Time flies when you're writing blogs...

I have some gainful employment with www.runflux.com, and one of my jobs is to write a blog, which can be found at www.runflux.wordpress.com.

These are good blogs, and worth reading if you are a runner. Writing them has sucked a little of my fitnessfarm blog mojo, however, so that is why there has been something of a hiatus.

These blogs, here on fitnessfarm, are written primarily with the people I coach in mind, which is not good commercial blogging practice, but which makes me happy. As I write, I am addressing the people I am guiding as triathletes or runners, and that feels as though it is the right thing to do. So there you go.

I have just read 'Ultramarathon Man' by ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes, who has succeeded in becoming one of the best very long runners while still holding down a job (and writing his running story), so good on him. One non-running thing that struck me was his admission that (i) he is basically an obsessive-compulsive and (ii) he saw the woman he was later to marry at school and instantly fell in love with her. How would you feel if someone said, 'I love you I want to spend the rest of my life with you...by the way I'm an obsessive-compulsive, so it's not really love, more of an obsession...anyway, how about it?' She married him anyway, so she couldn't have found him that creepy.

James, one of my coachees, is selling his training bike. I said I'd mention it here.
55cm Ambrosio Alloy Frame with Semi Compact Geometry
Carbon Fork
Campag Xenon Group Set
Shimano FCR Hollowtech Compact Crank
Vualta XRP Crosser Aero Wheels
Bontrager X lite Tyres
In great condition only 2 years old, you wont get a better spec'd bike for the money.

£300

Call 0845 23007441/email james@humancapitalsolutions.com for pix/more info.

There are two new Ironman World Champions as of today. One of them was a winner waiting to happen - Chris McCormack, one of the winningest triathletes ever, one of the fastest IM athletes ever (two sub-8hr races, I think), second at Hawaii last year, just failing to reel in the Norminator.

But the women's race was won by a near-unknown, near-novice Brit! And won at a canter. Chrissie Wellington only turned pro this year, and her coach persuaded her to enter IM Korea, which she won, to cement her place at Hawaii. But to turn over a field of experienced Ironwomen so easily (admittedly Natascha Badmann and Michellie Jones, the top two favourites had dropped out) is truly remarkable, and I applaud her effort. 

It's that time of year again. Time off training. Muffin tops coming back. Hair growing back on your legs, maybe. And maybe the excuse the Rugby World Cup gives to have more beers than usual. After a while guilt starts to make itself felt, and (rash) promises are made: to stop drinking forever; to never eat cake or chocolate, and especially not chocolate cake, again; to lose 5 kilos. And so on.

If you've done well this season, the chances are you want to do better next season. And if your season didn't go as well as you would have liked, then ditto. I've never heard, to my (admittedly faltering) memory, anyone say: 'I'd like my season to be just the same as the last one.'

So it makes sense to have a good winter before the racing season looms again. Now, for many people this is the time when all the talk is of 'building a base'. And for many people there is the assumption that this involves mainly endurance training, aerobic work at lowish heart rates and plenty of miles.

I want to question this assumption. Even when I started learning about training and this was the orthodoxy preached by the mags and the books, and I endorsed it to people I was helping, my gut was that it wasn't right. (I am reading 'Blink', by the way, by Malcolm Gladwell, which I recommend, and which deals with following your gut feeling). Nowadays I take the opposite view. It is better to get fast and bolt on endurance than to go long and try to bolt on speed. And my Very Long Race in France only emphasises that to me. I was able to go for nearly 10 hours - all right, I know I'm the new Captain Slow - on a diet of time-efficient threshold - and above - training in bike and run, with a few longer sessions nearer the time, and a laughably small amount of swimming, almost all of which was 'thinking swimming' or 'awareness swimming'. (Another story...)

Often I go about justifying this to my athletes like this: I ask, can you run 10 miles? Yes. Can you run 10 miles in, say, under 80 minutes? Yes, my PB is 77 minutes. OK, could you see yourself running 12 miles in 92-93 minutes, 13.1 miles in 100-105 minutes - this is about the same pace - next weekend? Er, yes. Easily? Fairly easily. Now, instead of going out and running longer, at the same pace, could you convert the extra effort you were going to expend on distance to speed, and run that 10 miles in 69 minutes? No. No? No, I can't run that fast. It's that simple. I'm sure you, dear reader, can adapt my example to fit your own experience and find some truth in it.

In most situations it is easy to add distance to a session or race with the fitness you already have; it is much, much harder - maybe even impossible - to sort out going faster, or significantly faster with that same fitness. So we should place a premium on our capacity to go faster or produce more power, and less emphasis on our capacity to go longer. And that is why an endurance base is, in my opinion, massively overrated.

Now you will see somewhere below photos of some rather unorthodox footwear. I got them a few weeks ago and wore them for the first time when I arrived in the Vosges for my Very Long Triathlon (see further below) to walk and jog in for 20 minutes or so. Today I did my first proper session in them, and this is how it went.

These 'shoes', or whatever one might want to call them, are made by the walking shoe sole company Vibram, and are called FiveFingers. There is a very thin rubber sole and a very lightweight upper with an elasticated cord to cinch them tight around your feet. And, of course, those individual toes, like the fingers of gloves.

The idea is that you wear them when you'd love to go barefoot but the ground underfoot would make it uncomfortable, or also, I suppose, if the pace you are going would make it uncomfortable. I can walk barefoot on gravel, for example, but running barefoot on gravel would not be bearable. The soles have a little bit of grip, and you also get grip due to the fact that your toes are working as they would when barefoot.

I ran in some normal shoes to my secret venue, which had: a short stretch of Tarmac, about 20 metres, which turned into cinder road, about 75 metres, then a grassy slope, very uneven, then a longish sloping path, not very steep and well-worn earth, and finally a steep and uneven grassy slope back down to the Tarmac starting point point. The whole loop may be around 500 metres, and I jogged it all except the longish slope, which I took at a very fast lick indeed. I changed into my FiveFingers when I got there and stashed my running shoes under a bush  and set off. On the cinder road I got a few sharp intakes of breath from landing directly on a cinder - you can feel it through the sole, but not nearly as painful as it would have been on naked skin. Everywhere else I ran without a hitch. On the fast stretch I had to stop to cinch the FiveFingers tighter, or they would have flown off in the sprint.

The last barefoot running I did was at the weekend, with two small boys, sons of friends, at Greenwich Park; we sprinted around for a while, either chasing a football or just chasing. Before that, I did some on a track while coaching, and before that some beach running in Canada. But barefoot running is not a regular and frequent thing with me, even though I walk around the house and garden and the immediate pavement barefoot as a matter of course. So I was a little wary of the whole thing maybe being a shock to the system. I needn't have worried. Going fast in the FiveFingers felt really good, I have to say. Underfoot the earth was firm, if rutted, and I did have to watch where I was going, but it just felt like I was enjoying the best of both worlds - the sensual pleasure, the feeling of freedom of running barefoot, and the protection of the soles of my relatively soft Westerner's feet.

I remember the first time I saw the film 'The Commitments' being amused by the scene where the older band member, an ex-session musician, got the group to congratulate themselves after a good rehearsal. He got the group to stand in a circle, and then, to their bemusement, to pat the person in front on the back. They soon got over the cheesiness of it - as did I - and realised that they did indeed have something to be proud of, having made some decent music together.

I've recently carried out review sessions with a couple of my athletes, who both, for different reasons, find it hard to applaud their own achievements. For me simply to say the words 'You've done really well' gave them pause for thought. Isn't sad that as adults living in a competitive world we find it so hard to give ourselves a pat on the back? To just say 'I've done well'?

It seems there might be two big, and different, reasons why this is so rare. The first is when you want more, more, more, and what you did wasn't the ultimate, so it wasn't really quite good enough. Not bad, maybe, but not yet good enough. Well, the ultimate may never arrive; so being happy with what you have done, without losing sight of what you want, is fine. The other reason self-praise may be rare is that praise in general is in short supply. In the first instance it's a case of - ok that was good but not good enough; in this second instance it's more like - nothing I ever do is particularly good, no one ever tells me so, why should this be any different?

