Cley Windmill

Just had a fantastic evening at Cley Windmill in North Norfolk. I cannot recommend this highly enough. This was probably the most perfect weekend of my life! Here are just a few photos from this weekend! 

http://s1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa326/Brix2tri/Cley%20Windmill/

Veggie or not veggie?...

.....that is the question.

I am seriously considering giving up meat. After a heavy weekend of burgers, fry-ups and all round badness on a dietary front. I feel that I could comfortably cut out meat from my diet. I have put on 9lb (Now 13st 8lb) in 4 to 5 weeks due to poor diet and lack of running, cycling and swimming.

The plan, at the moment, is to go meat free Monday to Saturday. Then allow meat on a Sunday if fancied until the end of the year. Then a reassessment.

 I have no issue with animal welfare really. I love bacon. But sometimes, you have to set the ones you love, free:-)

I feel my biggest problems will come from the fact that I am a chef. Working in an environment where I can be surrounded with little snacky bits of cooked meat. Chicken breast here, bacon rasher there! Also, I have the will power of a... I don't know what, something with little will power anyway!...that's me! It will be hard, but that's life. I'll just give it a go.

At the start of the year I cut caffeine out of my diet too. After the initial head-aches, I found this quite easy to deal with. Although, I did find it affected my training mojo. I have, more recently, slipped back into coffee world. I would like to start reducing my caffeine now again too.

Hope this all leads up to starting 2012 lighter, fitter and mentally stronger. All ready and set for a season of sweet runs and sweeter triathlons.



So start the countdown 10, 9, 8,7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..... I am now a part-time vegetarian*

Links  --- Vegetarian Society


*Not sure if i will be including fish!

Weekend break in Hopton

I have just got back from a weekend away with the family. We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Haven holiday village in Hopton. The resort itself was really nice. Quite literally, on the beach. We are already planning a mini Triathlon camp there for next year :-) 

The food at Haven was what I expected! Traditional menu of bought-in classics in the restaurant. Pizza (Papa Johns) everywhere. Burger bars, candy floss, all the normal unhealthy resort stuff. We only ate in the restaurant once. This was to celebrate Abby (my wife's) bingo win. £361....Ker-Ching!!! 

For a starter, I went for the whole baked Camembert. Followed by a Gourmet burger thing. Both pretty darned tasty.

The puddings were a bit of a disaster, but I won't go in to that too much. The kitchen had run out of Whipping cream, chocolate and vanilla ice cream. This meant the sundae's that the kids had ordered were made with clotted cream. Not nice. Also the fruit salad which my daughter was served was barely worthy of being called a fruit salad. Lemon tart was nice. 

Now, I seem to have gained a few pounds over the last few weeks (now 13st 8lb usually 12st11) I'm still recovering from my hernia op. Will start back with a diet of some sort soon.....Maybe!

That is all! :-)

Just a few videos (Velo)

My wife has instructed me to stay in bed today. I had an para-umbilical hernia operation on Saturday. So i've just been chilling watching random cycling stuff from the web! here are a few gems which made me smile! 

Lois Malle Film "Vive le Tour" 1960's

 Le Velo, back then!

Le velo Now!

My boy Gregory drifting on a Fixie, love it!

Not a natural winner??? (blog post)

This year I have won a Zipvit Tri suit, a £50 wiggle voucher and some Haribo goodies I even managed a first place in a marathon team relay at a recent event.

What is going on???

 On a personal level, it’s not winning but almost. I recently applied for a college course. As part of the application process I was asked to sit an online literacy and numeracy test. Anyone who reads this, or previous posts will know that my literacy skills are not the best. I mean, you should see how many red squiggles are on this page now, before I hit the spell-check button! Anyway, I spent two to three days studying/refreshing my math and English skills, and after a stressful few hours I passed the tests with higher scores than I expected. That feeling of accomplishment is awesome.

 I know life balances out. This is one of my firm beliefs. You just have to view it with perspective. To say “you win some, you lose some” may feel like a cop out, but really, that is it!

