Run training wrecking weather.

Run training wrecking weather.

For much of this year so far, we in the UK have been bombarded by one storm after another. In the area where we live trees have been blown down, the countryside has been flooded and pebbles washed all over the seafront promenade and the sea road. It is the worst I have seen during the nearly sixty years that I have lived in the Littlehampton area. 

For us being quite selfish about the state of our area, it has wiped out some of the run routes that we have taken for granted over the rather long time that we have lived in the triathlon world. The worst affected run being on the west side of the river Arun as far as Clymping, where the sea defences have been completely washed away and the farm land behind the beach has been flooded cutting that two hour run for me down to a forty minute run before it is too messy to use. 

   

For thirty years give or take, on the weekends that we were not either on holiday or competing in a triathlon somewhere far away, we would be going out for our favourite Sunday run in Angmering Park this has also become a muddy, slushy mess for a while and we have moved our run to Arundel.

Traditionally we start our Sunday run roughly 8-10 minutes before our slightly faster and younger friend who turns up that fraction later coming from a different direction. We start our run with a short brisk walk to the gate that that is our set start point. 

 

Our friend catches us somewhere along the way and if we don’t see her until the end, it is because she is a seriously ‘Green’, not just a thinker but a doer, in that she runs with a backpack and picks up plastic litter that the thoughtless and I venture to say brainless oiks, have thrown aside into the hedges and ditches along the way. She also runs barefoot some of the time on the unmade up sections.

I do carry a shopping bag on the beach when I walk there and on my way home in my neighbourhood. The littering never used to happen when we first moved into our little cottage twenty five years ago when it was a country lane. However the council have seen fit to allow the building of over a thousand new houses to surround our formerly pretty lane, that now has eroded banks from the bus service that was introduced for the new estate residents of the two large new estates here abouts. The result is a regular trail of Mcdonald’s wrappers and beer tins thrown down by, and there is no nice name for these people, nothing that suits them better than plain, environmentally ignorant pigs! 

Getting back to the training for my husband/triathlon coach and myself; Angmering Park is a stretch of well managed wooded countryside that we feel we are blessed to be able to use for our run training. Half of our run route travels along part of the Monarchs Way, an ancient long national footpath dating from the battle of Worcester on 1651. I often think what a great holiday idea that would be, to walk the entire route taken by Charles II after his defeat at that battle, I have always been dead keen on our nation’s history so it really appeals to me. This full walk is 615 miles or 993 km. 

I am afraid that my busy life as a triathlete puts that big bright idea right out of the window for the next couple of years at least, though I have completed a number of long point to point walking holidays in the past that were rapturously engaged upon. How-jolly-ever; because of my incredible race programme, that will have to wait. 

The 2020 race plan starts with a fabulous looking Ironman 51-50 (Olympic distance) event in Poreĉ, Croatia, on the Istrian Peninsula on the 10^th  May. 

Two weeks later the race that I am most excited about this year will be an Ironman 70.3 (half Ironman) in Graz, Austria I have looked up as many travel websites as time allows and Graz looks wonderful and it is incredible that with all the travelling Steve and I have done through Austria, that we seem to have missed a precious gem somehow. Well that will be rectified soon enough. 

Below is a reminder of what this mad old bat of triathlon is looking forward to this summer.

         March 27-28-29^th Swimathon Triple Challenge

         (5000 mtr. Pool swim three days running).

April 26^th Bluebell run. 10km off road woodland run

May 10^th Poreč, Croatia

Ironman 51-50 1500mtr sea swim- 40km bike-10

May 24^th Ironman Graz 70.3, Austria. (Half Ironman distance)

1800 lake swim- 90km bike- 21 km run

May 30^th Run-2-Music Sea front 10km running event in Brighton

June 14^th Royal Windsor Triathlon 1500-40-10

July 5^th Klagenfurt Ironman Austria

3800 lake swim-180km bike-marathon run

July 12^th National Aquathlon Championships, Worthing.

Sea swim/promenade run (current 2019 title holder in AG)

26^th July Dawn on the Downs 26th off road downland run

August 1^st Pier 2 Pier open water sea swim Isle of Wight

Sandown to Shanklin 1.8 miles

August 30^th Zell am Zee Ironman 70.3 (distance as Graz race)

September 6^th Koper, Slovenia Ironman 70.3 (as Graz race)

September 13^th Brighton and Hove Triathlon

1500mtr sea swim/ 40km bike/10km run

Qualifier for 2021 World Championships in Bermuda