This is the time of year when you should be reviewing your season in order to plan the next one. Part of that process is to look at where you succeeded. If you can't find anything good to say about your performances and your training maybe it's time to jack it all in? If the only pat you can give yourself is a cowpat (sorry, that was stretching things a bit) then have a word with yourself - you have done some good things this season, and you must recognise them, celebrate the fact and give yourself a big pat on the back. You've done really well!

* The swim: in a long race, it doesn't make much difference to your time, so take it easy. I swam around 1h 20, taking it extremely easy, and some of the elites at the very top end of the field swam over 1hr, but I can assure you that by the end there was just a little more than 18-19 minutes between us!

* Run shoes: I will lose two toenails soon, and one of those toes was damn sore during the race, adding to the list of pain areas to overcome. The shoes I chose were great for short and moderately long runs, but maybe I could have chosen another pair that wouldn't have caused me pain later on in the race. The reason? The ones I chose have a relatively narrow last, and I have ones with a broader last that would have allowed my feet to expand, as they undoubtedly would do in c8hrs of riding and running. Maybe this would have made my life a little easier, but it's hard to say.

* Comfort: I have some carbon-soled tri-shoes, but my battered old Sidi Genius are far more comfortable on long rides. OK so I couldn't leave them in the pedals and do a super-fast running mount, but then I wasn't going to do that anyway. Comfort is king. (See shoe mistake above!)

* Emotions: you get emotional in a long race. Towards the end of the run I passed a mother with a little girl who looked a lot like my Edith, and the next thing I knew an unstoppable wave of emotion barrelled up my throat and into my stupid eyes, which filled up for quite a few minutes afterwards.

If more points about this race or long events in general come to mind I'll post again soon. 

With 2k to go I got angry with shuffling along, mentally moaning in pain and engaging in pointless and very slow ding-dong battles with other such runners; 2k to go, you've run 28k, biked 120k in the mountains and swum a rather chilly 4k; you've done all that and you're just going to shuffle on home like the rest of them. So I tentatively lengthened my stride and speeded up and waited for the agony to increase. Nothing. A bit faster. All fine. So I ran, properly ran, those last 2k, blew away the plodders whose ranks I had been very much part of and crossed the line looking pretty good, all things considered.

The jewel in the crown of this race is the bike course. The Vosges mountains are challenging enough for Gérardmer to have hosted a stage of the Tour de France, and for Ironman France to have been run here for two years. For the XL, as this race is called, there were three 40k laps. Each lap had three climbs. The first was just over a mile - and came straight out of town; the second was about two miles; the third was about four miles. This last was the true winding ascent: you could see a line of riders stretched up ahead and behind  you as the road wound upwards. The descent from this summit was just as typical. With a system in operation that meant only traffic going the same way as the race was allowed, you could use the whole road to descend, confident that nothing would come round a blind bend and kill you. My one hairy moment came near the bottom of the second descent. Down at the bottom I could see a tractor pull out onto the road, the driver swearing and gesticulating at the marshal who was pointing at me and imploring the driver to stop. One of the tractor's massive tyres went over a large plastic road divider, shattering it and sending half of it spiralling up into the air - I was watching this in disbelief as I bore down at nearly 40mph - to land slap in the middle of the road, directly in my path. I think the poor marshal had his hands over his eyes. Thankfully this wasn't a lot different in principle to many an incident in London traffic, I was alert to the dangers, and a sharp brake and even sharper swerve saw me right, if a little shaken.

The lake at Gérardmer was about 16 degrees C, after as dismal a summer as we have suffered - indeed, the two days leading up to the race were cold, cloudy, drizzly and very  demoralising, as we found it hard to stay warm at our lovely campsite.  Race day was mercifully fine, but long sleeves were in order on the bike, after that chilly swim, and I welcomed them on those long descents. Some racers opted for tights, thermal jackets, overshoes - the whole Arctic lot. I noticed from the results that one racer spent 14 minutes in transition, presumably spent in getting thick lycra over his shivering limbs. The lake lies east-west, so the return leg of the swim was straight into the rising sun, and a lot of the less experienced swimmers around me were faffing and slowing down everyone else's progress. I stayed cool, carried on swimming long, smooth and slow, and came out totally unstressed albeit later than anticipated, and ready to ease myself round the bike course. My race plan was 'be sensible' on the bike. During the swim I reminded myself, whenever my patience wore a little thin and I wanted to get on with it, that there was plenty of race left and not to be stupid; for the bike the focus was getting to the run in good enough shape to do it some sort of justice, and that meant going slowly, no matter how many people passed me. And there were plenty, believe me.

The run was four laps of the lake, with a few little climbs into the forest to keep everyone honest. For 28km it was a question of maintaining focus, staying centred and working to stay on top of the mounting pain. The fact that the aid stations were giving out chocolate was an enormous bonus: I probably put on a few pounds that day.

I'm pleased that I did what I would have counselled my athletes to do: ignore the other racers, do your own thing, conserve your energy, finish the run well, slow down as little as possible on the run, focus, focus, focus and more focus. I didn't look at my watch once, not until I crossed the line, which I think was a major success in the game of staying in the moment. I'm happy I got round on such little preparation.

But never, never, did I think I would be out on the course for just under 10 hours. And that to me is embarrassing. I can come up with a row of excuses, from my 10 years of injury to the lack of specific preparation, having Edith, and so on, but ultimately I feel like I was there under false pretences, a tourist among racers. I won't lose any sleep, don't get me wrong, because the flip side is that I never would have guessed that I could make 10 hours of effort seem so easy, and that is something I am proud of, since it is an aspect of my racing and coaching that I give weight to.

This race will host the European LD Championships next year, so at least I am in a good position to offer advice on it! I am a little mystified as to why so few Brits did this race this year, although it did fall on the same day as the Vitruvian. But to go to one of the most beautiful regions of Europe, to get involved in a massive and extremely well-organised race, to ride real mountains, to do one of the true long-distance formats of 4k/120k/30k...to get CHOCOLATE at aid stations...start training now!

A massive round of applause please for Dean - though he's not happy with his race after having the swim of his life and then thinking he was behind, not in front of, his main rivals, and riding his legs off to catch up, then being drafted to death - Jill, top ten finish in second Worlds ever (second full season) - and Chris, in first full season and still getting over the knee injuries that prevented him turning pro a few years ago (not triathlon!). My hat goes off to you all.

Irony of ironies. After urging a bevy of my athletes to do this 'Nice' distance race in France, and having been persuaded to do it by one of them, my pal Mark, it now turns out I am the ONLY one doing it. The words 'it's not fair' come to mind - along with 'you are the athletes, I am a broken, fat, unfit and very rickety coach. YOU do the races, I plan them.'

But no. The universe is having a little giggle at my expense, and that's fine, actually. As I write this, Wednesday, I am getting my stuff ready to go on a tri-road trip to Gerardmer with Mark, who will hold my coat, so to speak, as I get to grip with the mountains of the Vosges. Two Ironman races in the space of two months proved too much for him, and the spirit and flesh were both very weak when it came to this race.

Even though I am as far away from a fitness level that would allow me to 'perform' - if that were ever a possibility over such a long distance race - and in theory have no competitive juice to excite me, for some strange reason I am slightly excited. I am also mentally preparing for all the pain that the probable structural damage and low levels of endurance will inevitably entail.

I have bought a large pork pie to nourish us as we drive across France. A camp site slightly away from the hubbub of town has been located. I have chosen a bike for the race, like King Arthur choosing a knight for a special mission. I am resigned to my fate.

This weekend is crunch time for Dean, Jill and Chris. Squaring up to the best athletes in the world (allegedly), and at least a higher level of racing than it is possible to have in domestic races. It should be good.

My thoughts, hopes, fears, nerves will be with you this weekend. Do good racing, guys.

My 'Nice-distance' event (I use the the word advisedly, rather than 'race', since I am unlikely to be racing it) is looming large on the horizon and in my mind. And just when I needed to get out for what would have to be my last long ride, I came down with a 24-hour bug that emptied my guts and gave me a short sharp fever to the extent that Caroline rented me out to the local pub as an outdoor heater (one that groaned quite a lot, so they asked her to take me back and got their rental fee back too, so no one was the winner in a rather sordid display of moneygrabbing).

The next day I risked a 'long' ride - 'long' for many long-distancers would be 80-100 miles. Right now, 60 was plenty for me. I hope the fact that I found it fairly hard, and that it put my back into spasm again was due to the short sick spell and not to worse levels of fitness than I thought. I didn't ride it easy, but pushed the pace a little, and trotted off afterwards for a 15- minute transition run to keep me honest.

