As I write this, I’m sat in the reception of the hospital that saved my life 13 years ago. I’m just in for a check-up, but back in 2009 I was rushed in here for heart surgery, culminating with a stent being put into my heart, opening up a 90% blockage. At the time it …
Category: Motivation
Training for Ironman Cozumel – its coming together.
It’s been a month since I’ve posted, I have no excuses other than I just haven’t felt the desire to sit down and write. This doesn’t reflect that things have gone bad, nor that I’ve lost motivation, actually its more to do with the fact that I have been training hard (and even working hard), …
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Getting into the swing of things.
It’s now been a month since returning to Japan, and my 7 month sojourn in UK and Spain seems a distant memory. I’ve got back to some sort of routine, although things are far from normal, with many offices and shops being closed and a state of emergency in place, meaning restrictions on what you …
Is this what we really miss most about racing?
Its nice to be in England as summer slowly creeps up on us, although I must admit I had forgotten how much it rains here, even on the warmest sunniest day, clouds suddenly appear and the heavens open to soak the unsuspecting. The beautiful green of the countryside along with bright early mornings and long …
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Up, down and up again
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, and I have a very good excuse for not updating recently. Thought I would just drop a line now to explain where I am at, and once everything has settled fully, get back to regular posting – news I am sure will please and enthral my prodigious global …
Wow I can see!!!
I wasn’t planning on writing anything this week due to having NLR surgery (natural lens replacement, which is basic cataract surgery but using prescription replacement lenses), however as I am feeling pretty chipper and positive, thought I would get a brief update down.Firstly – wow, I can see!! I was first prescribed glasses in elementary …
12 weeks before Ironman Vitoria Gasteiz
This week's post is a little late, and somewhat truncated. I actually have no idea where my time went, but seems I’ve been too busy/tired/lazy to get anything done, and now it's already halfway through the next week. Time is weird like that, I’m lucky that I don’t need to work a normal 9-6, I’m …
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 …
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 …
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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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 …
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 …
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 