Pentlands Bike Ride

Getting the miles in.

Unislam

UoB were victorious at UniSlam - well done Hannah. Next stop the Royal Albert Hall !!!!

On a less happy note our car was broken into. Nothing stolen but a pain to get fixed and it meant I missed my orienteering.

Bike, Three Billboards & Zizzi

After a fairly busy morning I headed out on the bike to the far side of Balerno for a 2 hour ride. For Cherry's birthday treat we went to see Three Billboards at the cinema and dinner at Zizzi at Ocean Terminal.

SOSOL 1 and Sufferfest

With the weather pretty grim I’ve been doing my bike rides indoors with the help of Sufferfest videos to fight the boredom and motivate hard efforts. It seems to work with some really tough sessions this week.

On Sunday I had my first orienteering session of the year. The ground was frozen and potentially dangerous underfoot on the paths. Of course most of the run was on snowy grass which was fine. With the conditions I was focussed on getting round safely. It was a challenging outing with lots of fine navigation through the gorse and complex contour areas on Arthurs seat. There were also a few very long legs which would have been extremely difficult without local knowledge - I could just use my knowledge of the area to plan the best route without worrying about the map.

I was very pleased with the run which only had very minor mistakes. I normally get lost in the gorse bushes so pleased to have carefully worked my way through them.

13th place out of 114 or so runners on the Green course.

Bike Miles

Second week of training with some exercise every day and a 50 mile target for the weekend. With a lot of work to get through the bike rides were scheduled later in the day and the most efficient routes directly from home to save time. These went fine although weren't terribly exciting routes.

Deepsyke Dead Ends

I had planned a long route in the areas South of Penicuik. These are generally fairly bleak areas particularly on a freezing january morning. The first off-road path immediately looked impassible with ground water and very rough terrain so detoured around to the main entrance to Deepsyke Forest. The route through at the far end led to some-ones garden and I decided not to traipse through but to reverse round and do some more exploring in the forest. Trails are quite nice but no obvious circuits - certainly not when everything so wet.

Back onto the road I travelled East to Whitmuir and then back to West Linton and a long slog into the wind travelling North to the care. Feet were frozen solid by the end. There are limits to how long I can be out in weather like this.

New Year Training Regime

I've signed up for a weeks cycle holiday in June and need to get super fit for it if I'm not to be left miles behind. I've got a detailed schedule of activity and mileage targets. Generally each week I'm aiming for 3 or 4 days on the bike, 2 days of body pump and 1 day of body balance with a few additional short yoga sessions thrown in.

Today I took a long loop along the canal towards and beyond Balerno. A fairly flat and fast route. Very wet with snow melt. A good session but quite muddy.

New Years Day Triathlon

A great start to the year with my first ever Triathlon. Quite nervous at the start with quite a bit of waiting around and time for the butterflies. Was 1 pair of shoes short in my set up preparations but other than this all the preparation went fine.

Swim was 400 m and with reasonable gaps between swimmers was a pretty easy effort with the only unusual aspect being the need to duck under the lane divider at the end of each length. Got passed by 4 or 5 swimmers so probably not quite as fast as I had hoped on the swim.

A quick run outside in my trucks - dry off and dress up warm. Then run in bike shoes to the mounting point.

Feeling a tiny bit off at the start of the ride - a mix of residual nerves and some fatigue from the swim. Fairly quickly into the swing of it and maintained a steady effort on each of the long climbs round the park. HR was only just peaking above 160 bpm on a few occasions on the bike so definitely not attacking the course - wisely probably.

Transition to run was straightforward and the run felt good. Again ran most of the way at a comfortable steady pace although the long climb meant it was fairly tough. Felt strong at the end and able to push hard over the last several hundred metres.

Really enjoyed the experience and certainly interested in doing it again.