It really is debatable how much this will help me on race day, with less than a fortnight for my ravaged body to try to absorb that workout in.  One advantage maybe was that I rode a 10.5 mile loop four times, which was mentally quite tough and required the application of more focus than I thought it would. I really wanted to stop after two loops, because my back and hamstring were really hurting, and I was thinking that going on would not help me on race day, any riding was worth something and I would have covered nearly 40 miles if I went home then, and I could save my big effort for race day - I really tried to persuade myself to go home. Luckily I failed, and by half-way through lap three I was feeling more positive, promising to do the fourth circuit, praising myself for sticking at it when home was so close and not in any more pain than earlier.

I have a strong suspicion that Mark, with whom I am supposed to be doing this race, has not entered it. The ultimate irony would be for me, who never intended  doing anything more than accompanying some of my committed athletes to a great long-distance race, to be the only one doing it, and to toddle off to France on my own. We will see.

While I was slicing up a beautifullly ripe avocado for my lunch my mind wandered to Hawaii - I am rereading David Mitchell's brilliant novel 'Cloud Atlas', part of which is set in Hawaii - and then it wandered on to last year's duke-out between Stadler and McCormack. And it made me think about what 'race fitness' and 'the perfect race' are, and what our notions of being 'fully fit' are.

One of my athletes raced very well last weekend after a long lay-off, and said he was a long way from 'race fitness'. I understand his point, but I would also say that when you race, you have your race fitness for that day, and that is ALL you have! All you have is that moment (this moment), and you cannot know what your fitness will be in a month's time; and if you were a lot fitter a few years ago, then those moments are gone and you can never guarantee that you will be in a similar state. We change, the world changes around us, our race rivals change...

Which brings me back to Hawaii: Macca got stronger for Hawaii 2006, and a lot better, to win a race that he couldn't even finish the first time he went there (expecting to win, ironically) and at which he had constantly struggled to put in the really great race performance everyone knows he is capable of. And on race day, it's hard to argue that he could have gone any better. He possibly had his greatest ever performance, maybe even the perfect race for him at Hawaii. But who knew that Normann Stadler would steal several minutes off everyone by having a breakthrough swim, and turn the race on its head? All stormin' Normann had to do from T1 on was hold it steady - ride as usual (ie lightyears faster than anyone else) and put in a solid, no-frills run and victory was his, even though a hard-charging Macca was eating up the gap between them on the marathon, running like a man possessed.

You can have your perfect race and get a good spanking; be moderately fit, but execute everything well and have a good placing; feel like shit before a race and have a good one, and feel like a god before a race and die a dirty death. Triathletes train a lot, and race fairly infrequently, and often there is an expectation that those races should be perfect, and achieved in a state of top race fitness. My job and my passion is to get my athletes to higher performance levels, but no one should be fooled by how life works, and go chasing the Holy Grail of the perfect race and top fitness, since it is a horrible paradox that by ignoring them and making sure our NOW is working well that we may sneak closer to them. 

With my little trip to France in September pretty much inked in, the urgency to get more training under my belt in order to limit what promises to be absolutely hideous damage on race day gets greater. To this end I accompanied a couple of my charges at a half-marathon on Sunday, held on a multi-lap course around Hackney Marsh.

To make things a little more real, I got out for a tough little ride beforehand, including a standing, big-ring ascent of Lippitts Hill, which is steep enough to suck most of the juice out of your legs when ridden up like that, followed by a longish TT effort to get home in time to get out again for the race. Job done, legs quite fatigued, even slightly sore, as I toed the line.

Part 2 of making it real was to go out a little too fast, in order to make the second half a battle against fatigue. Easy enough to go out a little too briskly, it doesn't hurt then! The heat added to the reality check.

This is a nice low-key race, and 6 laps didn't seem like trial at all; indeed it allows you to check your pacing, and even enjoy the rare pleasure of lapping other runners! My 'keep it real' strategies all worked, making the last 20-30 minutes a bit of a death march as my adductors seized up, my back caved in, one knee started begging for it all to stop, and my pace slowed to what may even be faster than my pace on Gerardmer race day. This course is billed as 13.5 miles - 6 x 3.6k - so I was pleased with 1hr 34 minutes and collapsed into a foetal position after crossing the line.

For the record, both of my companions put in very encouraging and competent performances, and I wish Nick well at Bedford and the Vitruvian, and Jon a happy New York marathon.

I was in Canada, on Vancouver Island, staying at a house on a lake.  One of the friends I was staying with has entered the New York marathon (race date Nov 4th) and thus far had not run for more than an hour. I got him to run for a tad under 90 minutes early in the week, and then pointed out that it would be a good thing to take the bull by the horns and get a 2-hour-plus run under his belt, a prospect that he found frankly terrifying.

I explained the importance of going beyond one's comfort zone, of getting closer to race duration, of building confidence, of just f***ing training instead of poring over the schedule, blah, blah, blah, and a few days later I accompanied him on his first ever run of over two hours, (2 hrs 12) during which we also covered over a half-marathon, a feat which amazed him no end. I helped, but he did it.

Then I thought how I had been avoiding my long swim. I had a wetsuit, a lake, enough time in any given day and I had been doing 25-30 minute swims instead of the 70-minute swim I had promised myself. And here I was giving it large to an inexperienced runner about not being afraid of the big sessions. So I got cross with myself, then went out and swam for 72 minutes, starting ve-ery easy and gradually building pace. And guess what, no one died.

Proponents of what is becoming known as Evolutionary Fitness and Primal Health take the view that regular high-end aerobic and threshold exercise goes against our adapted design - it puts too much strain on the heart and metabolism. One writer takes morbid glee in pointing out when an endurance star goes down with a modern metabolic disease - Steve Redgrave's diabetes, for example, due, it is supposed, to the vast quantities of sugary foods he consumed to fuel his gargantuan training efforts.

Well one of the greatest marathon runners of the modern era, Alberto Salazar, has had a serious heart attack at the age of 48. He won the New York marathon three times on the trot in the 80s (although his Olympic record was not remarkable), and returned from retirement in '94 to win the 53-mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa. One of the fittest men on the planet in his day (according to conventional wisdom, anyway) has severe heart problems, and the EF people will be pointing to this as further evidence of the long-term damage caused by unrelenting high-intensity aerobic training.

So what can I pass on in terms of race execution that may be of help to you? What went well, what I did right in this half-IM - swim pacing and effort levels, definitely. Didn't really get any good long drafts, but when I did I swam catch-up and glided as best I could to save energy; I swam really good lines and didn't swim overdistance at all, unlike many people in front who were zigzagging plenty. I really focused on my stroke, on rotation and catch and glide, and this made 2k seem to go by in a flash. So I got out of the water quite happy, unstressed, calm and ready for the bike. Can't think of any mistakes on the swim.

T1 - I had an aerobar-mounted drinks bottle, and I hadn't fastened well enough. Weighed down with water - I had tested it unloaded, duh, and subjected to severe jiggling as I ran the bike over the ploughed field of transition, it started to come adrift, and I had to stop and redo it.  Lesson - test things as they will be in race circs.

Bike - I think I went out a bit fast for my fitness levels and training background; pacing is always an issue when you race so infrequently, and although I was clear in my mind what RPE I was going to work to on the bike, there was a little blast of adrenalin that clouded my pace judgement early on and caused fatigue later. Lesson - have a cue maybe at T1 to remind you to go at goal RPE or pace straight away and not when you remember after 20 mins. What went well - feeding. I didn't overcarb. That was key. Water in the aerobottle, light electrolyte solution in my other bottle and some carb support from a gel in laps 2 and 3. Weeing without having to stop - I hate stopping - was good, and also alleviated my back pain slightly.

Run - I hadn't bothered to put lace locks/elastic laces in my shoes because I didn't feel my race ambitions warranted it. Fine, but when a lace came undone I had to stop and retie it. I didn't lose much time, but bending down was agony! Lesson: plan to make life as easy as possible even if speed is not a factor. What went well - cadence. I think I actually ran better than my fitness and fatigue would have dictated. I know I ran a slow 20k but I think it actually could have been slower. What also went well was that I didn't give up in the face of a lot of severe pain - god, I'm tough - and didn't resort to walking. I know I wanted to!  So overall I think I achieved my goal of acquitting myself well in the context of what I brought to the race - I 'run what I brung'. I got a very high percentage of my available performance on the day, and that is what all racers should strive for.

