Lost 1 & 2

Finished watching Lost Season One this week and I'm up-to-date with Season Two as well now, got to wait patiently for the next episode now...

Great TV, highly recommended.

Training Summary

I've not posted much this week, so a quick summary of training...

Wed - Swansea swim, 2500m Sam 'Webmaster' Webster was there, holy potatoes! He's not swam for a long time! Still kept up though, good lad.
Thu - Tri Swim 2km or so. I forgot my baggy shorts for the resistance session but borrowed a pair for a few hundred metres, tiring!
Sat - Bike, 45miles at a brisk pace, cold headwind but nice tailwind back - 30mph+!
Sun - Bike, 65miles also at a brisk pace - Matt Beckett either feeling frisky or needing to get back for sunday lunch? Didn't do the 80 I was supposed to but I was battered when I got in.

Asleep on the couch

Wow, this weekend's cycling has been at a faster pace than usual and it's left me asleep on the couch Sat and Sun night - 8pm tonight!

So, that's twice this year i've been asleep before midnight :-|

Tue 25th - Night Run

Lovely and crisp out tonight, a bit over an hours steady run through the unlit woods, lush.

Light by Petzl and tunes by iPod :-)

Only hit the deck once - an unseen step!

24 Season 5

24 Season 5
Originally uploaded by dgunthor.

Yey, just watched episode 5 and lovin' it!
(I won't post any spoilers though)

Bit strange to watch it week by week - I normally watch the whole season in a couple of days.

Homemade Pizza

homemade pizza
Originally uploaded by dgunthor.

The panasonic breadmaker serves up another feast!

Routine

Feeling shite running earlier and being rather wobbly on the bike on Sunday has encouraged me to get to bed a little earlier, get some sleep and get back into a routine.

This should be easier now the website is actually live, or so the theory goes.

So, off to bed now and up at 8am.

Night night.

Mon 23rd - Run

Jaysus, it was busy at the indoor track tonight. The students are all back and hurdling nicely - have you seen how high those things are?

Feeling good now but awful doing the 5x800m with 3min recoveries earlier on.

2:54
2:48
2:54
2:51
2:46

2x200m to finish
32.57
33.13

Sat 21st - Bike

Eventually got out on the bike on my lonesome for 2.5hrs at 4pm. First night ride of the winter, so naturally my front LED light batteries died!

It's cold out when the sun goes to bed too.

Sun 22nd - Bike

Time for the 75 mile Ajax reliability ride today, over Penderyn Moor - which didn't seem to be 5 degrees colder than the rest of the country for a change today.

I managed to hang on in there, though the ride was not without incident - I nearly binned it just after Taff's Well - I was wiping my nose when I hit one of the many pot-holes not pointed out and lost grip of the bars. I managed to stay upright though!

I also had a near miss in Merthyr, I was taking a drink (with my right hand) assuming the traffic lights were on green, but they weren't and eveyone braked hard, I used my rear disc brake but it didn't do a lot, adrenaline flowing and heart racing I just managed to squeeze between the two riders at the front before coming to a stop. Phew!

24 Season 5

Wow, have watched the first four episodes and it looks like another great show. I now have to wait for the fifth episode - never done that before, I normally get the DVD box set and watch them all in one go!

Thanks to BitTorrent for the episodes :-)

triandbike.co.uk is open!

Credit card payments are switched on, just bought something myself to check. Won't show on my credit card bill for a few days though I expect.

Still a few things to tidy up, but can do those in the morning.

Happy days!

HSBC Secure ePayments

Aha, so it turned out to be some confusion in the end, we were told to expect 3 items of snail mail, we only received one. The rest of the information we already had, though we didn't know it or have any documents to explain it.

Still, I've got the credit/debit card payments working now and HSBC have approved our website and set the payments to be live - once I do the same our end we can accept payments for real.

If I can get some work done this weekend then we'll go live on Monday as planned -
still a few things to tidy up and lots of products to add with images and descriptions.

