Chlorine Poisoning?

 Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France

This morning I woke up feeling awful after yesterday spent sneezing violently and applying tissue after tissue to my poor nose that was running like a tap. Every time I have one of these days, and it is always on a Monday it leaves me totally wrecked; my ribs and my wings ache as though I have been beaten with sticks all over my upper back. There was a headache today, too one of those forehead jobbies. The day had tired me out and I slept for nine hours without even a bathroom visit. I had turned out the light at 10.30pm and slept straight through to 7.30 am Steve had not disturbed me and had turned the alarm off knowing that I would not be in a fit state to get on the bike. He was happy enough about that too since he had had a very hard day working at Battersea Decorative fair again on the collections day after the show had ended.

If I want to keep my Monday swim sessions, something will have to be done and I think step one will be the try a nose clip again. I find the nose clip hard to keep on so I’m going to keep trying different ones to try to win this battle. The pool staff, say they do not do anything different and don’t see why I have this problem. There are one or two other people who have been affected in the same way as me and they have simply started going to another pool. There are a lot of children in the pool over the weekend since it is a very successful party venue. The chemicals are added automatically I am told…..yes, that’s right, and we know all the reasons why.

Otherwise I will have to change my own schedule which would be a pain in the butt because it works so well along side the coaching sessions Steve does on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On the other days I am perfectly OK and for our club session on Saturday late afternoon. 

I do take a Boots one a day allergy tablet but they are very weak and that is something else I could look into I suppose. Allergies are a pain for the sufferers. But my medical history includes a mother who had umpteen allergies and died of kidney failure and a father who was an asthma sufferer and who died from lung Cancer.  They had both smoked until quite late in life, extraordinarily they both stopped smoking after having Asian Flu one winter when they were lucky enough to lose the taste for tobacco due to that. During that same epidemic I stopped drinking orange squash and fifty years later I still wouldn’t touch it. Curiouser and curiouser eh?

Ironman European Championship Almere Netherlands Long Course 2006
4000 mtrs swim 120 km bike 30km run

There is always something that can upset the apple cart or training schedule. In summer the Monday pool swim could be swapped for a sea swim and that would help the training stay more normal apart from having to wait for the tide. The sea at Littlehampton is just over the road from the pool.

My love of figure skating has been almost satisfied for the present, Steve having made sure that every event on the European Championships was recorded and then watched in the order that I prefer to see it. We have watched the Men’s Short and Free programme, the Pairs and the Ice Dance that saw my favourite Ice Dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France fight back from third in the short, to a breathtaking performance in the free that gave them their third European Championship.

Now I only have the ladies competition and the gala left to watch. Then I will be counting the days until the World Figure Slating Championships in Helsinki at the end of March.

By that time the President of the USA may well from what I have just read succeeded in banning metric measurements. Is this true is or is it a post put on by a comedian? There are so many joke posts about. That would mean that all triathlon race distances will be changed; no more 1500 metre swims in the USA only a mile swim then?

That would surely mean no more international athletics meetings in the USA since 5km 10km 100-400 metres would not be permitted. Please tell me it isn’t true.

Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater, Florida 2006

The world Ironman 70.3 Championships are in Chattanooga TN later this year. All the 70.3 races I have looked at today have used miles.

This below I have just copied and pasted from the race site:

Sunbelt Bakery IRONMAN 70.3 Chattanooga begins with a point-to-point swim that is mostly downstream in the Tennessee River. Athletes will begin with a short up-river section before making the turn and heading downriver to the transition area. The bike course offers spectacular views of Lookout Mountain as the riders head out 11 miles south of town for a rolling 34-mile loop in Georgia. The day ends with a chance to enjoy Chattanooga's many tourist attractions as athletes take in the Tennessee Riverwalk and the beautiful Riverfront Parkway during the two-loop run.

Confused of Littlehampton.

Beltie: An Unsung Hero

Here we go again with another week of work and training.

I woke when the light was switched on and the first thing I was conscious of was a loving hand slide over my foot that was as usual hanging out of the bed. “Time to get up, its morning again”.

“NO” I moan “It’s the middle of the night”.

I slide down the side of our bed to a standing position, tippy toes first, then make a soft landing but still leaning on the bed wearing my birthday suit, hair looking as though I have stuck my fingers in the electricity socket.

 

Monday.

Swim-work.

Monday means 100’s at the moment.