The Beaver middle distance triathlon; swim 2k, bike 80k, run 20k.  The swim, a confusing asymmetric polka around a course  resembling a ski slalom, with T1 a good half-mile distant, up a slippery hill of a field, and the bike exit another few hundred metres on the other side of the field; the bike, three laps including one evilly steep grind and a lot of nasty lumps and twisty descents; the run, also three laps with a heartbreakingly long steep ascent just after the start of each lap, and a psychologically damaging extra out-and-back loop where you could see runners pulling away or being clawed back.

So the distances belie the evil, cruel nature of this race. Before the race my take on it was: 'I've done one or two decent long sessions, and I know I won't kick any arse, but I'll get round ok - how hard can it be?' Afterwards it was less a case of me walking my talk than hobbling my croak. I found it, once the easier bits were out of the way - swim, first lap of the bike - damnably hard.

My personal travails were compounded by the fact that my age-old injury problem reared its head quite soon into the proceedings, my back going into spasm after about 20 minutes on the bike, and pulsing in and out of it for the rest of the race; and to add insult to agony, I had some leg cramps, which was something totally new to me.

This is a great race. The swim is silty, the flailing limbs swirling up ever more mud to prevent you seeing more than an inch in front of your nose; the bike course is tough indeed, testing every facet of bike fitness and adroitness; the run is a bastard, and I doff my cap to those wonderful athletes who truly raced it. T1 is incredibly long, more like a mini-aquathlon thrown into the mix.

As I write this blog, the results have not yet been published, so I can't say how well or badly I did on my limited diet of training, my constant injury shadow and general laziness, but my time was five hours and 24 minutes and that seemed like an adequate return on the above investment.

Having watched six young men try to come to terms with a Tarahumara race I now realise that the programme is so much about them and their individual battles that you learn little about the running culture and the country they live in. It's not an anthropology programme after all.

The race that I was lucky enough to witness was similar: one shortish loop of about 3 miles (which my guide and I calculated by estimating the pace per mile of the various runners as they passed and timing the intervals between them passing in front of us) run about 20 times. The race was also a battle between two villages, and the distance was announced after much negotiating between the two village leaders immediately before the start. That really tickled us - imagine turning up for a race and having to wait while the distance is decided upon. One significant difference was the terrain: most of this race was run on a dry river bed rather than a mountain trail. We had to come up the river bed to get to the race start, and it was hard to walk on, let alone run fast on. And in huaraches! I've put some pix of my huaraches below. They're not for sale, but if anyone fancies a trip to the Copper Canyon to buy some and have a run, then let's talk!

Now that the Nationals are done I would like to say I how proud I am of three athletes who have done themselves proud so far this season. Chris Hill has beaten back a severe long-term injury problem to qualify for the Sprint Worlds in Hamburg. Dean Moy has qualified yet again for the Worlds, and comfortably won his age-group at the Dambuster. And Jill parker has not only qualified for the Worlds too, but has become national Champion in her age-group. My warmest congratulations go out to you.

In case this looks bad, I'm proud of ALL of my athletes, and there have been some really excellent efforts this season already, but I'm just thinking about the Worlds here, ok? 

I've only bleedin' been an' gawn an' entered a race, enn'I? The Beaver 1/2 IM race. July 15th. A few days away. Am I mad? When did I last race? Can't quite remember. How far was it? Standard distance. The feelings as I entered my payment details online were akin to those experienced just before walking out on stage, or entering a dental surgery, maybe. You know the feeling.

I'm not the impulsive sort, but this was pretty much an impulse buy. I believe that normally one trains for such an event, so I'll have to see how things go. I have a wetsuit, a bike and some running shoes. I can get to the race venue. I'm not thinking much further down the road than that, for further down that road madness lies. 

Mark Cavendish, 22, is one of the few Brits in the Tour de France this year.  He has his priorities sorted, if this excerpt from a recent interview is anything to go by:
When you're out cycling up a big hill and it's cold and raining and you've 40 miles to go and you're aching all over and your directeur sportif is shouting abuse at you from the car, do you ever think to yourself: "What the hell am I doing here? I wish I had a proper job."
There's are times when you do think that, but I've worked in a bank before and I'd rather do 300km on the bike in the pissing rain every single day than go back to that.

The out-laws were staying with us last week to help look after Edith while our childminder was away on holiday. Edith really gets on with 'Mam-ma and dad-dad' (grandma and granddad) so it was a great help. Anyway, grandma cooked us a meal one evening that was fairly typical for her: lamb, with boiled carrots and roast potatoes. Nice. From the point of view of good protein, no problem. From the point of view of moving towards a successful day's consumption of fruit and vegetables, it was not good. She'd cooked two (large) carrots between four. And I don't really count potatoes boiled then doused in oil and roasted as a portion of veg. So I make that 1/2 a portion of veg for the meal. And the carrots were boiled - does that reduce their nutritive value? I think so. So that becomes maybe 1/4 of a portion.

Enter Captain Smug. So far today (just after lunch) I've had 1/2 a large avocado, one large beef tomato, a yellow pepper, a stick of celery, a pear, a nectarine and a large serving of raspberries, plus two lots of nuts and dried figs. I make that about seven portions, and in general I keep tabs on my intake to make sure I exceed five portions most days. I just don't think my out-laws pay too much attention to what is going in, even though if you asked them about the '5 portions of fruit and veg' thing they would be aware of it. If they were in excellent health I wouldn't feel justified in pointing this out, but they both suffer from inflammatory conditions - arthritis, back pain - which could be alleviated by changing their diet.

It's all a question of habits. Getting into the habit of eating and monitoring one's intake of plenty of fruit and veg is not necessarily easy, but in the grand scheme of things there are tougher assignments to take on. Aim for a minimum of five portions, and don't do what I have done today, which is to have more fruit than veg.

Second in my occasional series of 'not-in-the-training-plan' workouts to inspire you. I was rereading my account below of the ascent of a Pyrenee, and this one contrasts completely, being flat and urban, and run in cool conditions. I was living in Leyton (east London), and one Saturday Caroline and I were due to visit her cousins in Ruislip, west London/Middlesex. A quick glance at the A-Z showed me that there was a route there that went almost all on canal towpaths, and that I could send Caroline off on the Underground while I ran, setting off three hours earlier - I estimated the distance as 30 miles.

Armed with more knowledge and, crucially, more kit, I selected a large Camelbak and a few gels (yes, we have moved from the 80s to the 90s for this story), and decided my Asics DS Trainers were most apt. The night before, I scrawled a few route notes onto a scrap of paper.

This run divides neatly into four sections in my memory: the first stretch, while I was fresh, took me across Hackney Marsh and onto the canal, which I followed as far as Camden. This was a route I knew well; pacing was easy, and I looked out for favourite landmarks like Broadway Market in London Fields, and the City Road Basin at Angel, just before you have to climb up off the towpath and get back onto it in Pentonville. This was easy. Section 2 wasn't.

Just before Camden, the towpath was closed for repairs. Hmm, not in the plan. At this stage I felt I was only just on schedule, and as I tried to make my way round Camden Town I got lost, which caused a slightly tense acceleration as I tried to waste as little time as possible getting back to the canal. After running through the heart of Camden Market - and getting as many strange looks as a retro-clad indie rocker would get in a 10k - I asked a postman for directions, and looking at me in vest and shorts and run shoes, sweating, and breathing heavily, he said 'Are you in your car?' I got back to it near Regent's Park, well behind schedule, and suffering slightly from having run much harder than I ever intended. End of section 2, and about 12 miles covered.

Section 3 was lovely, just blissful: gentle spring sunlight, an even towpath, dogwalkers for company, and a nice, soft rhythmic feel to my running as I eased down and relaxed after the Camden excursion. I still had water, and I sucked down some gels and moved smoothly from 12 to about 22 miles taking in parts of London I had never seen, starting with Little Venice, then Wormwood Scrubs, then moving to the western edges of Alperton and Perivale.

