After the fun and games out in New Zealand during October, I was looking forward to things being a bit quieter for a while. However, this just never really seems to happen in our world. Since being home, we were straight back to work and it’s been just a tad busy on that front recently!
Apart from work, work and more work, Jill and myself have been keeping out of trouble with a range of other activities too, such as: –
11th November: After several easy weeks I thought I ought to make an effort to get back into action, so took part in Tri-Anglia’s club 10km running event, one of several this winter. Not surprisingly, I was a bit sluggish, but not too bad. I actually ran my fastest ever 10km on that course at this time of year boding well for when I’m fully back up to speed.
17th November: We attended the British Triathlon awards dinner. See here for more information.
21st November: Round 3 of the East Anglian Cross Country League, and my first outing in the series, was held at the University of East Anglia. A 10km route was covered, including some quite challenging sections along a river where the mud was pretty deep and extremely slippery; it was all you could do to stay upright. I took half of the course home with me! Some sections were just too technical for my level of eyesight and even being careful I still managed to turn my ankle on an uneven patch, although no major damage done. In the end I got round OK to finish in 48th place from over 100 entries. See here for a race report on the Tri-Anglia website.
30th November: Jill and myself visited Tasburgh Explorer Scouts for the evening to talk about Paratriathlon. It was a fun evening that we tried to make as practical as possible. We took some medals, the Paralympic torch and my Matrix tandem as props to help generate questions for an interview-style session. The best questions of the night; ‘Exactly just how old are you?’ and ‘Who is Nancy?’ referring to one of my medals from the World Duathlon Championships in France this year. We finished the evening with everyone having a go at running around some cones in blackout glasses which was entertaining to say the least!
5th December: I was invited to join a group of 40 local school children who were attending a Paratriathlon taster day at the UEA Sportspark in Norwich delivered by Active Norfolk. It was great to meet the children and see them take part in a short triathlon in the pool, on gym bikes and then running around the athletics track. I was asked to present the medals and had fun posing for photo’s with each school. I even got invited for school dinner by a couple of the participants! Hopefully one or two from this group might go on to take up Paratriathlon or even another sport.
5th December: I took part in the 4th round of the EACCL hosted by Tri-Anglia at Whittlingham Country Park. This was a fun 3 lap course including some steep steps, descents through the woods and some flat sections along the lake front covering 6.7 miles. It was pretty chilly and we even finished with the snow starting to come down! I felt pretty good on the day and was running consistently to finish in 33rd spot to help the club take 3rd place men’s team which wasn’t bad. The main thing was it was another good workout – they say summer races are won in winter…See the race report here.
8th-10th December: Carl Shaw arrived for a weekend of training and socialising ahead of my birthday on the 10th. We had a nice tandem ride and I did a 60 minute steady run in-between doing a short interview on Radio Norfolk about being crowned British Paratriathlete of the year, Christmas shopping, a trip to the cinema and a spa evening a centre parks!
Apart from all that, I have been trying to fit in some general winter training. Work, the dark mornings, dark nights and poor weather havn’t helped much, but it’s still nearly 6 months until the next major objective – the European Championships in June.
Iain