Wantage pool

Up early and home before the boys had finished breakfast.

Felt strong despite Sunday and managed to do crawl for the whole lot with no stops.

Modified my stroke in the final 600m to six beats rather than four and changed my head position in the final 350m which seemed to allow greater glide. Dramatic impact on splits.

In the pool

Torrential rain when we woke up this morning but it had slowed to a drizzle by the time we got up so I stuck with my original plan of running to the pool with a rucksack on for the first time (Berghaus bag). The rucksack felt OK once I had got all the straps pulled tight but I think it will take a bit of getting used to for any distance.

The swim felt like hard work at first but I got back into a decent rhythm after the first 750m. I had planned to do about 1,000m but Jane and the boys were a bit delayed at home so I ended up doing 1,500m. I really need to do some more work on my swim next week.

Wantage Tri route

Great start but there was a brutal headwind after Great Shefford so really struggled with the last half. Legs feeling good though and the bike is feeling OK after its trip to the repair shop!

Snelsmore Common again

Started out with Huw and James at a swift but not excessive pace. Dropped back with Neil after a couple of miles as I wanted to make sure that he got the value out of the miles he has been putting in and I knew he would "plod" on his own! I think it was the fastest he's managed for quite a while!

I felt good and could have gone much further and faster. I actually did about 3k more than the usual route as I parked at The Castle and ran into Shaw as a warm-up.

Very leisurely lunch with Neil afterwards to make up for having missed him on Wednesday when I went up to see Mum in hospital.

It's Back!

Oh, happy day! I've got my bike back from the lovely people at Ridgeway Cycles. I haven't always been completely complimentary about their service in the past but they turned my bike around exactly when they said they would and I had a really nice chat with them when I went in to pick it up.

Then, of course, I had to get out and play so I did the Wantage Tri bike route and then ran the Manor Farm loop. I managed an OK pace on the bike (with a blistering 75km/h coming down into Wantage) but was really delighted with the run. My legs felt absolutely fine and I managed quite a quick pace. I did suffer a bit of stomach cramp about 3k in - need to consider running with some water as probably slightly too much carb content in the Lucozade Sport

Snelsmore Common

A lovely run around Snelsmore Common with Neil. I started out from The Castle and met him outside the old gym entrance so by the time I'd done the usual route and then run back to the car I'd clocked-up 12.4km. Snelsmore is always a nice run and keeping to a slow-ish pace meant that Neil and I could catch up on the gossip.

Had lunch at The Castle afterwards (Jo and Rhys joined us). The guys had bought me some gear for the OMM as a belated leaving gift; I was really touched.

Manor Farm x 2

Twice around the Manor Farm loop (8.2km in total). Nice run but my legs felt a bit heavy after riding the hybrid yesterday… That was harder work than it should have been, I probably need to look at the set-up

First outing on the hybrid

Had to take my baby in to get it repaired this morning following a broken chain which took out two spokes and mangled the rear mech on Sunday morning. So to get over the depression of being without my roadbike for at least a week and to cheer Jane up, as she has been having a tough time at work, we met up for lunch at The Plough at Eastbury.

This meant that I could give the hybrid its first real airing. It's about 12.5k over to Eastbury and I mean over, as there is a pretty steep climb over the Ridgeway before you drop down into Lambourn. The return journey with a couple of pints and an excellent beefburger inside me and a strong headwind wasn't made any easier by the fact that I decided to go the "pretty way" via Sheepdrove Farm. That involved an even greater number of hills and a fair section of off-road; nice way to spend the afternoon though!

Sweaty Ramblings

The fantastic thing about technology is when it is working and you can do cool stuff. My kids are sat in the bath while I compose my first new blog post on my rather fabulous Eee PC. How quickly I've forgotten the three hours getting the WiFi to work or the ranting and swearing 'cos I couldn't install some favourite software (being a bit of a Linux noob).

So, "Sweaty Ramblings"...

This is going to be part training diary, part reportage on interesting races and training venues and partly the opportunity for me to get excited in print as I build up for some of the bigger events in this year's competition calendar.

This morning's run was a beautiful jog out to Letcombe Regis along some tracks that I didn't know existed with Jeremy. The sun was starting to beat down (we went after dropping the kids off at school) so I was relieved when he said he only wanted to do a short one. Good opportunity to link this run up with a run up to the Ridgeway around the Devil's Punchbowl or to use that as a route down after climbing Gramp's Hill.