17th June 2007

Sunday gives me another chance for some solid training, with a second fairly regular window of opportunity during the mornings between 9.30ish and 12 noon. Helen normally heads into Albany for church with the kids (I go on Saturday night to make this work). Her father’s the Pastor of a church there and they hold their morning service in a school hall, which just happens to have a shower... So I normally either run in and meet the family there, it’s exactly 20k’s, and with a good number of hills thrown in usually takes me just under two hours (my record, done the week I hurt my foot is 1 hr 50 – as a side note I’m doing the North Shore City Half Marathon next month, strictly for training of course … and I’m really interested to see how it goes). I used to get a few funny looks, but I think they’re use to my sweaty dishevelledness now.

Well the plan today was to do a bike / run brick, riding for an hour and leaving my bike at the in-laws and then running for another hour to meet the family. It was a good plan and I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately things just weren’t going to go my way, starting at 2.30am when both my son and daughter decided to wake up at the same time. Because I know that the kids can be a handful during the day for Helen I normally get up for them during the night, and first thing in the morning. So I was up at 2.30am (4 hours after going to sleep), Eve, my 2 year old daughter settled down alright, but my 4 year old boy Sam didn’t really get settled again until 4.30am, I was back up with them again at 7am, meaning I didn’t really much of that all important recovery sleep.

Sunday morning was COLD, which again left me cursing that I’d sold most of my winter riding gear two years ago, so no leg warmers, no arm warmers and for some reason I could only find one shoe cover (I did have some other gear so I was alright once I hardened up). On the bike it was straight into a stiff southerly headwind, and my legs wouldn’t work. Cycling’s my strong point and I knew that as soon as I warmed up things would come right. Unfortunately I didn’t warm up.

The ride was an energy sapping grovel. So as I was working to a schedule I cut it short by taking the direct route, meaning that just over an hour later it was into the run.

The run was interesting as for the first few k’s I couldn’t feel a couple of my toes. After a while I started warming up and my legs began to work again which was nice. I managed to get to where I needed to be in time, but certainly not the greatest work out, and I've been sore all day since.

This evening I've spend a bit of time doing a gentle session on the indoor training and a bit of stretching, so I'll come right.

Never mind, there’s always tomorrow.