sure tonight would have been a PB if the conditions were the same as back in May, but I've got only got one race left to break that 47 minute barrier now..............

By the way, Lee Rankin asked if I could add a feedback service on this blog so people can leave comments about the posts. Or, as is more likely in his case I suspect, abuse me J. I'll look into it though and let you know.

August 4th 

Total training/racing for week - 6.5 hours

Bit of a recovery week with a race thrown in to boot. A fair few ales on Saturday evening so yesterday was a complete recovery day after Saturday's race. Tri-Monkey Rich is out in Beijing now at the Olympics with one of his clients, but he'll be sending through my training while he's away and I'll be back on it this week.

Bike graph showing gradient and speed from Saturday below. Check out that climb out of transition!

August 2nd 

Fantastic race, great weather and a performance I was very happy with. A superb day all round, although that wasn't looking so likely prior to race start....

Having travelled up to the Gower the previous day, I stuck my head out the tent at 5am and the weather wasn't looking too welcoming. Drizzle and grey skies as I walked over to the toilet block had me questioning the sense in what I was doing.

My kit and bike were all laid out in the back of the van which I'd carefully planned the night before and so I was down at race HQ by 6am wheeling my bike to transition. I decided I'd just give it one last spin up the road before racking it and as it transpired, this was a very wise move. As I attempted to change gear there was a big clunk and my front mech jammed. The chain ring couldn't turn and as I came to a grinding halt I knew that I had a fairly serious mechanical problem. I dashed back to the van and on assessing the damage realised that my front mech had come loose on the seat-tube and was preventing any gear changing or pedal turning. Thirty minutes of tinkering with screwdrivers and cable ties was to no avail and with the race briefing kicking off in the distance, I was forced to go to Plan B and grab my training bike out of the van instead.

The problems weren't over yet as in my haste to change the pedals over, I dropped one in the sand so that the thread wouldn't turn in the crank - I couldn't get the pedal on. I started to think that maybe it wasn't my day but after washing the pedal thread by squirting water as hard as I could from my drinks bottle, I managed to remove enough sand to get it attached and got my bike to transition in the knick of time.

By the time the starter horn went I was just chuffed to be in the race. The swim buoys had moved a little so that we swam an estimated 1000m instead of 750m but that didn't phase me. I couldn't get my wetsuit off in transition and I was stuck in T1 for over a minute, but that didn't phase me either. I was in the race and I was happy.

The immediate climb after exiting transition was a real stinger but I then put my head down at every opportunity and gave it plenty of effort on all the following climbs too. Obviously I missed my race bike but my trusty Trek 1200 stepped up to the mark in its absence and together we took a few disc wheel and TT bike scalps along the course.

I hit 68kph on the main descent with no sign of a 'speed wobble' and I averaged 33kph with an average HR of 167bpm for the 24km bike. I felt pretty strong on the run too and finished that in 17:44 (I made it 4.5k) to take 10th place overall in 1:23:17.

Top race, top location and top organisation. The  family all turned up to watch too and the first proper test since I started the Tri-Monkey training was passed with flying colours - so I'll be carrying on as planned with the programme and working towards the main goal which is to perform well in Rimini.

Just need to get my race bike sorted now in time for Castle Combe on Wednesday.....

Triathlon results are available here

July 31st 

Got my final swim session done today before Saturday's race and that should have been it. However, my run club were holding their annual Avon Valley Mile this evening and it's an event I'm always keen to support.

It's an out and back course along the river at Bradford on Avon and although I've obviously not been training to run a mile, I figured it couldn't be that tough. So shortly after the gun went off, I decided to tear through the field to the front and try and leave everyone else behind. 20+ kph felt very comfortable.... for about 15 seconds and then physics, biochemistry and reality reared their speed-sapping heads and the rest of the mile was a lung rasping slog. Finished 10 seconds quicker than last year though, so that's still progress - even if breaking 5 minutes is some way away.....

July 29th 

Umm, I don't know where to start with today's post. I was going to have a laugh about my crap 10 mile TT performance and tell you a funny story, but having learned a little more about what may have caused my experience, I'm not sure it's quite so amusing any more.

Unfortunately there's a phenomenon out there known as speed wobble or 'shimmy' that us cyclists have to contend with. I'd never heard about it until last night but as you'll see, it introduced itself to me in a big way.

I've had a couple of problems with my beloved race bike of late and Matt Brett and I worked on it on Sunday and Monday night to get it back on the road ready for my upcoming races. It looks as though my knee problem was being caused by a dodgy pedal, but to cut a long story short, our work on the bike involved drilling, rivet guns, tub repairs, greasing bearings and all manner of tinkering, but by Monday night it was good to go. I didn't however want to leave my first race effort until Saturday's  Gower Triathlon, so I decided upon an unscheduled 10 mile TT and headed over to the weekly event hosted by Somer Valley Cycling Club on the A361 near Frome.