When we get to pool side Beltie watches everybody slip in the water and start their warm up. He gets in via the steps at my side of the pool and waiting for his moment, nine times out of ten his path into the ‘Animals’ lane, will be a dolphin dive to the bottom of the pool passing right underneath me as I swim along the surface, he will then join his men in the warm up.

At the end of W.U. I look and see the laminated schedule he has give me. “Oh no” I say, “What? I’m just a little old lady you know”. He smiles and says “No you’re not you’re an animal”. The he looks up at the clock and adds, “That’s your start coming up now… Gooooo”.

He knows he can leave me to get on with my swim on my own. I was the one who translated the schedule from his illegible scribble into the computer and printed it out anyway, so I know what the clock needs to read for me to go on each consecutive 100 metre swim. He also knows that even though it has a set of 15 x 100’s that I will do 19 and then change to back stroke until his lane set finishes. 1900 mtrs is the swim distance of my hardest race this year. Ironman 70.3 Elsinore, Denmark.

He swims with his guys, except when he needs to note swim times or make sure they go at the right time.

Every now and again as I push off from the deep end he will push off at the exact same moment as me and as he pushes away from the wall with his arms and hands out stretched he will roll to face me and wave one of his hands at me before swimming on past me, or occasionally he will be watching the stroke of his swimmers under the water, with one of his hands pressed on the lane rope above his head to keep him in place and he will Wallace and Grommit grin at me as I turn and pass.

Steve coaches with not the slightest thought of gain to his personal wealth, his reward is only to see his swimmers improve and that is tremendously satisfying to him. He is devoted to the people he coaches, they are his babies. They do know that too and a simple “Thanks Steve” at the end of a session is more than enough payment.

When we got in the car to leave to pool and drop him at work I told him that I had “Til I hear you sing” playing in my head again during my long set of hundreds and that it was a bit of a pain in the neck because the guy singing in my head kept starting at the beginning of the song every time I pushed off, so I never got to his big crescendo and the sustained last note that he holds for bars and bars. It was a bit annoying and when I told Steve that he just muttered “Why am I not surprised”?

On the occasions that I have been racing and Steve has not, he will give every ounce of support possible. He will turn up all over the course, smiling and shouting encouragement. He will do this for anybody that he is coaching and those he is not also. He does not have a selfish bone in his body and is totally dedicated to his sport and to his sports people. 

It is definitely Monday today and I know this because I have not stopped sneezing since swimming today, this is a regular Monday occurrence that is a pain in the neck and further down. Steve has gone off in the truck to Battersea to pick up for our antiques clients all day and won’t be home until late-ish.

That leaves me in charge for the day and I have to actually go in to work. I have mustered together my warmest clothes and a notebook to scribble in whilst I am in the warehouse. Maybe the cold will shock my sinuses in to calming down until Saint Stephen returns to take over command.

Turbo-Swim-Run: Down to earth with a bump

After three great evenings this last week it was certainly back down to earth with a hell of a bump this weekend. Saturday morning we got up a little later than usual to start our turbo session, we started at 7 am thirty minutes later than usual but then we didn’t get home until gone 11 pm and that was the second time this week we have been late going to bed. Steve can come home from theatre night out, throw himself into bed and be fast asleep while I am still in wind down mode. I will take a look at Sky news for one roll of the latest happenings, then I climb into my side of our ridiculously high, ‘Princess and the Pea’ bed and read a couple of chapters of what ever book I have selected on my Kindle. The light will still be on and there is not a chance, even with me being the thing goes bump in the night, that anything will wake Steve; he is a solid sleeper and never complains that I am keeping him awake.

Missing my usual sleep pattern was reflected on the quality of my bike work and the session seemed like it was hours long but was in fact only and hour and a half.

Later on I had a bit on computer work to do whilst Steve had the downhill skiing on TV that looked to be total carnage with the rescue helicopter working overtime. 

There is not time in this life to do everything I would like to do and three evenings socialising had put me way behind on my viewing of the European Figure Skating Championship from Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Yesterday I was able to watch our recording of the Men’s Short programme. Spain’s Javier Fernadez’s short programme was the best I have seen him skate, sheer perfection that had him go into the Free with a 10 point lead leaving him close to unbeatable.  He was not, however perfect in this long programme, even though he had shaved off the cute facial hair that so suited his ‘Malaguena’ routine in the short that helped with the Spanish feel. The clean shaven look did not prevent a couple of costly mistakes in his Elvis routine but he was still safe enough to take his 5^th European title. My favourite skater of the last several years Sergei Voronov was not competing, which was a bit disappointing for me but then he is 29 now which in figure skating competition terms is quite old; sad but true with so much young blood popping out of the woodwork.

