Blogger all!

Done blogger all this week, except a Boxing Day and a Mince Pie run. Been very lazy. Too many mince pies. Too lazy to write my blog. Not enough training.

Will be back next week with a vengeance - blog and training.

C

Fail to plan, plan to fail

I've been harping on recently about the importance of organisation and never so more important is that concept than at Christmas time, what with being Santa's Head Buyer and also the usual juggling act of visiting family and friends.

Amongst all that is having to find time for work and training. Having already alluded to the work issue is previous blogs, things are really hotting up now. My recently-created business blog makes comment about the taxman's incompetence, and the knock on effect of this causes me great distress and additional work.

Doesn't leave much time for training, or rather it wouldn't if I didn't plan my time as well as I try to do. This week - Christmas week - I have planned a couple of runs and rides, and a swim here and there, although nothing too serious (in particular a 'mince-pie' run with the tri club).

The concept of 'fail to plan, plan to fail' is even more evident at this festive time of the year now that I have had to plan next year's races so that, come January, I am ready for the off. So, the following very carefully selected races form my schedule for 2009. I have highlighted the Worlds Qualifiers (my A races) in bold. I have deliberately left out the Worlds (my AA race) because I don't want to tempt fate.

Bedford Sprint - 3 May 2009

Grendon Sprint - 10 May 2009

Eton Super Sprint - 17 May 2009

Milton Keynes Sprint - 24 May 2009

Milton Keynes Sprint - 7 June 2009

Northampton Sprint - 28 June 2009

Bournemouth Sprint - 5 July 2009

Dorney midweek Sprint - 15 July 2009

Blithfield Sprint - 26 July 2009

Other non-triathlons will be the Milton Keynes Winter Duathlons, 10 mile time-trials (bike), 5 km run races (Bushey Park time-trials) - all 'as and when'. I also plan to cycle and run the courses at Grendon, Milton Keynes and Blithfield so, come the day, I will know the routes like the back of my hand.

The week just gone saw me spend plenty of time in the saddle, a run and no swimming whatsoever. Two mountain bike rides (one with Jev, the other a very early morning ride with Chris (aka Duff) from the tri club), and another my weekly tea-shop road bike with Jev. All very quaint stopping at the tea-shop in Stewkley for a coffee and soup (and the odd puncture repair thrown in for good measure).

Assuming Father Christmas is agreeable, this week I plan more of the same. Failing that, you'll probably find me in a pub somewhere resting my tired feet and nursing my tired wallet!

Compliments of the Season to all.

C

Blink and you'll miss it

This week I treated myself to a little pre-Christmas pressie.

My TV is about a hundred years old. It's not quite black and white, but it's not colour either - over time apparently the tube (whatever that is) has died and now the screen pushes out a picture which is a shade of green. Not good for the eyes. The mono sound system is not good for the ears either. I think the old 8-track which I had in my first car was of higher quality.

So, I have bought myself an all-singing, all-dancing, bells and whistles, lots-of-inches flat screen TV, together with surround sound home cinema system and hard disk recorder. Just in time for the usual Christmas repeats, although I suspect it will be dominated by the kids' Wii and XBox.

Over the weekend I tested it all out with the final of the X Factor. My daughter Emily and I sat down and treated ourselves to some Saturday night visual and audio entertainment from the eventual winner, Alexandra. Her opposition, Eoghan and JLS, were Ok but were simply no competition for Alex. Her rendition of If I Were A Boy, a duet with Beyonce, was absolutely outstanding and from then on it was a one-woman show (but enough of the crying, already). I know the X Factor has its critics, but I think it is great family entertainment for a Saturday evening. Beats Strictly Come Dancing anyday.

But the highlight of the weekend's viewing was the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. Favourites Rebecca Adlington, Lewis Hamilton and Chris Hoy came in 3rd, 2nd and 1st respectively, but I think I must have blinked because apparently there were split second moments of glory for Chrissie Wellington winning Hawaii and even Alistair Brownleee who was part of the audience.

Now, I know that triathlon is, and will most probably always be, a minority sport, but surely the world Ironman champion deserves more than a two second slot in what is a celebration of British sport. And, yes, I know that 2008 was a fantastic year for British sport (especially the Olympics), but if they keep on harping on about triathlon being 'the fastest growing sport in the UK' then why does is continually get overlooked?

But, then again, I think that is one of the reasons why I love the sport so much. It isn't the sport of the masses, and I like the lack of the football-hooligan mentality at races. It is a sport where you can participate with the best, and how many other sports can you say that for? So I suppose I shouldn't complain when it doesn't get much coverage, but it would be nice to give Queen Chrissie more than two seconds in front of the Great British audience at sports' equivalent of the Bafta's.

As the writers of BBC SPOTY suffered from a bit of triathlon laziness, so did my training suffer from my own lethargy. I did a couple of runs and a road bike ride with Jev (stopping half way for a soup and coffee, so it was hardly a hard ride). I have decided not to follow a strict plan yet until the New Year, so for the next couple of weeks I am not going to beat myself up if I take it easy. My ever increasing work schedule is also making it more difficult to fit in lots of training. So, it's 'do whatever I can' time again.

That said, I shall be starting a more structured running plan which I have found on the tri247 website (in conjunction with my plan from Mark K). I shall hopefully be getting out with Alex and Jev at some point this week too.

In the meantime, here's our greatest sportsman of 2008. Officially. Well deserved too, and very gracious in his acceptance. Like Chrissie, a true inspiration to us all.