I used to wonder why I never won anything, though the reality is that I have been a winner all my life. I don’t mean for that to sound as wanky as it does. What I mean is, I have a good life, my wife is my best friend, my kids stress me out sometimes, but they are great kids. I have had employment all of my working life, my parents are enjoying their retirements. I have a roof over my head (admittedly, a massive never-ending mortgage). All these things and more add up to, in my mind, a win.

 I may bitch on Twitter and Facebook about my running/cycling/triathlon training. I’ll complain about not racing due to this hernia thing. But that is not ALL my life. I have perspective.

 I have said before, I am looking forward to 2012. I can’t wait to see what it brings personally, academically and *sportingly. 

 

....touch wood! :-)

 

*is that a word?

Ex hire wetsuit

Bit of a deal really.
Just received 2 ex-hire wetsuits which I had purchased from Tri UK. They are FOOR Classics rrp £99. I picked them up for £50 each (sweet). Get in there quick if they have any left. My one fits perfectly and is in great condition. The one I got for my wife looks unused. I just need to learn to swim now :o)

See the full gallery on Posterous

Just thought i'd share that with you!

A few photos from my ride this morning #Suffolk #Ipswich

See the full gallery on Posterous

Think this is the one and only hill in East Anglia. Semer.

....It is pretty much flat around here though.

.....But beautiful

I avoided the rain too thankfully. 

http://www.dailymile.com/people/brix2tri/entries/8955975 

802279-cycling-route-in-ipswich-gb.gpx Download this file

 

Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting...

I love running and cycling, a bit too much sometimes. I can bore the pants off most people talking about bikes, rides, triathlons and running races. I try to see as many races as I can via Eurosport, ITV4, channel4 and online. I fill my sky+ box up with more than enough obscure adventure races, triathlons and athletic meets from around the world.

The problem is… I ain’t done shit this year. Well I did the Brighton Marathon back in April, which I loved, but since then, not much. I mean to say, I have done a couple of 100k rides, Suffolk Sunrise and the Tour of Britain ride. But my issue here is that these were not done at race pace, or anything close to race pace. These were more social. Just opportunities to get my wife to myself for a few (6) hours :-). 

Yes I know that these are still massive achievements in themselves, but I wanted more from 2011. Back in April, just before the marathon, I found out that I had an Umbilical Hernia. It has not giving me any trouble whatsoever. However, the good old NHS have had me hanging around waiting for this op for yonks. I am going to blame this for my reluctance to train. Or sign up for any races. I just want the op done so I can get on with stuff.

It is always tricky when you are unsure what your own future holds for you. Even my plan for Ironman 70.3 in Ireland looks like it may have to be shelved, due to the age old triathlete question.... Race fees VS family holiday! Admittedly we have not had a proper family holiday for a while. And will be much needed.

Steve McQueen said "Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting"  This is true of my sporting persona. Though thankfully I also know there is more to life than racing. Outside of sport, training and racing all is good. Better than good actually. That will come in another blog post soon. For now. L8RZ

Tour of Britain: East Anglian 100k Tour Ride

On Sunday 24th July, Abby and I took part in the East Anglian 100 kilometer challenge ride in aid of The Prostate Cancer Charity.

Then route was to take us from Diss to Sandringham. 100 kilometres of beautiful, Norfolk scenery. And it was. My I was so gutted that I had left my camera at home and my mobile phone battery has been playing up, so there is only enough charge for one call. So, no pictures I’m afraid.

The course was flat, like only East Anglia can be. Not a single challenging hill, lump or incline of any sort. But what there was plenty of was wind. I’m no weather man, but it appeared that the wind must have been coming from the north, it was in our faces all the way. It was not gale force. Just heavy enough to make me regret removing my aero-bars from my road bike.

Abby and I were on our own for pretty much the whole ride. So this meant I had to get her to sit on my wheel for the duration of the ride. I am also no expert on aerodynamics and only have partial understanding of the drafting systems that can be used when cycling. Every now and then, a pack of 8 to 10 cyclists would blast past us with ease, in a HTC train like fashion. This would give me a glimpse of where we needed to be, in our two person peloton.