Last night the club swim felt much better than the Turbo session in the morning. It was quiet in my lane since I thought that I would be alone because several of my friends were out on the razz one way or another with trips to London right, left and centre. In the end I was not totally alone because a paramedic friend who is a bit of casual at the session, chose to swim in my lane because he didn’t feel up to much with work pressure and having spent a cold afternoon watching his son play rugby. I had told him before we got in the water that I thought it a shame that he was not keen on swim training when he has such a lovely stroke. He is despite being over 6’ tall a very considerate person to swim with and I notice that he always glides gently by me when he passes on the other side of the lane from me to avoid hitting me with one of his shovel sized hands. He told Steve a porky about how far he had swum on one occasion and gave me a Wallace and Gromit smile in the hope that I would not split on him. I wouldn’t do that when I am trying to encourage him to swim with us more often. He got out before the end of the set and I added 300 back crawl to the music in my head that was perfect for swim down. Ramin Karimloo singing Hush-a-bye Mountain; perfect first swim use of this song. I nearly always swim to music in my head.

This morning we had a good run that was only one minute slower than our best, even though there was thick mud everywhere that was made harder when it started to rain about half way through the course. By the time we finished we were soaked to the skin. I had not worn a hat and my hair that I take such pains to straighten, turned back to its natural corkscrews in no time flat. Since we had a bit of work to do later at our warehouse we had brought bags full of warm clothes to change into. Changing clothes completely in the pouring rain hiding behind the car is a bit of an art but sometimes has to be done. Keeping wet clothes on for hours is not an option. Wild life count: four Kites and a Green Woody and of course the usual robin where we leave the car; Must take some feed next time as I am sure he would feed out of your hand.

  

We went to Belinda’s for tea coffee and chatter with Birgit before heading to work. Steve sat me at a table to write labels out for the furniture and brought the workshop heater over to keep me warm as I sat there.  He kept coming back to feel my hands; I am fully aware that I am seventy seven but I hate being looked after and treated like an old lady! My job had to be done because if it was left to Steve it would all be ‘writ rotten’ and nobody can read his scribble, not even him.

                              Our club mate who runs barefoot even in ankle deep mud

Ramin Karimloo and the Broadgrass Band

It may be a little early to make claims on a ‘best this year’ level but Ramin Karimloo and the Broadgrass Band last night at The Capitol in Horsham was indeed our best night out this year and we have been very busy with theatre and movie visits, as we often are during the winter months when we don’t have much in the way of sporting events to get in the way of sheer enjoyment.

That is what last evening at the charming little Capitol Theatre, Horsham, was. Ramin is the best value for money you may get. He has been the long running star in so many musicals that I’m sure President Trump would tell you were HUUUUGE simply HUUUGE. That is what Ramin is in talent terms as well as being a top level hunk of eye candy.

He has several voices all of which are marvellous. The price you pay for the absolute pleasure of hearing him sing ‘Til I hear you sing again’, ‘Bring him Home’. Music of the Night etc. is that you have to accept that he wants to sing Bluegrass and that is in no way too hard because be does that exceedingly well too. Even if that genre is not in your top favourites; the Bluegrass is very well done; foot tappingly, head bobbingly good.

Having said that the difference in the reception of his own fun brand of music and what 99% of the audience want to hear, is vast (another Trump-ism use HUUUGE) and he cannot deny that he can hear that difference too. So the truth is that we, the faithfully following Ramin Karimloo fans, allow him that, because it is not in any way a sufferance, indeed its easy listening and fun watching but it is not what we have gone to the theatre to hear. His big show stopping songs bring the house down every time whereas Ramins own favourite world of music are enthusiastically met but not a fraction of the thunderous applause for the big numbers from the musicals we have loved and seen many times, I cannot count how many times we have seen Les Mis. 

All the other big show songs that he sang from were also a bonus deal: ‘Can we start again please’ from Jesus Christ S.S. was great as was Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Being alive’ and ‘High flying adored’ from the spell when he played Che in Evita.

Ramin Karimloo is an extraordinary talent and as good as his band certainly are, they are not what the crowd have come for; they are there to see and hear the great God of the big musical stage.