Still, feeling very pleased.

Sam kindly and very quickly provided me with a new stylesheet for the website this afternoon too - it centers the website and makes it look much more professional, thanks fella.

Fri 20th - Swim

6.30am swim @ Maindy, managed to get up ok despite a late night.

WU
200 FC easy
4 x 50FC on 60secs

Main (using paddles)
3 x 5 x 100FC on 2min 1st set, 1:55 2nd , 1:50 3rd
mostly coming in on 1:35, harder to tell in 2nd & 3rd set due to odd time intervals

WD
400FC easy

2300m

triandbike.co.uk getting there

Well, still waiting on two items of mail from HSBC (been waiting about a week and a half now), but their email support is great, I've been getting swift replies from their Asia office who have been very helpful. Got the full developer docs and software through which is now setup as much as can be without the remaining items of mail.

Must mention the web host too at this point - www.transnexis.com, they have great technical support, got a problem sorted in 30 mins this afternoon during an email exchange. Highly recommended and thanks Sam for the original recommendation.

Just waiting for Mr Postman now...

Wed 18th - Swim

Down to sunny Swansea 50m pool, managed to squeeze in the session despite attending the Innovation Network talk at Cardiff Uni with Ian - Ajaz Ahmed was speaking, don't recognise the name? Me either, but he was the founder of Freeserve, and I expect you've heard of them right?

Good talk, very informative and entertaining to boot. Nice, down to earth guy.

Laura Harding and her friend (I'm useless with names) popped along to the swim seems as they are both at Singleton Hospital at the mo (studying, not patients).

1hr of technique and not too much pool swallowing involved this week.
Might make this a regular weekly session seems as I'm down for 3 swims per week now instead of 4.

Just added a Flickr photo stream on the RHS too -->

Tue 17th - Swim

Tri swim session @ Fairwater, quiet again but saw the return of Ian Liddiat - last seen at Ironman UK in August!
Pool felt a bit wobbly tonight - like being in open water.

WU
100 FC
50 kick
50 pull
100 drill

main set
8x100 on 2 min

50 easy

8x25 drills

another 500m doing something, I forget what though!

WD
100 FC
100 no FC
2 x 25 sidekick with fins

2100m

Zyro

Headed up to Harrogate on Sunday with Ian to Zyro's 'Open House' where we got to see and give feedback on the forthcoming products from Altura, CatEye, Panaracer, De Marchi, Powerbar, Minoura and other brands too.

Some neat stuff is on the way!

I managed to get food poisoning on Sunday night though and spent most of the night vomming and the other one too. Nasty.

Still, on the bright side I'm down to 63kg now :-)

European Champs

Was very excited on Friday when I spotted on the BTA website that applications were open for the GB team for the Europeans. No qualifying, just apply with your previous experience.

I applied same day, fingers crossed I get in.

The race is in Autun, France, will have to check where that is!

Sat 14th - Swim

Managed to squeeze in a swim @ Hawthorne L/C with Matt & Rhi.

400 FC paddles, easy
2x200 FC paddles, working catch
4x100 FC paddles, working pull (hard)
8 x 50 FC paddles, working catch to pull
400 FC paddles (some) easy

50 sidekick with fins

ejected as time up!

2050m

Sat 14th - Bike

Morning JIF club ride, loads of people out. Started the ride with a puncture, just as I got there, Meirion kindly fixed it promptly in Cyclopaedia :-)

To Newport along the flats, then chain gang route to Caerphilly, I turned off at Caerphilly and did the Nelson route for another 20 miles, then the long way home via the lanes to Taffs Well.

3hrs

Fri 13th - Swim

Swim with G & Cardiff Masters.

~= 500m WU
4x100 FC on 2min
2x100 BS/FC on 2.15
4x100 FC on 2min

16x25 BU x 2, FC x 12, Sidekick with fins x 2

100m WD

2000m

GMT

Wow, back on GMT today, i skipped a night's sleep on thurs in order to get out of my bed at 3->6am cycle as i was stuck, unable to get up before lunchtime.

