Nice weather...for triathletes

I must apologise for the lack of posts of late. You'd have thought that being off work, back in the UK, I'd have plenty of time to dedicate to this blog, chiseling and sculpting it into something even more beautiful, witty and emotional. Right? Wrong. So far, it's been a non-stop exhaustathon.

Fortunately, that has involved some training too. With the 'hardest Ironman on the planet' tag starting to stick to IM Wales, I realised it was time for hills. Obviously, this close to the race, there isn't too much I can do to improve on fitness levels etc, but I decided that until two weeks out it was still worth doing some good training in the hills as much for mental preparation as physical.

With that in mind, on Friday I headed out into the hills and valleys of North Wales and the North West on as tricky and hilly a route as I could find. The route took me 135km through Ruthin, Corwen and Llangollen, over the Horseshoe Pass, down to Wrexham, to Chester, along into Flint and then back through Mold. I then ran an easy 6km off the bike.

UK: lovely scenery, god-awful roads.

Observations:

1. That was my longest ever solo ride - being on the bike for 6-7 hours for IM was a concern. But it's fine and time passes fairly quickly.
2. It was a little windy, pretty chilly and started spitting with rain a few times - loved it!
3. Riding here is far more interesting than riding in Dubai.
4. The roads in the UK are slightly worse than in Laos - a third world country.
5. I'm OK at climbing. As long as I take it slow and steady, I can make it up just about any climb.
6. IM course is going to be slow - the bad roads, technical descents and wind mean you just can't make up that much time on the downhills.
7. As long as I don't flog myself on those climbs, running off the bike isn't as bad as I thought it'd be after a hilly ride.
8. This was the hilliest ride I could find with almost 1500m of climbing in total. Ironman will be almost double that.

Top of the Horseshoe Pass. It's demoralising being overtaken by a sheep.

With an equal mix of reassurance and panic in my heart, I headed down to Falmouth, Cornwall, for Jamie and Catherine's wedding - friends from back in Dubai. It was a beautiful day, great do, the bride looked stunning and everyone got drunk and danced like idiots - proper wedding!

Yesterday, I left early (wow, Falmouth is a long way away) and stopped in Bristol on the way home for lunch with my good friend Ceri who I'd not seen since last September. Had a roast dinner, couple of coffees then drove back. And after months of hardcore triathlon training, thousands of kilometres on the road, I think I pulled a muscle in my thigh while driving! Typical - although it was nice to have a full weekend off training and thinking about nothing but whether I'd have a Cornish lager, Cornish ale or Cornish pasty next. And carb loading on amazing scones!

So, another wedding next weekend which means plenty of work to do during the week. Hit the local leisure centre for a swim this morning - the flapping/slapping/dreadful technique/aimless weaving of the swimmers of Mold should make for valuable open water practice in the next couple of weeks.

I did meet another guy at swimming who's doing Ironman Wales too and had taken part in the Long Course Weekend (a sort of training weekend/dry run of IM down in Tenby) a month or two back. I chanced a question, expecting a sort of "sure it's tough but it's been blown out of all proportion" answer. When will I learn...

His opinion? "I didn't make the swim - it took me an hour to do 600m due to the current. And the water is teaming with jelly fish. The bike is just hill after hill, and the marathon is like an uphill hike. I was hoping for 13 hours - but now I'll just be happy to finish."

In future, I'll not ask. 20 days and counting!