Yesterday afternoon I left a post on FB saying that I was getting a little bit excited about the forthcoming evening with my idol. I added that I was dragging Steve along kicking and screaming but in truth that was nowhere near the case. My husband loved that show every bit as much as I did though he may not have enjoyed the long awaited moment when Ramin got hot enough performing to take his jacket off! That is another box that Ramin ticks. Very presentable, fit and strong looking and well as a handsome face….. complete with dimples and a charming personality.

When the show ended, the audience refused to leave; clapping, shouting, stamping, whistling and demanding MORE, MORE. We got several songs more with a final burst of country when all the band came back on to join the main man for the old Johnny Cash smash ‘Will the circle be unbroken’.

When Steve and I saw Ramin's show at the London Palladium last July, at just the right moment a woman called out from the circle “We love you Ramin”; that is un-deniable. Yeah we do…. blokes too.

The programme did at first glance seemed enough money at £7 but it had a link to get three free downloads that were recorded in New York last year including The Anthem from Chess. The warm up act was OK, nice young man with a nice voice singing his own songs; acceptable but sadly for him everybody just wanted Ramin Karimloo to start. Our seats were in the centre of second row and only cost £38 each. What sensational value.

This will be the last chance we have to see our top West End and Broadway man in the UK for some time since he did state that he was moving out of the UK. The reason for that is that he is to star in the new Broadway production Anastasia that starts the preview season on March 23^rd before the full opening night on April 24^th. I think Ramin did a recorded workshop version last year sometime. He will be wonderful in that have no doubt.

The last show on this tour is at the Apex, Bury St Edmonds tomorrow.

Starting Something New

A couple of weeks ago I had a phone call from a young woman who told me that she was student on a film course in Brighton and wondered if I would be able to help out as part of a project on the course she was taking. I gathered that it was basically about older people keeping up with sport for health fitness or whatever. I told her that it sounded like fun and that if her fellow students wanted to after she spoke to them about her idea, that I was more than happy to give some of my time to it. I know from my own experience in life that if you want help with something it is always best to ask a busy person.

That call grew into a flutter of emails and then a request to have a person to person chat. Amazingly she also send a copy of a letter to say that she was doing the course that she had told me about, very professional and understanding.

Yesterday there were texts; about trains and times and directions and finally in the late morning Kathy Azopardi arrived on my doorstep, having already dismantled and neatly folded her Brompton Bike so that it could be brought into the house rather than left at risk outside.

Having made a cuppa, we sat down across the table in the window and she told me more about what their plan involved and then asked questions about my training and my lifestyle. Bless the woman for her dedication, since I understand that the finished work will only be a matter of minutes after several sessions that would be on the horizon to gather what they wanted.

Over the years I have been involved in other missions of this kind but have to say that I felt that we got on like a house well on fire and the interview and all my information and offerings were the greatest fun to share. She wanted to see our turbo room! Now I can tell you that that is not everybody’s idea of heaven. Three racing bikes set up on turbo trainers in the box room of a terraced house. Towels covering the floor over the carpet for obvious reasons, a TV bracketed on to the wall in the corner and all the walls covered in triathlon photos.

She asked about other coverage in magazines etc. She had already found bits on the internet; I dug out piles of old magazines that I had been threatening to light the fire with since recently, I had begun to wonder what I was keeping them for on one of the last occasions that I had a sort out of our sporting mess, accumulated over 26-27 years in the triathlon. So just for the moment I was pleased that I had not taken them to the fireplace.

Sometimes interviews can be hard when the person has no knowledge to base their questions on but that was certainly not the case with Kathy, she had done her homework. We never stopped talking and it was an easy comfortable conversation.

Toward the end of what must have been more than two hours she confessed that she was thinking about trying a triathlon herself, maybe as a special step to mark her fortieth birthday. I asked her when that would be and she said (I think) this coming December. I had to laugh as I told her that according to British Triathlon Age Group guidelines that your age is whatever you are on December 31^st and so she is already forty in my sporting eyes and I think there was a slight widening of her eyes!

This is a woman who rode her bike to meet me and of course all my fellow triathletes will know that being fairly strong cyclist is an excellent place to start from. I don’t think that running is unknown to her either or swimming. 

Talk about, ‘Said the Spider to Fly’. Nothing pleases me more than finding somebody that could possibly get to love my sport as much as I do. She already looks like an athlete for goodness sake and I know from this couple of hours that she is very much her own person and Is not short of determination.

We will be working together now and then over the next month or so. Maybe it will be the start of a firm sporting friendship. I hope so.