The big news for the UK this week was the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. I am a bit of a Royalist, although not at all nationalistic having spent so much of the last 40 years out for the country, so I do find it sad to witness the passing of an era. He …
Author: TimeToTriHarder.blog
A grumpy middle aged old man, who tries to persuade himself he still has what it takes by struggling through gym, swim, bike and run training in an effort to race marathon and Ironman.
Building Strength
In the summer of 2013, I started a running streak that lasted all the way until March 2017, a total of 1302 consecutive days, only brought to a halt by the need for an operation. During the streak I had set a PB in the marathon of 3:36 and in the half marathon of 1:35, …
Born again Noob
As a kid I never really enjoyed participating in sports, I was a bit of a klutz, not being particularly gifted with any physical skills other than some endurance. This endurance did favour me when it came to long distance running, and I was briefly in the school cross country team, however I was always …
It’s One year. It’s 12 Months. It’s 52 Weeks
That’s 365 days, or 8760 hours or 525,600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds! Whichever way you slice it, there is exactly one year to go! Yep, 25th March 2022 is the new start date of my race across the Sahara, the 36th edition of the Marathon de Sables To be accurate, the new date for the postponed …
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And so it begins – training for MdS #week1
Since making the financial and mental commitment to race in 2021, Marathon des Sables has been taking up much of my time and energy, constantly on my mind and driving me to become rather one track in my conversations. It’s terrifying and exciting, but I have become more and more committed to doing it now, …
The Toughest Footrace on Earth
I know once I make this challenge fully public, I will have more reason to make sure I succeed, so after weeks of prevaricating and rewriting, I dumped the previous blog attempt and I sat down to write and publish a totally new piece as quickly as I could. Apologies for the bad English, grammar …
Is the plan, going to plan?
The Japanese government announced last week the expansion of the lock down to cover the whole country, along with a promised payment of Y100,000 per adult to support the economy. My office has been in “Work From Home” (WFH) for basically a month, and two weeks ago my gym and pool closed too. Tokyo, much …
So where do we go from here?
On Saturday it became official, the Desaru 70.3, scheduled for 21 April in Malaysia, joined a constantly growing list of M-dot sanctioned races that have been cancelled or postponed. This was supposed to have been my first race of this year, and would have been my first race since June of last year (my planned …
Favero Assioma Uno Powermeter Pedals
I have to be honest and admit that last week was pretty much a failure as far as swim, bike and run goes, when an unexpected disruption meant both training volume and focus dropped considerably, as well as causing an increase in bad food and bad habits to creep back into my life. There was …
The Miracle of MAF (and the need for blind faith)
Boring Warning, If you don’t like training by numbers, please scroll on by! It’s been a fun few weeks, trying to finalize goals for 2020 and then building the training plans to reach them. A couple of weeks ago I was fairly sure I knew what I was doing, but continued to have a nagging …
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Ironman Korea – Gurye 2019 (non) Race report
This is the third year of writing a race report for Ironman Korea, having participated in the previous two editions in 2017 and 2018. However the 2019 race report has one major change from previous years - it was The Race That Never Was .... As had become standard, my year was planned with some …
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My Private Training Camp
The continuing problems with my Achilles and the resulting inability to properly train, created serious doubts regarding my level of fitness. Therefore I had reluctantly decided that, rather than risk further injury, I had better drop out of the local Half Ironman race scheduled for 1st September. Of course every cloud has a silver lining, …
A fool, some friends and a physio
In my previous post, written in early July, I was feeling confident about my upcoming races, having got some good bike work in and looking forward to some structured and intense run training, something I had not managed last year. I surmised that by having the opportunity to follow a full training plan that my …
Summer Updates (delayed)
Oops! This should have been posted over a month ago in early July, but I got distracted as was traveling across countries, continents and the space time continuum. Anyway, found it sat in my pending file, so will post now. It’s somewhat out of date, but still relevant !! Summer has now definitely arrived, and …
Japan Half Ironman – Centrair 70.3 Race Report
The Japan Half Ironman, or to give it its proper title, IRONMAN 70.3 Centrair Chita Peninsula Japan 2019, is now the only Ironman branded race in Japan, and is celebrating its 10th year. In my mind I thought I had attended 3 times previously and was somewhat shocked when I checked back through my records …
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Between Races
A month between races I’m sitting on a plane heading back to Europe, and the forced inactivity gives me a great opportunity to catch up on my blog, Haven’t written anything since the Marbella Half Ironman report end of April, so I thought I would first update on the previous month, and then write a …
Marbella 70.3 Half Ironman 2019 – Race Report
It’s been a long time since I last updated this blog, (which is a pretty familiar sentence this past year), but no excuses, had a lot on my plate that has nothing to do with training or racing, so spending extra energy writing a blog has simply not been a priority. But I have been …
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Race Schedule 2019
So here we are, it’s March already and I need to get my schedule down and decide which races I’m training for. The last three years have been pretty messed up due to family health issues, a sports hernia operation and then being hit by a car, so I haven’t had a full season for …
Training Log – Penultimate week pre-training
I thought I should do a proper weekly update on my training – it’s hardly earth shattering stuff and unlikely will change anyone’s life (including mine!), but if nothing else helps me review what I’ve done This particular review covers the week starting 18 Feb (almost two weeks ago), during which I split my time …
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Brain over brawn
I’ve been racing now for over 15 years. After a health scare in my late 30s due to “lifestyle” issues, I successfully managed to lose over 20kg and buff up by following a gym regime. However I got bored with the lack of challenge, and signed up for Honolulu Marathon on a whim, somehow completing …
Time to Tri Harder 