I went straight from work and by the time I got there the wind was pretty fierce. This made me a little wary as I'd not ridden the route before and I only had my deep-rimmed front wheel. Got underway though and was ticking along fine and caught the bloke ahead of me in around 5 minutes. I would have done well to leave it a little longer though, as at the very next roundabout (Marston Roundabout) I went the wrong way. It didn't take me long to realise my error and I turned round and got back on it, determined to atone for my diversion error.

The next part of the TT course is known a the 'ski slope' - an awesome section of straight, downhill, road and a perfect place to catch up after my wrong turn. Down on my aero bars, max effort to build speed and then it hit. I'm not sure what happened exactly. I thought a big gust of wind got me, giving me a bit of a fright so that I came off the aeros and on to the brakes. But I was all over the place, fighting with the bars to regain control. 

Even though I was slowing up, the wobble wasn't stopping and I thought my headset must have come loose - I expected to eat tarmac at any point. Whether by luck or judgement, I managed to steer towards the verge and as I finally lost control, a supreme stroke of luck saw me go down on my left side with my knee hitting the grass verge and not the tarmac. Because the verge was elevated too, as I slid and rolled a bit my bike lifted a little and didn't hit the tarmac either. Picking my bike up, I checked the headset which was perfectly tight and thinking it must have just been the wind, I got back on. My only injury was a grazed knee so I decided I could complete the course. A bit jittery after what had happened though, my heart wasn't in it, and I hardly touched the aero bars but had a decent workout getting to the finish in 25:29.

Looking at the stats from my Garmin, I was travelling at 68kph when the problem hit - you can see the point shortly before where I had to turn round too. 

Chatting to a couple of guys at the finish, revealed that nobody else had suffered any major problems with the wind, but talking to both Matt Brett and James Hart later, I discovered that they had both had a similar sort of wobble when travelling at high speed in the past.

And so have others it seems. There's a few theories about what causes it and it seems it can be largely due to the rider, or a combination of the rider and bike. I've dug out some links to articles about 'speed wobble' at www.sheldonbrown.com, www.calfeedesign.com and www.slowtwitch.com and there's also a forum discussion with loads of thoughts and stories at the link www.bikefanclub.com.  

If you've got any stories or experiences yourself, I've started a thread at www.tritalk.co.uk and it would be great to hear about them, especially if you have any advice on dealing with the problem. I was travelling at about 42mph when the problems hit and I felt like I could have accelerated more. Just not sure if I've got the bottle to head over to the 'ski slope' and give it another go - and practice dealing with 'speed wobble' if and when it occurs.

Still, I escaped pretty much unscathed and just as importantly, so did my bike. Best plan might be not to dwell on it too much and just get back out there as soon as possible!

July 27th 

Total training for week - 10.5 hours

So a little less in total this week but I did the 5k race on Thursday and missed an easy ride on Monday  - after a tough weekend my legs needed an easy, easy, sit down and don't go anywhere ride. Don't feel too guilty though and hopefully the Tri-Monkey won't kick my butt, as it's the only day I've not trained on since July 5th

Been trying to solve the problem with my race bike today and it looks as though my left cleat had moved on my bike shoe. Hopefully this will cure my knee problem but not sure yet as if it's the cleat, it should have affected me on my training bike too.... 

I'll be trying it out this week though ready for the first big race this Saturday (Gower Triathlon). Hope the weather holds as I'm camping - plus if you have the weather, the Gower's just about the best place you can be for a day on the beach!

July 26th 

Blimey, biiiiiig ride this morning. Great weather as I headed of with Matt Brett again and today we were joined by Nigel Ashman too. Training programme said 'easy ride with hard work on the hills' and much like last week, the intensity was somewhat higher than that. Nigel lead the route which you can check out on the map below.

A mega 3hr 35 in total - 104k at an average speed of 29kph with an average heart rate of 138bpm. Spent a lot of time struggling not to get dropped or catching up after getting dropped on the climbs. Climbing still a weakness although my performance must be affected by the fact that I'm riding a five year old Trek 1200 with training wheels, whilst they're the proud owners of a Cervelo Soloist Carbon and a Planet X Ti. That's my story anyway and I'm sticking to it......

The 15 minute run off the bike was tough and the Tour de France final time trial gave me a good excuse to make the sofa my best friend again for the afternoon!