Cheers.

C

Like Clockwork

Things seem to happen this time of the year, every year, like clockwork.

I am always skint over Christmas.

My training takes a back-seat whilst I get on with some work.

I get fed up with the constant darkness outside.

And, frustratingly, I always, ALWAYS catch the flu or some other similar incapacitating illness early December. That's what happened this week. I could feel it coming - an all-over aching body, general lethargy, etc., etc. after swimming Monday evening and then for the rest of the week I couldn't do any training. None at all. Which is a bit of a pain in the backside because this was the week of my FULL return. I had a run planned with Alex later in the week which I had to cancel. And of course a mountain bike session which had to go too. All very frustrating.

But none of that put me off the tri club's Christmas dinner at Wendover on Saturday night (pictures below). And a highly enjoyable evening it was too, although I have got to say that the members of the club are not big drinkers and so I had to ease off the drinking a bit in order not to appear like an out-and-out p&$shead. There were, however, a couple who did give me a good run for my money.

There was Anna (aka Mitten) who had run (or rather 'scrambled through' ) the Grim earlier that day and was downing her gin and tonics pretty damn quickly. Mitten also apparently reads this blog too, so "hi, Mitts".

Then there was Chris (aka Duff) who decided to order a round of drinks after most had gone and the restaurent was locking its doors. Now THAT'S the attitude, Duff - proud of ya, mate!

But the most memorable of all was Rob (aka Bananaman) who got the giggles after just a couple of pints (I get the impression he doesn't usually drink much). Rob organised the evening brilliantly so a big pat on the back for the mighty Bananaorganiserman.







Something else which seems to work like clockwork is the Great British Weather. Or should I say the 'Cr$p British Weather'? It did its usual trick of putting paid to some weekend plans. My football team's game was cancelled because of the icy pitch (just as well, really, as we were down to 8 players - a combination of Scout trips and illness), and also the Luton Marathon (of which I wasn't participating anyway) fell victim, indirectly, of the cold snap - a car had span on the ice and blocked part of the course and so the race had to be cancelled at the 11th hour. Very frustrating for the competitors (of which Musty and Russell (club colleagues) and Jev were a few), but I suspect also a big fat pain in the ar$e for the organisers too.

So there you have it. A rather uneventful week and, thus, a rather uneventful blog. I am feeling 100% better now though and so I will be back with a vengeance in the morning. Or maybe not - it's very cold and icy out there you know!

Cheers.

C

If at first you don't succeed...

My mate Jev hosts the occasional film night on his home cinema system. Not any ordinary home cinema system, oh no. Jev doesn’t do things by half. This is a fully-fledged, self-contained, velvet curtains, 1000 inch, 1,000,000-watt sound system home cinema.

The Old Thatch Cinema society (that’s what we’re called) meets up every so often Chez O’Neill and the first film we watched was American Gangster, a film by Ridley Scott starring Denzel Washington. A highly entertaining film which scored highly amongst us in the post-film vote.

Last Friday we were treated to Withnail & I, a 1987 film by Bruce Robinson starring Richard E Grant and Paul McGann. Jev introduced the film as one which you either love or hate, but to be honest I was neither. It was entertaining, but I think as a non-film buff I missed some of the subtleties of the film. It was good, but I won’t be rushing out to see it again (sorry Jev).

We watched City of God a couple of months ago. This film, by Fernando Meirelles (the same guy responsilble for the recent movie ‘Blindness’) is at Number 18 in IMDB’s list of greatest films of all time, and is about two boys growing up in a violent neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro who take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer. I think I must have had too many pre-film beers that night because, again, I didn’t rate it that highly. It is a fast moving, subtitled film which you need to work hard at keeping track with and, frankly, I just think I wasn’t up to it the night we watched it.

However, I acquired the DVD of the film last Friday from one of the other guys, Dave Jones, and treated myself to a second viewing over the weekend. At well over 2 hours long, I had to watch it in 2 halves but, boy oh boy, what a masterpiece! I was completely ‘up for it’ and so was able to keep with the story and I am so glad I did. This is an absolutely incredible film and I can’t believe that I will ever see anything better. Prior to this, my current favourite was ‘Babel’ – a film by Alejandro González Iñárritu and in similar gritty style – but City of God has surpassed that. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you do so. But don’t go expecting any religious hymns or prayers, because you’ll be disappointed.

It just goes to show, in the film world at least, if at first you don’t succeed, try again.

I need to try again at my training schedule at the moment because I still can’t seem to get back into things as much as I should have. I have skipped swimming and cycling for a couple of weeks and done just a few runs. I am happy with how my running is coming along, but I need to HTFU and get out on my bike in the wind and rain.

There is a phrase which Jev uses – ‘ironmen are born in winter’ – and I think I need to adapt this a little to ‘world-sprint wannabees don’t wimp out of training just because it’s a bit wet and cold’. I do have an excuse though and that’s that work has been very busy this week, so I am not going to beat myself up about it too much.

This week we have my tri club’s Monday night social night (meets every first Monday of the month after swim training), and on the agenda for discussion is the new kit design (see previous blog). I think the ‘get rid of sharky’ brigade will have a difficult job of succeeding, and so it looks like a new design is on the horizon. Let's hope less 'Shark's Tale' and more 'Jaws' please guys, the latter surely being worthy of The Old Thatch Cinema Society. More news about this next week, no doubt.

Cheers

C