Section 4 was after I left the canal and hit the roads that would take me to Ruislip. My last few metres on the towpath coincided with me using up my last drops of water and wringing out the last stickiness from my last gel packet. It wasn't long before I paid for my extra speed in Camden. The pain began to shoot through my legs and back, my mouth started to dry up and my will started to weaken. I made myself run to incredibly close targets - the next tree, the next lamppost - and then made myself go to the next and then the next. From spanning the broad sunny horizons of west London, my focus was now constrained to the grey pavement under my nose, and a chain of lampposts. This was not fun, but it was effective and lamppost by lamppost, tree by tree, telegraph pole by telegraph pole, I trudged to my destination, where to my idiotic and grinning surprise I was met by a cheering girlfriend and family, and even a poster to congratulate me, made by the youngest daughter. I made it 32 miles at least, with detour, and very little walking. Lunch tasted great. We both got the Tube back home.

Time for me to get the latest tri-magazine/modern world blues off my chest, I suppose, and I'll lead into it with the 'two clocks' theory, which has its foundation in the work of that well-known triathlete Albert Einstein. When you're dealing with a long workout, problems tend to be a result of the you having two clocks to refer to. Consider an evening spent with someone you are falling in love with: it will seem to pass in an instant. That moment when you both look at your watches as the waiters pointedly start putting chairs on tables, when you both gasp in mock amazement at how the time has flown, and catch each other's eye in acknowledgement of how human chemistry has warped time. (Next is a cab home, and make it snappy...) Your own clock and the one in the restaurant were at odds, but the odds were in your favour.

Now, at some stage in a 5-hour ride, when your crotch is sore, you might be a little irritated when what feels like three hours of elapsed time turns out to be two. Since in general we tend to look at the segments of our days passing by in fairly short time-frames, this primal capacity to accept time for what it is is one we find difficult to apply.

Ideally we would like every activity or session we embark on to seem like a pleasurable and comfortable expenditure of time. Not long and boring, nor over too quickly to experience it. Both clocks in synch. And one of the key ways to achieve this is by association, which, as any sports psychologist will tell you, involves tuning in to yourself, your movement, your exertion, and your relationship with the world you are moving through. 'Etre engagé' as Camus would say. Being responsible for your own thoughts and actions instead of allowing them to be whitewashed over with a thick layer of externally manufactured input.

How do more and more people work out now? In gyms with harsh light bouncing off mirrors and polished chrome machinery, banks of TV screens set up in front of treadmills; spin, step and pump classes which resound to the thud and wail of track after track of hardcore disco; ubiquitous MP3 players plugged into the one-track minds of commuters, cyclists and runners. 'Please distract me!' sports people appear to be saying. 'I'm only exercising to avoid looking bad on the beach, not because I enjoy it, so sweeten the pill.'

Which brings me to an article whose strapline tells us that more and more triathletes are using music to aid their run performance. I believe that more and more people are using music to blot out the world and avoid having to pay any attention to what is going on in their minds and bodies. Citing one of the fastest runners in history, Haile Gebrselassie, having used music to run a fast time, or indeed any elite athlete, is disingenuous to say the least, and in the article the distinction between using music for arousal then going out and performing, and staying plugged in to an MP3 player for the duration of a workout is blurred. The former can be a good thing. The latter is denying you are alive.

Well 2.10 of Zen rhymed nicely (see post below), and this weekend I went for 2.15, but can't rhyme it as well. Last time I decided to do an 'over time' turbo, as in 'over distance' workout, I blithely programmed 60km into the turbo trainer, not thinking I would do it but wanting to throw down a hefty gauntlet to myself. This time I nervously entered 75km. Imagine my surprise when I cruised through 60km in 1.49. It was about then that it all started to feel a little stressful and instead of blissing out on high-end aerobic, and barely noticing the time pass, I was looking at the time every half-minute, it seemed, desperate for it to end. I had to snap myself out of it and get back to all the focuses that got me through last time, and that in itself was an effort, but there we are: 75km in 2h 15. And a sore crotch.

It is 50 years since the first broadcast of the famous 'Go to work on an egg' slogan. The British Egg Information Service planned to rerun a series of the original ads, featuring Tony Hancock, to commemorate the anniversary. Not so fast, you dirty egg-peddlers, said the corporate monsters! They have been told by the advertising watchdog the Broadcast Advertsing Clearance Centre that the ads are in breach of current advertsing rules on promoting a varied diet.

So let me get this straight. It is fine to run ads for breakfast cereals in which regular consumption is the religion. And unless I'm very much mistaken, Kellogg's used to run ads for its hideus unhealthy Crunchy Nut  Flakes in which people were shown eating the cereal in the evening as well as the morning. That's fine too, is it? But promoting a healthy and unprocessed food is not fine. Maybe someone at Kellogg's has had a word with the advertising watchdog. Cereals stink, they are bad for you; eggs don't stink (well, rotten ones do, but when was the last time you had a bad egg - I reckon I've had two in my lifetime) and are good for you. The food industry and ad industry in tandem are a powerful force for evil, aren't they?

Ages ago I came home from coaching a client and packed my kit away; then later when I looked for the shoes I had used for that session, one was missing. 'Silly, forgetful old Huw,' I told myself, with a wry smile, 'You've left one of your shoes at the track.' A month or two later, I threw out the survivor, with great regret, because it was one of my favourite pair of running shoes: adidas Davos. Designed for the niche market of mountain running, it became a firm favourite with XC runners because of its very low profile, with a tiny tad extra cushioning in the forefoot, and excellent grip. The upper has heavy duty, unrippable mesh, and no support whatsoever, so in effect it is like a top-end racing flat, just with a grippy sole and tough as f*ck. My first pair of Davos was so wonderful, in my eyes, that when I heard adidas had remodelled the shoe (it morphed into the 'Swoop', not nearly as good a shoe) I rang round a load of running shops until I found one that still had a pair of Davos in the stockroom, and bought them.

Well, silly, forgetful Huw just found the lost shoe. Silly, forgetful Huw had remembered to bring them both home, but had plonked one of them behind the box his shoes live in, and its partner, which suffered the wheelie-bin burial, in the box.

I picked this lovely old shoe up, about to dump it in the bin too, but took time for a few special final moments together; I looked at it admiringly from all angles, observing how the sole had worn, how the uppers were doing, mourned its lost partner (the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet springs to mind, doesn't it, one believes the other dead, so commits suicide, the other isn't dead, but finds the first dead and also tops self). And finally, I can get to the bloody point: the upper of this totally supportless shoe was leaning crazily inwards, proof that my foot pronates quite a lot. And as I replayed and reviewed training I had done in this pair of shoes it occurred to me that I never came in from a run in them thinking and feeling anything but good things. Whereas, for example, when I got a brand new pair of 2005 Saucony Grid Swerve (not tried on, but a mate got them at cost!), a lightweight racer-trainer supposedly designed for faster-paced running, that I foolishly guessed would suit my needs, all my runs were accompanied by feelings of not being able to put my foot down how I wanted, of my footstrike being interfered with. My legs grumbled afterwards and I suffered a vague and indefinable sense of frustration. So I took a sharp knife to them and cut away the stability bits, but they were still crap. Pronation is FINE. It is natural. If you run on your heels, pronation will take a lot longer in the gait cycle and can cause problems; but we haven't spent several hundred thousand years of honing our anatomies to become elegant bipeds to then piss it all away by running on our heels, have we? 

Just a quickie, really, on reading about Welsh 400m runner Tim Benjamin's return to form. Under the tutelage of Colin Jackson and his 'old school' methods, Benjamin has been running fast again, and went on record as saying that he was told by Jackson that core strength was vital for him to stay strong right through to the final metres of his race.

And this also ties in a little with a debate that must be carried on all round cyberfitnessworld  perpetually: is there merit in training the core on unstable mechanisms, or is it better trained on a stable base?

People are leaping onto their keyboards to defend both methods, but Benjamin is convinced that moving back to lifting weights as his primary provider of core strength and away from wobbly balancy ballerina stuff has been the (re-) making of him. I freely admit that when as a coach I took a deeper interest in strength training I was sucked in by the 'functional' hype surrounding swiss balls, wobble boards, bosu balls, and the like - to some extent I had no choice, since I was coaching as an assistant to the London Region coach on the junior programmes, and he swore by all this, and I was obliged to learn how to deliver his style of session.

