2015 is in full swing already!

Well its been a few months since I updated this, sorry about that! I’ll be aiming to keep this blog a lot more up to date over the 2015 season with regular training, race and progress updates whenever possible.

So, what have I been up to since the last update in November?

In my last update I mentioned that I was doing the Mallory Park Duathlon, a short 3km run, 10km bike, 2km run race as a final blow out of the 2014 season before fully settling into winter training. It was a rainy Sunday but the condition weren’t too bad for racing, and a field of around 80 people assembled on the start line under the finish gantry of the race track. It was a fast start but having settled in on the 3 lap first run, I came into T1 in 4th place, around a minute back on the leader.

The 5 lap, 10km bike course was around the race track and included a nasty climb at the start of each lap. Within the first lap I was up into 2nd place and after 3km of the course was complete I overtook the leader to take 1st place, a lead which I extended out to about 2.5 minutes coming off the bike into T2. A fast 2km second run and I was across the line, overall winner by about 2 minutes, a great end to a fantastic season of racing! See the video from the race, taken on a camera mounted under my saddle here:

Following this race it was time to focus on the next goal, getting a good winter of training in in the lead up to an even bigger and better 2015 season. The week after the duathlon I picked up a small injury in my left achilles which annoyingly ruled me out of the 3rd round of the North Mids XC League, a race which I had been looking forward to as I enjoy cross country and getting nice and muddy! I then took a couple of weeks off running to allow it to fully heal, so focused on swimming and cycling, getting some good miles in.

Come Christmas week and it was the start of Strava’s regular ‘Rapha Festive 500’ challenge where the aim is to cycle more than 500km in the 8 days from Christmas Eve to New Years Eve. I started well, notching up 210km in the first 3 days, with 50km on Christmas morning before church! It then snowed on the Friday evening, so Saturday was a running day with a gentle 6km run. Even though it was still fairly cold and snowy on the roads, I headed out on the bike on Sunday to get in some more km’s towards the challenge.

Having cycled over 110km the sun dropped fairly low in the sky and the temperature plummeted, freezing any water and slushy snow that was on the roads, which I had been riding through all day! I hit one large patch of black ice and that was it, I was sliding on my backside along the road for about 10m, not ideal! I had bent the derailleur hanger so couldn’t continue and had to call home for a lift, very annoying as I only had 20km left on the planned route anyway. I didn’t feel any immediate pain so hoped that it was just damage to the bike and that I would be able to complete the challenge after a day off on Monday. Here is the sunset on the day I came off my bike, taken as I was walking to find phone signal to call home!

However this was not the case, as I woke up on Tuesday morning with a pain in my hip where I had landed on it and more worryingly a sharp pain in the base of my back which meant it hurt moving at all. That signified the end of the challenge for me after 320km, and also the end of training for the holidays at least until my body was healed!

This turned into a bit of a longer term injury, lasting until the start of February before I could get back into anything like normal training volume. This did however allow me to focus a little more on revising for my uni exams throughout January, which paid off as I have just received the results from these and its looking promising! However, I hadn’t been in the pool, on the bike or out running for a month and boy could I tell! It was going to be a long few weeks before I would be back to the form I was in before Christmas.

So, to the current week! I am back in full training now and am in good shape on the bike and for the running. I’m still catching up with the work I missed in the pool over January but I’ll get there soon hopefully.

My next race and first of the 2015 season is the Silverstone Half Marathon on the 15th March. I am doing this as I’m aiming to do a few middle distance races this year to see how I fare at this distance, so an early season HM should show me where I can be aiming for in these races. The running is going well in training so far, and I ran a 1.30.09 HM split in a training run last week so if all goes to plan I should racing well in 3 weeks time!

I’ll then be looking on to the start of the triathlon season at East Leake sprint on the 29th March, which I am very much so looking forward to! Can’t wait to get out racing again, especially now I have made a few tweaks to my steed over the winter, as shown below! 2015 should be a fun one racing on this machine!

 

 

So, that’s all for now. Sorry for the slightly long post but it’s been a while and a lot has been going on! I’ve got some exciting news to share with you all in the next few weeks so keep an eye out for a new post on here!

Until then, thanks for reading and happy training 🙂