July 24th 

The Tri-Monkey had today down as a 5k race and it felt like my first test since I started the coaching. Yeah, I've done a couple of max efforts over the course of the last five weeks but today felt like the first race since I've got back to full fitness.

I was feeling yesterday's bike session in my legs but nevertheless, I headed over to Malmesbury for the 5k run organised by James Higgs at the Activity Zone.

Difficult to gauge as it was a hilly course which stung a fair bit, but finished 5th in 18:54. Couldn't believe how far the first 2k felt, but after going off hard as instructed, I felt pretty strong for the final hill climb to the finish. Adam Horder e-mailed to ask how it went and I'm pleased to report that that's a quicker time than the flat 5k I did with him near Byron Bay back in December. Stats for gradient and heart rate below folks.  

July 23rd 

Well I'm chuffed, if a little bemused, to hear that this blog's building a bit of a following. Thanks for your messages and I'm taking your points on board. 

For starters, I'm stepping up with the training data today. Had a call from Lee Rankin saying 'very nice to hear how you feel and that, but where's the damn stats?'.

So, today's session was an absolute corker on the training bike. It included a climb that is fast gaining a bit of a name for itself. The 'Tame the Horse Climb' leads up the Bratton side of the Westbury White Horse. You're allowed a rolling start from the first telegraph pole just past the junction and the clock stops at the summit by the Byway sign. Today I did it four times with a 3 minute rest as part of a 1hr 45 bike session.

Check out the elevation and heart rate stats below - just for you Mr Rankin.....

July 20th 

Total training for week - 12.5 hours

Check out that training time folks! What a week. That includes a couple of swims and a bike to work, but up there as my busiest week ever I think.

Saturday was a big day. The Tri-Monkey had prescribed a 3 hour easy bike ride, but working hard on the hills. However, I went with Matt Brett so it became a 3 hour tough bike, but blowing a gasket or two on the hills. Awesome route out to Avebury Circle and up on to Salisbury Plain for a total of 96k. The weather was fairly kind by recent standards although we still found time to get rained on and buffeted by some fierce winds up on the plain. 

Could have been worse as Matt came within inches of being hit by a big white truck which came flying round a corner at break-neck speed, almost skidding out of control and toppling over on the gravel track road. We were undecided about whether we would have helped the driver or lamped him, had his truck actually gone over.

Quite tough to finish the little run I had to do off the bike but got it done and then camped out on the sofa for most of the afternoon. My Garmin said I burned 4700 Kcals for the session.... that's about 16 Mars Bars!

Sunday was down as a 1.5 hour hilly run and I decided to leave it until the evening. After a big Sunday roast and an afternoon watching the Grand Prix and the golf, it was a little tough to drag myself up and out the door. I live by a canal now too so hilly runs aren't as easy to come by as they were in Westbury. However, I found a pretty good route that took me along to Bradford on Avon and then off the canal and up Jones Hill. Quite a tasty climb and after a wrong turn at the summit I enlisted the help of a young lad on a BMX who guided me back to the canal at Avoncliff. I needed another hill on the way back and ended up on a route that took me through Seymour estate (sometimes known as the Bronx...). Bit of a trip down memory lane as I ended up running along the first road I lived on in Trowbridge back in 1974 and also ran past the garages where I learned to ride a bike - age 3.

All done for the week then. Swimming's still feeling pretty good so might time myself for 400m next week. Rich has got me down for a 5k race too so I'll be heading over to Yeovil or Malmesbury on Thursday evening for a run there. Got to get my TT bike sorted though. I'll be needing it very soon....

July 17th 

No TT tonight but a session on my race bike instead. Headed over to the Semington bypass looking for a decent road to put some efforts in on. Wasn't bad but will probably swap my deep-rim front wheel over next time - very hairy when the big lorries overtake......

Good workout and timed it about right as the light was fading as I headed home.

Unfortunately though I seem to have a bit of a problem with my race bike. The last couple of times I've ridden it, my left knee has felt a bit odd and then swollen up afterwards. Pretty sure it's my race bike as my knee is fine on my training bike and when I run. Bottom bracket seems to be making a bit of noise too so Matt Brett's going to have a look at it for me. Otherwise I'll have to do the Gower Triathlon on my training bike.......

July 13th 

Total training for week - 11.25 hours

Feeling pretty pleased with myself this week after completing just about every minute of the sessions on the Tri-Monkey's programme and putting in my busiest training week of the year. Plus I managed the weekend bike and run sessions without getting soaked!

The odds were against me completing my swim workout yesterday. Had a choice of a morning session or an afternoon session at my local pool and plumped for the later session so I could catch up on a little shut-eye. Hit the pool in Trowbridge at around 3:40pm with the session due to end at 4.30pm, but after just four lengths of my warm-up, the life-guard kicked us out - someone had been sick in the water. Lovely stuff....