Now I am confident that training for strength on a stable surface is and always has been the way to go. In the case of Tim Benjamin, core strength work involves lifting very heavily charged barbells. In the case of age-group triathletes, the same should be true, but the logistics of getting access to a serious bar + weights is limited, as is our experience and confidence in 'going heavy'. It would be great if every office had a weights room - wouldn't it?

Bjarne Riis has been told that he no longer considered the winner of the 1996 Tour de France, after his admission that he took EPO when he won it. This is not news, so don't think I'm trying to be clever and blog a hot new story like what proper bloggers do in the sexy political blogging climate. Nor is it news that most of the rest of the Telekom team of that era have also fessed up, including the lovable Erik Zabel, who won the green jersey on many occasions, and showed himself to be that rare thing, a big-thighed animal of a sprinter who rode the whole Tour, mountains and all, with competence and good sense.

The big name missing here, of course, is that of Jan Ullrich. While he has been hit with a drugs ban, and subsequently retired from bike racing, he has not opened his mouth other than to protest his innocence, while his teammates are coming clean and at least earning a few points for honesty. Who does he think he is fooling? Are we to believe that when he finished a close second to a drugged-up Riis, most likely on team orders, and then won the year after, he was so naturally fit as to be stronger than EPO users?

Which may leave us thinking, what about the guy who constantly hammered Ullrich into submission, EPO and all - if Ullrich was an EPO user, that is. He too, so naturally fit that he could beat an EPO-enhanced Übermensch and indeed the rest of the dubious field?

This is the hell of drug admissions. One winner comes clean, says he was dirty (do you like the clever and slightly humorous use of metaphor there?) - and other winners are then looked at in the same light, including the greatest Tour winner of all time. 

So I emailed this American power-based bike-training expert about some impenetrable US slang in an article he wrote that I thought was very good, and he was kind enough to take time out of designing graphs with wiggly lines on to reply. 'What does "run what you brung" mean?' I asked him, since that was an imprecation in his article; and he said that in terms of power it meant that if you turn up to a race knowing you are a 280-watts man, and your opponents are 290-watts men, don't back out, but race anyway and just get on with it. He said it derives from car racing, where drivers would turn up with different sized engines, but still  race what they brought (brung).

And that made me think about all the things that psych out triathletes and make them negative about racing: knowing your VO2 max is only average, when your opponents may have higher values; knowing your body fat percentage is higher than your rivals' (or seeing that this is the case); having a bike that is too heavy, not aerodynamic enough, not carbon enough, wheels that are not disc enough; knowing you have a weakness in one of the three disciplines;  there are certainly more to add to the list, but it's late at night...

Run what you brung. Enjoy racing, be grateful you are alive, fit, healthy, and give what you have to give. maybe next time you'll have more to bring, whether it's a shiny new bike or stronger legs or better swim technique. The incomparable Mark Allen knew that: he frequently said that whatever he had available in a race, he made sure he gave 100% of it. Even when he was in meltdown at Hawaii, bleeding internally, and operating at, say, 10% of his usual powers, he gave 100% of that 10%. That is how to achieve success and fulfilment.

OK bear with me on this. This site is set up by me through a very nifty package called Mr Site. I am not in the least bit web-savvy yet I set up this (more than) adequate site without the slightest difficulty, and now have the capacity to talk through my blog to my clients, and let new ones see what I can do for them. I'm a fan. If anyone goes to www.mrsite.co.uk/friends and enters the offer code: fitnessfarm.co.uk they will get Mr Site for a fiver off. Brilliant, eh? The fact  that the fiver goes to me has not in any way influenced this blog.

I have been doing some run coaching – technique – and it made me think about the whole idea of run technique as it is perceived by both athletes in general and the athletes I come across as a coach.

The Pose Method is something that a few athletes bring with them in their brains when I coach them, and I have observed that when I encourage a runner to do something, it is done with an overlay of Pose that I never asked for (nor wanted!)

So let me just give a few thoughts on my approach to run technique, and on the Pose Method.

We evolved from apes, who are not able to walk or run upright. Humans are bipeds, and we have a tush/booty/derriere/backside/situpon that apes don’t. (And ours don’t go bright blue when we are ‘in season’, which I am always grateful for). As we are now, we are adapted as runners; running is therefore an unlearned action, in the sense that it is not learned cognitively. I have not taught Edith to walk or run: she has done what all humans are born to do, and worked it out for herself. I just try to help her not trip up on things as she walks and runs and sprints with ever-increasing ease.

I like to think of running as a reflex. Indeed, if you were to stand on a downslope, and were to receive a gentle push in the back, gravity would pull you forward and down, and you would break into a run until you could control gravity.

So my approach is that if you have the mechanisms for good running inside you, so to speak, my job as a coach is to let you access those mechanisms.

Now, one of the things you will see immediately on the Pose website is a bunch of testimonials from people who say how much their running has improved since they ‘took up Pose’. Of course, if Romanov is to make a living, he has to have proof his stuff works. Same goes for me. But I put it to you that the whole perspective is arse-about.

‘Since I started Pose, I realised how poorly I used to run, and now I run more normally.’
‘Since I paid loads for a Pose workshop, I learned that I was weak in key areas and now I am stronger, and run more closely to how I am supposed to.’
‘Pose perfectly suits my left-brained western neurotic need to learn and apply a rigid system. I love it!’
Not testimonials Romanov would have on his site, but I think that this is the truth. I know there are fundamentals to good running, but I think that it is stretching the case a little for anyone to package them in a system and sell something we were born to do as a product. It’s almost like eating – imagine if people were to make money selling ideas on how to eat healthily, when the answers are both out in nature and within our own bodies. No, that would never happen, would it…

I never drink any fizzy drinks, so I suppose I tend to ignore news about them, because it doesn't apply to me (I generally ignore The News for exactly the same reason!). However, I was just reading a post on a forum about aspartame, which is the sweetener used in Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi and  any other 'diet' drink, as well as in a range of low-fat foods and ready meals, and desserts, yogurts, hot chocolate drinks, mints, chewing gum and whatever else.

When I did a quick check on aspartame, one item that kept cropping up was a 1996 study that proclaimed that aspartame was safe because it didn't cause cancer. Phew. But the post I was just reading pointed to a 1996 study that separated out all the aspartame studies into those sponsored by The Industry, and independent studies. I quote:

"Analysis Shows Nearly 100% of Independent Research Finds Problems With
Aspartame
October 17, 1996

An analysis of peer reviewed medical literature using MEDLINE and
other databases was conducted by Ralph G. Walton, MD, Chairman, The
Center for Behavioral Medicine, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry,
Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. Dr. Walton
analyzed 164 studies which were felt to have relevance to human safety
questions. Of those studies, 74 studies had aspartame industry-related
sponsorship and 90 were funded without any industry money.

Of the 90 non-industry-sponsored studies, 83 (92%) identified one or
more problems with aspartame. Of the 7 studies which did not find a
problems, 6 of those studies were conducted by the FDA. Given that a
number of FDA officials went to work for the aspartame industry
immediately following approval (including the former FDA
Commissioner), many consider these studies to be equivalent to
industry-sponsored research.

Of the 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies, all 74 (100%) claimed
that no problems were found with aspartame. This is reminiscent of
tobacco industry research where it is primarily the tobacco research
which never finds problems with the product, but nearly all of the
independent studies do find problems.

The 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies are those which one
inveriably sees cited in PR/news reports and reported by organizations
funded by Monsanto/Benevia/NutraSweet (e.g., IFIC, ADA). These studies
have severe design deficiencies which help to guarantee the "desired"
outcomes. These design deficiencies may not be apparent to the
inexperienced scientist. Please see the documentation in the
scientific section of the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center web
page for more detailed information about these and other studies or
email mgold@tiac.net for more information."

(Me again) The post, too long to quote in full here, goes on to highlight the dangers of what happens when aspartame is heated above 30 degrees C, and cites the illnesses suffered by US Desert Storm troops who were handed huge quantities of diet drinks that had been heated up in the desert sun.

I'm just reaffirming the importance of avoiding food and drinks that come out of factories, and to disbelieve the corporations who stand to profit from their consumption when they assert that adding chemicals to food is perfectly healthy. Eat food, not food products.

