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: Run
The pools are open, the pools are open!
As of April 12th, England opened up a little and while many were celebrating being able to go to the shops, get their hair done or go out for a drink and a meal, for me the big change was that the pools would open. Since December last year my only chance to swim had …
A sad farewell, a jab and some progress
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 …
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 …
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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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 …
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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Bad roads, wrong breathing and crazy hounds – what a good week!
I’m again sat on a train, this time heading up to the airport in London, where I’ll stay in a tiny hotel room only slightly bigger than the bed, to ensure I get my 7:40am flight to Alicante in the morning. I am very happy with my short stay in the UK, not only did I …
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The season begins….
It’s half way through February already, and the end of winter is definitely in sight. I really don’t like the cold, I much prefer to sweat than to shiver, so the first signs of Spring are much appreciated. My sporting juices start to seep at this time of year, so along with thoughts turning to …
Ironman Gurye, Korea 2018: Race Report
Since the completion of Ironman Gurye three and half weeks ago, I’ve been taking things pretty easy. I’ve put in a handful of runs of around 30 minutes, plus another couple around the 60 minute mark. Added to that have been a few short indoor bike sessions and at least one relaxed swim per week, …
The day before the race
Here I am, day before the big race, wasting 20 minutes till lunch so a quick post It’s actually a year since I have raced triathlon, and it was the inaugural Ironman Korea 2017 in Gurye that I last raced, and here I am, 12 months later, to try again. Back in last October, I …
Hokkaido Training – 5 nights & 6 days.
Let me start this by warning all out there not to tempt fate. I mentioned in my previous post that the place I was heading to (Hokkaido), had summer weather like England but without the rain .. well the weather gods must’ve been listening, as they sent the rain, buckets of the stuff. Out …
Time to Tri Harder 