At around 15 miles in, we got overtaken by some old local guy on his basket shopper bike. He was clearly on a mission and going for it! It was at this point, where my wife says “I’m not having that, lets take him down”. We did. BUT. In our efforts to take down the old boy, we missed a sign/marker. This new course was taking us towards a busy section of the A140. On arriving at the junction we met another cyclist who had missed the sign too, and after a bit of deliberation Abby and I turned back, we rejoined the route, but we had added 10 miles.

I will not lie. My mood at this point was somewhat, less than happy. I was actually considering crying off the whole thing. Our pace was a lot slower than I had planned for. We possibly could have trained more. But we soldiered on.

We got to the lunch stop, where there were plenty off cyclists scoffing bananas, malt loaf and energy bars. There was a cycle repair guy there. A lot of upturned bikes and people mending inner-tubes etc.

This is where I’d like to say the second half of the ride flew by. No. Although the scenery was magnificent. The constant battering from the wind, the extra time on the saddle were all starting to take its toll. I’ll apologise now for the lack of village name checks. Most of the time, I did not know where we were. Just very close to Painville for sure. There were also a lot of people offering advice and chat out there. It made you feel better too, knowing that, as flat as the ride was, it was not easy for anyone! I Will be looking forward to seeing the Tour of Britain guys making mincemeat of the course though come september.

As we rolled closer to 62mile/100k mark. The enjoyment  factor of the day had partially gone. We had already had good five and half hours in the saddle. Raw to say the least. There was quite a few bewildered cyclists around. All checking their GPS’s and cycle computers. “It says we’ve done 100k” but Sandringham was no where in sight. Turns out that the 100k course was actually closer to 110k. Add on to that, the extra which Abby and I took on. We hobbled over the line 80miles/130kto the good in around 6 hours and 10minutes.

The finish line was tremendous. Friends and families of the cyclist on either side of an official, Tour of Britain, finishing shoot. Banging on the boards and a guy yelling through a PA system. It did make you feel good again. I wished we had longer to enjoy the whole finish line area atmosphere, but parental duties called. My dad who had driven to Sandringham and waited patiently to pick us up. Hot-footed us back home…. Oh just remembered, he did take some pictures. I’ll try to add them in somewhere.

I didn’t want this to sound like a negative moan about the ride. I can’t stress enough how beautiful the ride was. I WILL be doing it again. I think I just needed to pay more attention to the signs and possibly worn better quality cycling shorts.

 Just want to say thanks to Customer Service Direct for the ride and the cool jersey! Moons Cycles for sorting my bike gears before my ride. Also to Zipvit for fueling the ride the gels are a god send

Sorry for waffling, thanks for reading.

Finding Balance

How do we do it? If you, like me, are an entry level Triathlete/runner. This is a question you will have asked yourself on many occasions. If you are a parent, husband or wife then this question is asked of yourself more often.
Finding the balance between training and family is an issue that has come to the fore more recently to me. I am currently training for the Brighton Marathon in April. The runs are getting longer. The training, harder. The fatigue, greater.
I work as a chef. This line of work in itself does not lend itself well to a lot of free time. It involves working split shifts (e.g. 930am-2.30 then 5.30-11pm). Throw into this three kids and a wife who also works full time…Feel my pain!
So, to my main point. Finding the balance. There is no magic cure. Only that I had to realise my ’Actual Realistic Goal’ I am not going to qualify for an Olympic marathon place. I will (probably) never qualify for Kona Ironman world championships. Doing the best I can has to include my life limiters. I don’t want my kids to resent my hobby. I love triathlon and I love running. But when they say stop or “dad I need help” I will be there. I want to get to the end of the Brighton Marathon with my legs and my family in tact. I have NO time goal.
I now try to avoid doing long training sessions while the kids are about. This means my long runs are on my (week) days off or very early morning. No more sneaky afternoon Turbo sessions. Which I don’t miss.
Until the time comes that I win the lotto. Or one of these sport companies decides to start sponsoring ’Crap’ athletes. I will have to keep working to pay my bills and for my hobby.