I said in an earlier post that I would describe some of my most fulfilling solo workouts, partly to underscore my assertion that you don't have to pay for a big race to do something that you can remember for the rest of your life, barring senility, and partly to remind all you athletes out there that changing the rules of how you train every now and then can bring great benefits.

So there I was, living in the Spanish Pyrenees, and not that much into endurance, still in limbo between team sports, now forsaken, squash, not much chance in Spain, and the occasional run that I knew would keep me ticking over. My boss, on the other hand, loved running, and during the two-and-a-bit months I was there, turned my occasional into frequent, and changed my horizons from short flat road to long mountainous trail.

I wanted my last weekend there to be a good one, and decided to run up Peña de Oroel, the mountain just below the town of Jaca, where I was living.  Jaca is at about 800m, and the summit is about 1,800m, so I made that a round 1,000 of climbing, plus the run to the base and back. Being August it was going to be hot, damned hot, so I thought ahead and put a 2l bottle of water in my old canvas rucksack, along with some cheese and an apple or two, put out my rugby shorts and a T-shirt (hey, cotton was all there was in those days) and my squash shoes and set my alarm for very early o'clock. That, in the background of the picture below, was my challenge, and I wasn't even an endurance athlete in training: I was close to being an ex-sportsman, who drank and smoked and made half-hearted attempts at keeping in shape.

























I got to the foot of the mountain, to the top, down, and back to town, mostly running, and achieving my goal of getting back in time for dinner and a drink. I had never really attempted anything like this before, and rather than feeling like the ascent was a grind, I felt free, alert, aware; I felt light and powerful (in real life I was neither!) and ran all but the steepest, twistiest bits, emerging onto the plateau of the summit to see an eagle hovering and gliding dozens of feet below me. The euphoria stayed with me until I hit the flat stretch back in to town, when, after a day of exertion, my water and food long gone, everything suddenly began to fail - legs, feet, and mind too. But I was too close to home to give up, and I wanted food and my bed.

I think what made this so wonderful, apart from the obvious beauty of the setting (although after a couple of months there I was used to that view, it was what I woke up to every day), was the simplicity with which I approached it, almost as an excursion with a difference - it was a run not a walk - rather than an endurance challenge. No carbo drinks, no bi-directionally soled trail shoes, no Oakleys, no Coolmax; no training plan and no taper. And no nerves. I just woke up one morning and went and did it.
Below is the summit, not really a plateau, and you can see a cross in the background which is where I sat and ate my cheese and apples and watched more eagles below me.

Granny in 'The Beverly Hillbillies' used to refer to the swimming pool in their luxury mansion as the cee-ment pond. That's pretty much what Waltham Forest College pool is, a postwar 33 1/3 yard concrete box hidden away in the basement of what used to be Walthamstow Art College (where Peter Greenaway met Ian Dury, if you're interested, which is why Dury had a part in Greenaway's 'The Cook, The Thief, His wife and Her Lover', but that's moving away from blogmessage).

It is ugly, unsophisticated, a bit grubby, and it is for swimming in. No funky jets of water, islands or mock beaches to distract kids from the serious business of swimming. No lockers, so no need to wait 10 minutes for a pool attendant to come and retrieve your pound coin when it gets stuck. No diving boards. No mermaid mural. No palm trees, the only vegetation being the film of mould around parts of the changing rooms.

But as a swimming resource, as used by Waltham Forest's top swim squad, the Gators, and home to East London triathletes, and erstwhile Swimfortri courses, it has more than done its job. It is quiet, plain and unassuming, sensible - and runs at a loss. The College, which as an educational establishment is of course all about balancing books first and foremost, and 'delivering' educational 'products' to its 'customers', can no longer to afford to have a grubby white elephant sitting in its basement, and has announced its closure at the end of the next term. In just a few weeks we will lose a much-loved and - by those who know it and love it - much used resource.

I am honestly very upset, and I know that users and staff are too. I don't know how negotiable this is. Clearly once it is closed it will not be destroyed immediately; weeks, months or years will elapse while the pool still exists as a structure, so there is always hope. But is there any way of persuading the college bean counters that this pool is truly needed in the community? Does the recent study that showed that there were not enough pools in the borough count for nothing? What will happen to the Gators, who have produced and should continue to produce Olympians? There will be an outcry of protest - will it be enough?

You are all probably aware of the point I am about to make, and it is only one piece in the jigsaw, but it is a very important piece. I just read something that reminded me just how important this is, so I thought I'd share.

Insulin resistance is bad. Insulin sensitivity is good. Remember that. Next: the more carbohydrate you eat, the worse it is for you. And the less you eat the less harm it can do you. It's a bit like alcohol in this respect, and not like sunlight. Insulin resistance means blood sugar levels are hard to control, are usually elevated, and this leads to type II diabetes, heart disease, obesity, TOFI (thin on outside, fat on the inside, with intra-abdominal fat being a right killer) et al. The more sugar you eat, whether in the form of starch or sugary foods, the more resistant you become to the lifesaving effects of insulin. The less you eat, the better your endocrine system can control blood sugar levels when it has to. 

A recent study showed that obese individuals following a low GL (glycaemic load) diet lost more weight and kept it off longer than individuals on a low-fat diet. To stay healthy, lay off the carbs!

I was discussing with a client recently the pros and cons of doing a particular race he had his eye on in the medium term. The race in question is a long race, and a hard race, and the client in question would at best be surviving it rather than racing it. It brought me to the question of very long events such as Ironman, and one aspect, which is what the participants get out of them. Since median IM times are falling, we can assume that fewer entrants are racing, and more are participating, as if IM was a mass event with racing going on at the sharp end, like the big European bike events such as the Italian 'Granfondi' and the French 'cyclosportives".

Undoubtedly the completion of an Ironman brings with it a huge sense of achievement; the same can be said for a Granfondo or a major Audax event. In general, the event is a step up in terms of what the athlete was previously capable of and completing it is a major effort.

I've done some long events, but for one reason or another some of the physical efforts of which I've been proudest have been done solo, as one-off efforts, or unusual training sessions, just me working against my desire to give up, with no one running alongside with an energy drink, or screaming 'Wooo, great job fella!' as I totter past, no stream of fellow competitors to keep me going.

So I thought maybe I'd share some of them with you, partly as an exercise in neurotic self-actualisation and the pleasure of logging on to my own site and seeing something written by ME up there; and partly to give an idea of how there are wonderful, fulfilling things you can do without having to then have the IM logo tattooed on your ankle. Stay tuned.

Anyone remember when Evans Cycles consisted of a few stores based around south London? There was Croydon, Kingston, Waterloo, and the Spencer-Smith-sponsoring Wandsworth, a shop to which I made a humble pilgrimage shortly after my entry into the the world of triathlon, hoping that there would be some go-faster tri product that would suit my skinny wallet - there wasn't. Now there are 29 stores (at last count, but they seem to be springing up every other day at the moment), and they have branched out as far as Glasgow, Kendal (that's in the Lake District, for you Londocentrists) and York.

For an independent retailer in a difficult market, they've done an incredible job of brand-building and expansion, tapping into various demographics (that's groups of people, for you traditonal language-users) as they become aware of cycling in one form or another. And while they don't sponsor Spencer Smith any more, they do carry a decent range of triathlon bikes - just be prepared, as with pretty much everything they sell, to get something less than a bargain. They are selling the discounted Specialized Transition Comp 2006 for £100 more than other stores - £1099 to £999 - in fact stop press, just seen it for £979. If you'd like a sweet carbon Bianchi 928, 06 model, with 10-speed Veloce, they'll sell you one for £1,349, while it's available elsewhere for £1,200, and down at the bargain end, a Lemond Reno will cost you £549 from Evans, when you can get your feet on one for £500 if you look around.

So it remains a mystery to me why they do so well. Can anyone help me on this? Is it the customer service? (I had to argue long and hard at their Waterloo shop when I went to pick up a bike after its free service - yes, I bought a bike there - and it wasn't ready, despite both customer and manager arranging a time for pick-up). Is it the range of stock? Is it the nice colours, green and gold (which, incidentally, an ex- - very ex- - coaching colleague who also worked as a decorator swore blind they stole off his original idea)? Don't get me wrong, the more bike shops in the world the better, no question about that. But why do Evans do so well?