Woke up at 6 then 8.30 this morning and getting tired tonight at 10pm, ace!

Thu 12th - Run

55 min run with Dominic, steady/sociable run, some offroad around Castle Coch in a nice loop.

Tue 10th - Swim

Tri swim tonight was dead, 6 people! Have all those new years resolutions faded already? :-)

WU - 200m

20x50 on 1min, sprint every 5th
2x100 drills
2x100 different drills
10x25 tumble turn practice
4x100 on 1.55

WD - 100m

2350m

Logo

Mon 9th - Run

Running at the excellent NIAC 200m indoor athletics track tonight.

10x400m with 2min recoveries

first 5 were quick, around 1:11 to 1:13
sixth was somewhere in between 1:13 and 1:17 I guess
1:17
1:28 (jogged this one to recover as I was battered)
1:14
1:13

Note to self: get a lap counter that does more than 8 laps!

Bled nicely on my left heel as well after 5 reps, best wear socks next time, not had any problems before though, that's how I normally race 10km.

arse

my new and time consuming extra linux hard disk install has hit a problem - the drive has failed! luckily nothing too important on it.

just backing up what's left now.

Sun 8th - Bike

Managed to get up and make it on the club ride, about 60 miles from Cardiff to Newport, Shire Newton and almost Chepstow, then back along the A48 to Newport and along the Flats home.

3hrs 40, steady

xp

extra 40gb hard disk installed into xp now as well, painful experience not helped by a dodgy cable and the dell case having no room for a 2nd hdd - hello? so i wedged it into a cd drive bay instead.

now to bed, best get some kip before the sunday 60ish mile bike ride

happy days

linux

after a few hours playing with linux, i've got an extra hard disk installed, network, cvs, samba, apache webserver and the intranet site setup.

ssh looks more problematic - need to compile zlib for it, yikes, this isn't easy peasy windows pointy clicky but once it's setup it should be rock solid, unlike the aforementioned.

going to need a recent version of java and finish the mysql install too.

Breakfast

Mmm, chelsea buns via the new Panasonic breadmaker, yummy.

Tue 3rd - Swim

Evening swim at fairwater with cardiff tri. I had to set the session, as Elinor (coach) did a no show after I mistakenly told her the pool was closed, whoops.

Approx 2000m

Tue 3rd am - Bike

Pedal with Rhodders, Pentyrch, lanes, back parallel to llantrisant road. A rare occurence for me to be on the bike lately, will be getting out on a regular basis now that it's January though. Felt great after, though the legs were still feeling it a little from Saturday's ride with G-man.

21/4 hrs steady/easy

Mon 2nd - Run

From maindy up the taff trail to the canal and back the other side of the river, just over an hour with Pete B. Great route that.

Thu 5th - Swim

Cardiff Tri swim tonight, I've not seen so many keen folks in the pool for a long time!

WU 150m FC
20x50m on 1min
8x75m 25 pull, 25 kick, 25 swim
2x25m skull
150m FC paddles
WD 100m FC

2150m

bed: 3:45am, a little better?

Wed 4th - Swim

Swansea 50m pool session, ace venue.

2400m: sidekick, flippers, some paddles, some FC 100's etc

bed: 7:30am FFS

Resolution broken already

Oops, broke one of my new years resolutions on new years eve - try to get to bed at a more sensible time! I'm very capable of staying up working till 7.30am these days, eek.

New Year

Well it's 2006 already and with the change of year I feel motivated again, maybe it was the xmas break that did it?

I'm going to use this blog primarily as a triathlon training diary, so it may not be a riveting read but it should prove an aid to memory to see how my training/racing is going, how I'm feeling and what kind of performances I'm acheiving...

Hopefully my coach can check up on me as well as training partners to see what sessions I have planned for the week.