Our weekly long runs on Saturday mornings have taken the group to such wild venues as Regents Park, complete with the animals from the London Zoo, and the Thames path where certain other scantily clad mammals (male rowers) have on several occasions threatened to halt all of my efforts to keep the pace up. At this point it is probably best to explain that our run group consists of myself, Trinks and Keel (for those that don’t know them, they are both blond, lycra-friendly females). We will see how well the training is working when we all run our first marathon in September in the New Forest, joined by our speed specialists Kate, Steve & Kirst all running the half-marathon.
On the cycling side the Sunday group, which is made up of a motley crew of Safrican refugees, have toured most of Surrey’s tracks, roads and thickets thanks to the efforts of our experienced guide and Guru, Chris “Nettles” Engel. The rest of the group includes the previously mentioned lycra-lovely Trinks, Doug “Breakaway” Bitcon and Colin “Waterboy” Stent. And yes Doug I would have mentioned the group at the awards ceremony if only I had won…..
As far as racing goes Team Rat competed at the Eton Super Sprint Triathlon in May where Trinks got 28th out of 50 in the women’s event after an excellent 24-minute 5km at the end of the race. I managed 34th out of 73. I was particularly pleased with remembering to take my helmet off after the bike section as many a long distance athlete has been seen running along with a helmet still on after getting caught up in the excitement of the fast transition in these short races.
From there it was off to the land of the sheep, yes Welsh people do know how to ride bikes apparently. The Welsh Olympic Distance Champs in Fishguard on the SW coast. After driving through torrential rain on the way to the race we were greeted with blue skies and a 25-knot wind for the 1.5km swim, 40km bike and 10km run. Time for a real test, not could we finish, but would our bikes have blown away while we were swimming? Well all was fine, and both of us finished strongly (to be read as, “not very high up in category”) although times were around the 3-hour mark due to the conditions. Thanks to Wayne for the wetsuit and prevention of severe leg lag in the cold water.
This weekend we will line up for the Essex 10km Champs in Brentford. I am thinking about buying a spoiler for the car especially for the trip.
Training for October seems to be going well and we are off to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands next week for 7 days of sun and big mileage around the volcanoes.
A thought for the day:It's great to be an Ironman because if the car breaks down you can go for help. As long as it's less than 226 kilometres!
Train safe and don't forget if you are cycling keep the rubber side down!!
Lab Rat
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