I am in the middle of marking a Level 3 candidate's coaching diaries and theory papers, and to the answer to a question on hydration the candidate added the comment that 'by the time you feel thirsty you're already dehydrated,' and further added that 'research shows that a drop in hydration levels of 2% leads to a performance decrease of 20%.'

Well I always had my doubts about the 'thirst means you are already dehydrated' thing; it just never seemed to make sense in the context of other bodily systems. And now I know more about the evolutionary model, it makes less sense.

The drop in performance? Does 4% dehydration mean a drop in performance of 40%? I'd like to think not. 20% sounds like an enormous amount doesn't it? If you were pedalling at threshold holding 300 watts and you were stupid enough to go 2% dehydrated, this would mean you would go from 300w to 240w, or 25mph to 20mph, say.

Both these 'facts' are very common currency, as well the 'you must drink 2 litres of water a day' myth. As a coach and coach educator I used to peddle these myths in good faith, especially since their appearance in the teaching materials implied a degree of scientific validity.

As long ago as 2002, one of the US's top physiologists, and an expert in kidney function and water balance, Professor Heinz Valtin, was pointing out that, a a result of many reviews of research into that area, he could see no evidence to support either that thirst means dehydration or that we need to consume 2 litres of water every day just to stay ahead of the game. It would seem that in the 90s the American Food and Nutrition Board stated that 1ml of water was required for each calorie of food consumed, and for healthy adults living in a temperate climate that would represent about 2L; but their study also stated that almost all of this water was obtainable from food and any beverages (doncha just hate that word?) consumed, and it's almost as if this qualification of the equation was left off when the facts were reported. So if you eat plenty of fruit and veg - and of course you eat little else, don't you? - then the water content of your diet is ample for your basic needs. And when you train, you can add more water to the mix to cover extra fluid loss due to heat and exertion. Above all, don't feel obliged to sip endlessly from a bottle when you are not thirsty - you'll gain nothing but toilet time.

As I was trawling Google for ideas for a logo, I came across my own name attached to an article. And was reminded that I'd written one for a very wonderful guy called Micah True when I spent some time with him in Mexico researching a book I was writing.
If you have a minute or two and are interested in the little-known Mexican canyonlands, then follow (or paste?) this url to what I wrote for his website - he edited a little, but I don't mind.

http://www.caballoblanco.com/article.html

I have a client who, when I recently took him on (for the third time, but that's another story), had scaled down his ambitions from doing a triathlon to just losing a skipload of weight and getting fitter. Very wise, to start at the beginning and put himself into a position to move on to the next goal. Anyway, this chap (and he is I hope reading this, so again congratulations on doing a GREAT job and really turning things around) mentioned to me that many of his colleagues carried out the same dire routine of lunching on beer and crisps and entertaining clients with wine and more wine and fat dinners, yet they were skinny. And he was fat. I pointed out that although they had bodyshapes that he craved they were not necessarily healthy. And that he, as an ex-rower, had the potential to be much fitter then them (like it's a competition!), regardless of bodyshape. At that stage I'm not sure how much that sank in, because he was just not happy about his weight (SO much happier now, though). But I came across an article the other day that summed it all up, and highlighted the perils of focusing on bodyshape above health.

So if you go here, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1619307,00.html you can read about TOFIs, people who are Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside.

I tried to edge past the latest copy of Runner's World without catching its eye, but failed again. It always gets my goat. Usually there is a front cover shot of a good-looking girl grinning inanely into the camera and doing running on a beach or a lovely forest trail. And the production people obviously think it's better to catch her mid-stride, looks dynamic, but it always shows a heel-striking straight-legged gait that entails running along the trail to injury. Like this:


The latest copy showed a pretty girl 'stretching her quads', holding her foot right at the end, in a way that guarantees she'd stretch her toes, feet, ankle ligaments, knee ligaments, and maybe after all that her quads, although since her hips were ever so slightly flexed there would not have been a lot of good quad stretching going on. I don't know if this is the cover or another one, but it looks like this:

As the lowering sky...er, lowered, in a grey, soggy kind of way, I made my way into the garage, naked save for a tatty pair of bike shorts and a HRM chest-strap. It was 'long ride on the turbo' time. My goals recently on the bike have been to get around 3hrs of aero riding at aerobic to high aerobic effort, and I had been successful enough on my last three fortnightly rides to allow myself to be turned away from the attractions of the Epping road by the torrential rain and seek salvation on the turbo.

I was wondering how long I could go (rather than telling myself how long I would go) and just for a laugh I programmed 60km into the turbo, and, just like getting quickly into cold water, hopped on and started pedalling veree, veree gently. Didn't think about anything, just pedalling, and just going easy in the aero position. Half an hour of gentle, HR barely rising above 100, went by as if it were a few minutes, so I started the arithmetic, decided I didn't want 4hrs of turbo, and set about chasing the average, converting distance and time into average speed whenever the numbers were convenient and watching average speed slowly go up. Still focusing on the pedalling, mind, and still keeping relaxed and aero. To cut a long story of arithmetic and pedalling short, I got to 1hr 40 with 10k to go, ie I had gone from an average of around 24kph (15mph) to over 30kph (18-19 mph) - on this turbo, I must emphasise, not to be confused with true road speeds - and getting to 60km in just under 2hrs turned out to be rather easy, the main stress being crotch rather than legs or brain. In fact I carried on up to 2hrs 10 so that I could say I'd ridden 40 miles, (on that turbo) and it still felt fine. RPE 14-15 max, HR no higher than 138, if that is of any value to anyone other than me. Cadence in low 90s all the way through.

What helped me to sit there for 2hrs 10 almost as if it were 2 minutes and 10 seconds? I believe it was a strong focus on the process, allied to a deep feeling of relaxation. I was comfortable for the most part, which is down to the saddle and the bike fit and the bike position; this in turn enabled me to direct my mind to where I wanted it to go, which was either on working out average speed and counting down time versus distance remaining (process-oriented) or on my riding, my pedalling, my shoulders, my toes, my hips, etc etc (process-oriented). I paid attention to my breathing and its rhythms; I spent periods of time with my eyes closed, using this either to 'feel' my pedal stroke and leg actions or to visualise myself riding smoothly and easily on the road.

Next time I do this, I will be surrounded by kneeling devotees, clad in simple robes, each concentrating on a single candle and chanting 'Guru, Guru'. That's my bike, by the way. It's a Guru, but I'm not.

When I first learned about the advent of a new concept in swimming wetsuits, the De Soto T1, a two-piece suit, I was swayed by the article that introduced the idea, and then subsequent reviews. And I made a mental note that if ever I got the chance to trade up to this clever and deeply intuitive design, then I would. And I have. And after two lake swims in it, I'm giving it a shout, as I believe modern DJs say.

When a design resonates with me I don't really mind going with it even if - or maybe because, but that is a winding and overgrown path into my psychology/childhood that we don't want to hack our way down just now, do we - it is 'a bit different' (as dull people say about things that aren't really different at all). Triathlon geometry makes so much sense to me, and I still remember my very first outing on my race bike, nearly two-and-a-half hours, most of it aero, followed by an insanely easy 45-minute steady run. It didn't seem quite right that the run was so easy; part of me wanted it to be the struggle I had become used to.

A two-piece wetsuit also makes a lot of sense to me, and as someone who has always felt vaguely cheated by the constant proclamations that swimming is easier in a wetsuit - the promise was never quite fulfilled for me - then I feel that finally I have arrived at a good wetsuit place. There are two keys to it with this suit, but first a little more history: the idea was not, I believe, Emilio De Soto's, although it was his (usually innovative and funky) company that makes them. It was Dan Empfield who pushed the design towards Emilio and helped him make it reality. Now you may not know Empfield's name, but you know his impact. He founded Quintana Roo. He basically pioneered the triathlon wetsuit as we know it today. He advocated, and built, triathlon bikes with their specialised geometry. If the man behind the tri-wetsuit and the tri-bike decides a two-piece suit is the way to go, then who am I to argue?

So for me, those two big pluses: no pull at the neck. For me this is massive, and something that I'm sure slowed me down - and irritated the hell out of me - in my other suits, the constant tug and tightness at the back of my neck and around my shoulder girdle. And what feels like a loose, flowing arm action, easier to get good rotation and hence to swim with less energy. When I tried to step on the gas, in this suit I got a response. Add on the fact that it comes off as easily as underwear in a rude film and I am a happy open water swimmer.