Wednesday morning rolls
round again and we thought that it might be a struggle because we both felt
tired and achy yesterday. Steve, because he had been lifting a load of heavy
furniture more or less not stop for days, including the weekend, and it does
not get any easier as you get older. For me, because my ribs still ached this
morning from the violent sneezing on Monday, it was better than it was
yesterday but I still ached and it was hard to say if it was my ribs or my
lungs or both.
I looked at Steve to see
what clothes he was putting on, because Wednesday is, in this current training pattern
a swim-run day but it was raining and not looking at all inviting even if we
were feeling good. As I watched he put on running kit and so I followed suit.
Steve said that he was not
making any promises because he felt rubbish. I said that maybe we should do the
swim set and see if it was still raining when we came out of the pool and see
then, if a swim woke us up or not and maybe it would be better not to even aim
at the harder run in Arundel, because it would be disgustingly muddy after so
much rain, I said I thought that doing a sea front run instead might be
favourite, Steve thought that was a good idea, we would see.
My friend Bekka, who I work
with on Wednesday and Friday mornings, would not be swimming today since she had
gone skiing in Italy
for a week. Actually the pool was half empty this morning, so I imagine a lot
of people had looked out of the window early and thought ‘Blow that for a game
of coconuts’ and turned over to go back to sleep and who could blame them.
There was only one other
lady in the whole of the open section of the pool my side when I started
working through my schedule. Steve started his boys off and I could see that
his arms were not working properly just from his face as I made my turns at the
shallow end. A couple of times he slipped under the lane ropes and did a slow
50 with me swimming stroke for stroke beside me; he is one of the few faster
swimmers in our group that can actually swim very slowly when he wants too. He
is always telling people that the warm up is not a fast 400 and that there
should be a clear difference between your fast work and your slow work. Some
people just can’t swim slowly.
I finished my schedule that
would have been for my friend and I which was:
W.U
3 x 200
1 x 100
8 x 50
1 x 200
Swim down
I missed out that swim down
and started at the top again
I got through the:
3 x 200
Then I did the 100 as
backstroke by which time the boys were done.
I met Steve near the desk in
front and we looked at the weather and turned to me smiling and said “Bugger it’s
stopped raining, we’ll have to run then not having any excuse”. We went out and
ditched our bags in the car and I got a hat and gloves out.
Steve opted to do a test run
of the ‘Frost Bite’ run course because we knew it was a measured 5km route. That
run starts at the pool and does a lap of the park to the east of the pool then goes
to the far end of the promenade to the east, turn around a post and then right
back to the river at the western end, turns and ends back at the pool.
If I say that neither of us
spoke a word the whole 5km, I’m guessing that anyone would know that it was not
comfortable. It was only 5km but both of us were not feeling great before we
started.
A harder but most satisfying day at Ironman Austria
When we reached the point
where the finish gantry will be on March 5th I just hung myself over the sea
wall and gasped and breathed heavily at a cluster of Mermaids Purses on the
stones the other side of the wall. I stayed there for a bit.
Steve asked if I was OK.
I didn’t respond
He looked at his Garmin and
said “Actually it wasn’t that bad but I take it by the shortage of conversation
that that hurt and if it makes you feel better it was agony for me too”.
I didn’t answer.
“You don’t like me any more
do you”?
I threw him a death ray look
in confirmation.
He put his arm around me and
walked me to the car.
“How painful was that on a scale
of 1-10”
“14” I muttered.
At times like that all you
can say to yourself is that it can only get better, try to think of those times
when it all worked out well and you had a smile on your face and sparkle in
your eye, and remember how good the good times felt.
We drove to Rustington for
coffee in Costa’s spotting fellow triathlete Anthony in his Tuff Fitty knitted
hat that makes him hard to miss, eating his breakfast and reading the paper in
Waitrose.
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