Family: my support crew

The family are going great guns.

My wife completed her first half-marathon this year at Reading. I'm really proud of her, and she's come along way since being last finisher at Margate parkrun on a windy June morning last year.

My daughter started in January at the local Tristars club. Her little legs wizzing round and round on her tiny 16" wheel bike around the Palmer Park track. Luckily it was her birthday recently so we took the opportunity to upgrade her to a 24" Islabike with gears. Well overdue. She can now accompany me on my runs.
She took part in her first triathlon; a practise one as part of the club. A single length in the pool followed by 2km on the bike then a 1km run. Good effort!

My son has been accompanying the family at the local parkrun where they've banged out a few 5kms over the past quarter. He has his eye on his 10 t-shirt!

It's really nice to see them get out and about and be active. I'm off work next week so we'll spend some more time on our bikes together :)

2013 - what a year!

As I sit here in January I can reflect upon 2013, and what a year it was.

Some great sprint-distance duathlon racing at Dorney Lake in sunshine, a cold Althorp and a torrential Marlow. The season culminated in racing for the GB age-group team at the European sprint duathlon champs in the Netherlands. I came 13th in age-group.

A couple of days after I flew to San Francisco with work and got some good running R&R and some great cycling.

A running niggle escalated to an injury and I ignored it, racing the Shinfield 10km and then I continued until the Grendon sprint tri; my only triathlon outing of the year. Finally I saw sense and took some time off running, investing the time in upping my cycling volume.

The knock on effect was that I would be in no shape for the 2014 duathlon Euro qualifiers which had been moved to autumn. I would live to fight another day!

As the autumn season approached I entered the new Dinton duathlon where I placed the highest ever; 10th overall. My focus then moved to training for a February 14 half-marathon and the impending winter cross-country league. Oh, and another 5km PB early December.

So despite some negatives it has been a great year for me.

My race schedule page has been updated for 2014 and I look forward to starting this new year, racing hard and getting some great results!

Happy New Year!

Prompted, stage left

I was recently told by someone that they followed my blog, which instantly brought about some guilt of a recent update. Sorry!

So this is week 17 of being back running. And week 2 of my training for Wokingham Half-marathon. I am loosely following the Furman Institute's FIRST plan. The crux is 3 runs and 2 lots of cross-training (read: cycling). Each of the 3 runs is a quality run; long, track or tempo they're fast and can hurt.

The balance comes in the cross training. It's a risky program and I got injured last time doing something similar. This time I know where I went wrong and I'm listening to my body much more. Common sense really. It's almost obvious that one cannot fit in 5 or 6 quality sessions per week. 

I'm enjoying some easy paced cycling in the week and some longer rides at the weekend. They help to offset the training load from the running. Every now and then I'm throwing in a harder turbo as a tester. Tonight was TrainerRoad's Raymond, a 4x5min at 108% FTP.

I'm looking forward to my first duathlon of the season, the Dinton Duathlon. I'll have been back from the US for less than 24 hours by that point so we'll see how it goes.

I've also entered Althorp sprint duathlon in Oct 2014. Far away but I got an early-bird deal as it is the 2015 European sprint qualifier.