After a couple of days of doing nothing I decided to get the cut and sore knee moving again so I headed back to the Parkrun in Edinburgh. I decided not to bike down this week and take the time to print my number. Could I get my printer to work! Anyway I couldn't believe it when I was running late again.
I drove, within the speed limit for all the police on the DCC Facebook page, and parked up at the top of the hill. Jumped out of the car at 9.30 and ran to the start Justin time to see the race disappearing over the start line.
I sped up and crossed the start line about a minute after the gun, started the garmin and managed to start passing people. My knee felt loose, the only way I can describe it but once I got moving I didn't notice it too much. The race went pretty much to plan and my number gave me a finish time of 23.58 which if a minute is deducted would be under the 23 minutes - almost 2 minutes outside of my PB. I forgot to switch off my garmin and messed up the timing on that as well. Bumped into my friends Andrew and Jane again today and both did PB's which was a fantastic result for both of them. It's a great race and very friendly.
So this afternoon I did a cross training session for 50 minutes which went to plan. Every week I seem to be getting stronger - time will tell!
Danielle is currently looking rather crossly at me as I turned my muddy kit inside out on Wednesday night and washed it on Thursday. She is now turning out dry mud onto the living room floor and looks like my socks are heading back to the wash!!!
It's 26 weeks to the race and my proper race training schedule will kick in this week. It's always a nerve racking time when you realise the challenge that lies ahead. The constant training, building up time and distances week by week and knowing that from now on it's time to get serious. As I said before I'm good with programmes and sticking to them. Iain Taylor is hopefully joining me in County Down (thus the title Up for Down) - his programme will be different to mine. We race each other but in reality I'm not at his level so the only people we actually race is ourselves. We will both have our targets and goals that we are aiming to achieve but the real challenge is being able to stay fit, complete the training and make the start line. The second target is to finish and third is to deliver a time.
I've seen disasters on race day with people lost in a world of pain where there energy supplies have run out and the next thing people in that state remember is waking up on a saline drip!
The Ironman community is really special as finishing is seen as a success and after the race your time is almost incidental. I've been lucky and met some serious racers who have been happy to chat with me and treated me like a winner in post race parties. I love it!
Weight loss is on target and to date, after from the night time fall, everything is working out. Having the support network around me is also brilliant - the guys on the DCC Multi Sport Facebook page have been great, Iain Taylor is always available for advice and my family are incredibly supportive and encouraging. I'm a lucky man and look forward to getting the traing plan started next week!
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