Soon discovered that there's no going back in either once this has happened, so had to get changed in double-quick time and hot-foot it over to Melksham where the pool closed at 5pm. Got there in time to swim and despite there being no lane and having to dodge the kids a bit, I got the session done and the full week ticked off.

Having sessions prescribed by a coach is helping me in a couple of ways. 

Firstly, I have to do them. Previously, if something came up that distracted me from training, or some mishap occurred (like someone losing the contents of their stomach in my pool), I'd just miss the session. Now however, I'm driven to ensure that I complete all the sessions in the weekly plan. I'm on a permanent mission to get them ticked off - it's like I have a constant motivator in the shape of my programme. Obviously I've always trained and I've never been afraid to push myself, but now I have more structure to my sessions and an extra reason to complete them.

The second way it appears to be helping, is when my girlfriend starts bending my ear about me training too much. I no longer have to think of excuses or reasons. "Sorry, it's on my programme" I happily inform her. "Yeah, but you trained this morning and these pictures need putting up". "Well I know, but Rich said" I counter and that seems to be enough. It's like it's the law. I'm a little concerned at what's in store for Rich when he and Jess eventually meet, but for now I just marvel at the extra hidden powers of my new training plan.

Anyway, just three weeks to go now until the Gower Triathlon. Had a chat with the organisers and sounds like it's going to be a top event. Other than that it's five weeks to go until the Reading Rowathlon, nine weeks to go until the Chippenham Half Marathon and 11 weeks to go until the big one - Rimini!

Lots of work to do!

July 10th 

What is going on with the summer...? I think I've been getting wetter on my bike this last ten days than I was back in January!

Week's going well though. Completed all my sessions so far and ...wait for it.... goal 1 was ticked off tonight. The 10 Mile TT at Frome & District Wheelers saw some pretty strong winds again, but my time of 24:14 was enough to take second spot and more importantly, was 7 seconds quicker than Mr Hart. 

Definitely feeling stronger again and looking forward to a TT in calmer conditions in a fortnight or so - when I'm sure James will be back seeking revenge.

In addition, the run sessions I'm doing now are top draw. There's a mixture of paces within each session and having to do some speed intervals and then hold a moderately hard pace afterwards, is tough for me. Rich adjusted my run training slightly to target my speed and leg cadence after seeing me in action last week - and these sessions feel like they're hitting the spot!

July 6th 

Total training for week - 7.5 hours

All done for this week after a wet and windy weekend.

Procrastination was 'word of the day' on Saturday. A long bike ride on the programme but I didn't get out in the morning because of jobs around the garden. These spilled over into the afternoon with me telling myself 'Yeah, I'll get going in a minute'.  I finally got my bike kit on for 5pm but seeing a few rain drops start to fall as I opened the front door, I thought I'd hang on for a bit - ten minutes later I was dozing on the sofa and before I know it, I'm into Doctor Who is killing Davros and the daleks and it's almost 8pm!

I think if I hadn't had a programme to follow I would at this stage have sacked it, but as I knew I had to tick the session off, I put my bike lights on and headed out. The weather was very summery - raining relentlessly and gale force winds. Half an hour of enduring driving rain and battering winds and I was wet through and thinking this is my punishment for whoosing out all day. 

I vowed not to throw in the towel though and stayed out taking mother nature's worst for around two hours. I even felt pretty chuffed with myself by the time I arrived home, but the punishment was set to continue as my girlfriend wasn't best pleased at being left on her own for a Saturday evening. So yeah, the late, stormy weekend ride was an experience as a one off, but I'll have to leave procrastination off the game plan for the rest of the summer.

Sunday was run day and I needed a 90 minute off-road route, but I knew there was a 10k trail run starting at 5pm. Had a plan to run it steadily and then go round again afterwards, however once the gun went off and people start sprinting past me, running steadily did not compute. Top event but the good old weather had it's input again and the going was a little sketchy to say the least in places, so I decided one lap was enough. Hope the Tri-Monkey agrees.......

July 4th

Big day on Wednesday. Technique session in the pool with Rich, followed by the 'Monster' Duathlon at Castle Combe.

First up was the swim and I'm pretty confident in saying it was the most effective thirty minutes of training I've done this year. After a brief analysis, some clear instructions were given and dare I say it, provided immediate results. My stroke definitely felt stronger even by the end of the relatively short session and I finished up feeling motivated and enthusiastic about hitting the pool. So, that's the ball rolling for goal 4!

