Rough and ready

While I’m sitting on a plane for 11hrs+ I thought I might as well write a blog post. Who knows when I’ll actually get round to sneaking some internet access to post it though.

So it’s the 3rd of October and there’s just 6 days to go. September ended up being my 2nd biggest training month ever, a long way behind Augusts total but that meant two solid months with no illness and no injuries. I started a healthy eating purge but it just wasn’t me and I soon drifted back into my bad old ways. Still, that’s who I am and Ironman will just have to take me that way.

I had the normal panic packing the bike. Try as I might I couldn’t get 3 wheels into my bike box along with the frame, so it’s just the old 404’s for me. I also worry that the bike box has too much room in it with so little else in there but with it weighing exactly 23kg I didn’t really want to risk doubling that excess baggage charge by having it overweight too (turned out they had no interest in the weight so it’ll get packed more on the return trip). Even now though the bike has an unknown quantity to it though, the LBS couldn’t get my cassette from the new back wheel onto the old one. They have a new Shimano Ultegra cassette on which should be compatible, but it hasn’t been ridden on yet to make sure. I’m sure it’ll be fine though (I hope).

The last week has been pretty steady. I put a solid shift in at the track on Monday and rested Tuesday. Then I looked up me training for two weeks before Florida and repeated it but putting in a 7mile run on Wednesday (although this years was harder than last year) a 40mile bike/2k swim on Thursday, a rest day on Friday and a small 5 mile run on Saturday.

Most of my spare time on Thursday and Friday was spent packing and re-packing things, I even missed my Friday Squad Swim trying to get everything sorted. Then after much milling around on Saturday morning we headed off up to Bristol where we were meeting my parents who are babysitting Rosie while we’re away. They’d offered to meet us half way to save us driving all the way up to Wolverhampton and then having to drive back down South again to Heathrow. We met them at a pub in Almondsbury (just off the M4/M5 junction) called wwwthebowlinn.co.uk for lunch. It’s a bit of a devil to find but the food in there is great, I’m sure we’ll end up there again in the future!!

After handing Rosie over (and Shelly crying) we made our way to Heathrow where we were booked in at the Crowne Plaza though a park and fly company. The hotel was very pleasant and very comfortable. The standard tariff of £250/night is ridiculous though as are their mini bar prices (can of coke £2.50), good job we got a cheap deal. This was just the excuse I needed to pop out for a run and return with some more sensibly priced goodies.

As I got back from my run Chris and Sally arrived at the Hotel. Sally is in my Tri Club and they’ve come along for a holiday and to watch the race. Sweet!!

This morning we were all up and about in plenty of time and we caught the Heathrow Flyer to Terminal 5....... Only when we got there did we realise that we actually needed to be at Terminal 1. I won’t however let anyone where the false information had come from (Shelly). Luckily Shelly always likes to be everywhere ridiculously early so we had plenty of time to grab trains and find out way around the maze that is Heathrow.

Booking in went easily enough so we found somewhere for breakfast. Service was a little slow and when we left out plane was already boarding... then we spotted the sign that said “Allow 15mins to get to Terminals xxx” which was where we had to go. Needless to say it didn’t take us 15mins to get there, especially when I saw the sign that said “Boarding Closing” and had to knock out a 6-800m interval to make sure we were there on time.

All is well though, we made it onboard and settled in......... that takes you up to this point where we’re currently between the Davis Straight and the Hudson Straight and cruising at 36,000ft, it’s -51C outside and we’re bombing along at a Chris Lieto-esque 543mph. I’d better try to get some sleep then.