It wasn’t really too bad – finally got a win against the Filth, even if it was Veteran’s Boat Race, courtesy of an Oxford crew that went off way too hard and paid the price, and some utterly imbecilic coxing. Then a few lazy weeks in which no training was done at all, other than some very lazy runs whilst Britta and her parents were over.

It’s not even a choice. Of course I’m going to spend time with her and with them.

And then starting a new job, which is not leaving a huge amount of time other than to be exhausted. A good thing, then, having read Matt Dixon’s “the well-built triathlete”. It clearly doesn’t refer to me, I’m just fat. But he talks a lot about the load the body and mind can handle, and that that is a function of everything going on in your life. Commuting, life, relationships, work stress, all of that. So from my low base, it was just what I needed to hear.

The pattern over the last few weeks has been: M/W/F run, Saturday swim with Cambridge Triathlon Club. Which has been nice.

Two weeks ago: 30 min runs capped at 142 HR, 32*100 on 1*55. I liked that. Cruised very much so that I sat around 1:20-1:25 for an HR that didn’t seem to get above 130. Running speeds – slow. 5:55 to 6:10 kms. I’ll live with that, build time and then speed into the routine.

This week: 40 min runs capped.

Monday went to 50 mins because it was a public holiday and I was having too much fun. Friday – best run of the week, first 4k at 5:50 or under pace. I’ll take that. Slow, but not breaking a sweat.

Saturday swim: a variety of drills to warm up, then 30*50 on 65 seconds. Goal was to pick a time range and swim fast and hard. If you miss a time, you recover for a swim or two. Swam 30 between 34 and 36 seconds. It got hard towards the end, but never unmanageable. Positively, got told by one of the guys that, “you need to move to the fast lane. And not the back. In the front half”. Nice feedback, but I’m still desperately unfit.

Sunday: Finally got a bike, so dived out onto the guided busway and rolled out 40k or so, pretty cruisy. No HRM, but in windy conditions and nose breathing and not sweating, averaged 34 km/h. Including a roll around St. Ives looking at things. That is positive. I didn’t feel like I couldn’t have done that for a few more hours. The more I think of it, I know that there is so much work to do, but given the only aero thing I have is aerobars, I’m pretty sure that given a decent race suit, helmet, and a borrowed set of wheels (there’s a house in Surrey that I have a key to with a nice Zipp Sub-9, Hed tri-spoke, and Conti GTs. Or I could just pony up and buy some cheap deeps and run them tubeless.) that I can cruise along to a 4:45-4:50 split. We will see.

Beer and Sunday afternoon sleep now.