A quick shower before heading off to Castle Combe for the 2 mile/10mile/2 mile/10 mile/2 mile duathlon event. I'd half expected to treat it as a hard training session with my legs still struggling from the Cotswold Relay, but as things got underway, I felt reasonably strong and had a decent race. Not quite firing on all cylinders yet, but hopefully I'll be back on top form next month for the standard distance race, ready to attack goal 2.

In addition to the swim session and watching me race, Rich had time to explain his thoughts on how we should aim to achieve my goals through training. Add to that some feedback on improving my run speed and it all turned out as a very productive day at the office. 

It wasn't that long ago that I could have been heard saying 'Ha, I'd never get a coach. The best person to train me, is me!'. It seems however, that in a rather short space of time, I'm considering eating those words..... 

Next week's training plan has just hit my inbox, so there'll be more updates for the blog soon. 

..................By the way, I didn't sleep Wednesday night. Felt pretty worn out but just couldn't sleep. Following morning I checked out the ingredients on the energy drink I used for my race. I'd run out of my usual one but had a tub that had been sitting in the cupboard since I was given it in Dubai last year - called Catapult.

Umm... 200mg of caffeine per scoop. I'd had four scoops. Isn't that about 30 cups of coffee...? Must remember to read the ingredients........

June 29th

Pretty tough swim session on Friday but it was great to get it done. Included a mixture of slow, medium and fast lengths, but I soon learned that after about 50m I only have one pace. Maybe it's because I don't float too well, but there is no such thing as swimming an easy few lengths for me J. 

Meant to get to bed early on Friday evening but was up until 1am unfortunately. Then up again at 4am to drive to Chipping Camden for the first leg of the Cotswold Relay for the Avon Valley Runners team. What an awesome run! 

The route basically follows the Cotswold Way but there's no race signage or anything, so you have to know where you're going or, like me, try and keep up with someone who does. Some steep hills to climb and descend and some great views, and it was all going swimmingly well until about ten miles - then the wheels fell off pretty rapidly. Legs blew up and the last two miles hurt a lot but great to finish even if I did lose about ten places in the final stages.

Anyway, everything moving in the right direction again. I'd expected a ten mile run and told Rich that it was ten miles too, and if it had been I'd have faired pretty well. The extra two miles were a bit of a challenge, but once I get my legs back I'll be full steam ahead for next week's sessions. 

June 26th

Sessions pretty much done so far this week as prescribed but today was 10 mile TT day, with the Frome District Wheelers. I just couldn't resist.....

Some serious wind saw a shaky start with my new front wheel, but soon got going and had a good blast. Well off the pace though with a 25:17 and lost my unbeaten record to James Hart to boot - by 40 seconds!

Rimini in September is the goal though - this is just training and starting to get back into it now after the lay-off.

Programme's looking top-draw and meeting up with Rich next week too for some swim analysis. 'Swim analysis...?!' I hear you say. 'There's no swimming at Rimin!'. It's true but I'm giving triathlon a bit of a go as well and my swim..... well it's usually a bit of a shit-fight.

Got an entry to the Gower Triathlon in August so that will be the first test.

Best set some goals......

1) Beat James Hart at next TT J

2) Break 47 minutes at Castle Combe this year.

3) Break 30 minutes for the Reading Rowathlon.

4) Improve my swim.

5) Rimini, Rimini, Rimini!

June 21st

Bike day today and had my planned workout all ready to go. But with Matt Brett, Lee Rankin and James Hart accompanying me and putting the hammer down from the start, the structure went out the window a bit and it was just 'go hard'. Plenty of hill climbs and 1 hour 40 into it saw the dreaded 'tame the horse' climb.

Matt equalled his PB and the record with a 4:45, followed by Lee in 5:15 and James in 5:37. I came in 4th....OK last, with a 5:57 but great to be back on the bike.

June 20th

First run back after the lay-off and 16k in 1:20 felt tough.....

June 19th

Well a delayed start to training with the Tri-Monkey as I suffered a cold which turned into a pretty major ear infection following the Westonbirt Tri. Guess the moral is, if you're coming down with something, don't race! Will I learn? Probably not.....

June 5th

Following my return from the European Duathlon Champs it was painfully clear that I needed to improve my run.

Seems that in a duathlon race, I can hold my own on the bike and so too on the second run to a lesser extent - but my first run.....? Erm..... well off the pace!

I needed to enlist some help and after a recommendation from a fellow athlete in Greece, I hooked up with Rich Brady from www.tri-monkey.co.uk.

So this blog will chart my progress with the Tri Monkey from now until the World Duathlon Champs in Rimini in September. Just how much can I improve my run...?