oh crap!

it's 3 hours 18 hours to go till what I suspect will be 24 hours of pain :/ and if i'm honest i'm less than excited!

This week I attempted a 5km swim in the bloody freezing Bala lake.. around half the field dropped out so i'm quite pleased with myself for managing 2 out of 3 laps.. esp as most of those who finished had an extra couple of  layers of fat!! However, in the process I think i've pulled a muscle / aggravated my hip flexor :( but hopefully 3 days of complete rest will rest it enough..

My preparation hasn't actually been too bad recently, i rode 100km of red/black trails last week across Penmachno, Llandegla and Coed Y Brenin and had alot of fun doing it. I also, after a couple of downhill sessions, bought a downhill (ok, freeride) bike.. and love it... :D so after this weekend, i'm going to be looking at downhill stuff for a while instead.. give my knees a chance to sort themselves out.

I also went to the zoo :) Not that it'll help me this weekend, but was good fun all the same! next update should be friday with all the preparation bits and pieces - EEKS!

Quick update before I collapse into bed!

Well I managed it! 12 hours of spinning and I am now UTTERLY shattered :) but i thoroughly enjoyed it and raised a total of £377.70 for Breakthrough Breastcancer. All throughout today I was amazed by how encouraging and generous members, residents and staff were and it does make me feel like I will be able to make a difference :)

I'm now off for a long bath before collapsing into bed, ready for work at 7am tomorrow!! I'll try and post a proper account of the day when I get in tomorrow, after a much needed physio at 3 o'clock!

Jene xx

T-17 hours!

Well tomorrow's the big day. The first of my three big challenges. A 12 hour spin at the gym I work at, St Davids Village Health & Fitness.

So firstly, a big thanks to them for letting me take up a small patch of reception for 12 hours and plaster info about the spin on the notice boards and reception! I'm now off to tesco to stock up on pasta, bananas and chocolate (the ultimate endurance food?!) before having an early night and letting myself panic a bit about what i've let myself in for!

What's amazed me so far is how much support i've been offered and just how willing so many people are to support me and Breakthrough :)

I don't really have much else to say! I just felt I needed a post incase I die during tomorrows spin - it could happen, i'm really not that fit!


ahhhh! I'll update tomorrow with how it went...

Jene xx

It's always good to post after a good day...

Thursday's Post (which blogspot didn't like the first time round):

The sun is shining, I quite enjoyed work (shock horror), i've ridden the black at llandegla without my knees hurting, clearing all the jumps and generally just enjoying pootling along. All finished off with two cups of tea (one of which was stolen from the boss up at llandegla before he had a chance to claim it) and  a creme egg :)

Now I admit that this isn't really gearing up for a 24 hour race, especially as instead of going round the blue afterwards (as planned), I went and played on the pump track :) But as I keep reminding anyone who questions just how much training i'm doing.. good bike handling skills will be essential once I start to get tired!

Despite this, it's not been a bad week of training, I managed 90 minutes of spin on tuesday, a 60 minute run (slow 10km) on Wednesday as well as the 21km black route today. With plans to do the red and blue tomorrow to get the miles in :)

Then, next tuesday, at 8am I am going to start a 12 hour spin in the gym... and I suspect its going to be torture... mostly to my bum! I just need to persuade my boss that he'd like me to spin in the reception so I have people to talk to :) If not, i'm going to be slightly loony by the end of the day stuck in a spin room!

In preparation for the resulting knee pain, I've also booked in with my masseuse for the day after the spin. I could probably do with one this week but unfortunately after last weeks crashed I still have too many bruises for anyone to go anywhere near my left thigh. I wish I knew what was up with my knee as it's fairly frustrating not knowing if i'm doing any long term damage.

Finally, on a non-training note. I'm actually happy. Not that I wasn't happy before or anything. I've just had a few ups and downs over the last three years so it's nice to have no pressure from anywhere... i'm just enjoying riding bikes, lurking at Llandegla, having a job that lets me train lots and living at home for a bit before actually doing something with my life.

Now i'm off to TESCO to find some ice cream - the diet has well and truly gone to shit this week, actually this whole month if i'm honest and i've put on alot of the weight I spent December and January losing. With adventures planned to Cardiff at the end of the month and my birthday coming up I can't see that changing much! Time to accept that 57kg is a fairly stable weight for me and it's just too much effort to shift what's left!

And if you've read this far.. well done (that was ramble-y and not much tri related, even by my standards!)

Jene x

Friday: ARGHHH! my STUPID knee was buggered today :( so I only did the blue at llandegla, most of which I pedalled with one leg... 3 rest days coming up in a attempt to complete this 12 hour spin. God knows how i'll manage 24 hours. But then again, its Friday the 13th, maybe I shouldn't be surprised and it'll all be fine in the morning!

well i'm overdue an update.

Two crashes, about 20 bruises and 200 creme eggs later and mountain mayhem is suddenly just around the corner! Next week I have a 12 hour cycle in the gym to test my knees and see how I get on. Although I suspect its going to be HORRID!

I've also, in a fit of impulse after a sunny ride, entered Deg yn Llandegla - or, for those not in the know, a ten hour enduro mountain bike race. I may change my mind after mountain mayhem though! But it would be nice to race on my doorstep! I probably should have just done the ten hour race in the first place...

Work was too long today.. im really too tired to update properly. tomorrow is the day for an update. honestly.

:)

61 days.. 15 hours.

I am training for an endurance event... now with that in mind I will summarise my training the last two weeks:

I have been up to Llandegla 10 out of 12 days [edit: 13 out of 15 days...]... (sounds good so far), and during that time I have ridden the trials only once! Instead I have spent about 20 hours on the pump track...

So whilst I am now less likely to fall off during mountain mayhem, I probably won’t be fit enough to finish!

I did also do 2 hours on the road bike and a couple of hours in the pool as well as some fluffy weights sessions... but not really anything I could count as proper training :/

My excuse? My knees are a complete pain and anything longer than 1 hour on the bike starts giving me problems – which doesn’t bode well for a race in less than two months! Argh! Co-codomol anyone? More physio booked and at some point i’m praying for a miracle!

However, having said all this, the most exciting thing in my life at the moment? Apart from my new bike, which i still love and gets far more comments than my actual riding.. is the NEW DOCTOR WHO... next Saturday! Eeee. Yes, anyone who sponsors me is, in fact, sponsoring someone with a mental age of about 8.

Thus far, these blog posts haven’t been all that training related and i would attempt to change that fact, except i’m still not training. Tomorrows plan involves Llandegla and a jump bike so it doesn’t look like it’ll get better in the immediate future either... it’s just more fun to jump than spend hours on the bike! Although I will need a couple of days off at some point as i'm accumulating enough bruises to look like i'm being abused - although only by someone about 15 inches high, as all the bruises are shin level... no skirts for me this summer.

xx

Urgh! rain, rain..go away!

73 (i think!) days till mountain mayhem...and fortunately my sports masseuse has just worked (another) miracle and after an hour of massage on friday I managed two full 45 min spins last night with only mild knee discomfort :)

The physio has said my patella isn't tracking straight...3-4mm to far inwards due to a weak Vastus medialis (which, slightly irrelavantly, makes me think of Vashta Narada (Doctor Who) everytime anyone mentions it!) and tight ITB/glutes/ most others things... but as i've had knee pain for a couple of years on and off I dread to think how much damage i've done to the cartilage around my knee!!

I also had another hour of PT last night and after some upside down exercises (something called candlesticks)... which i really didn't like as a) there actually were other people on the gym to witness me having absolutely no core control whatsoever and b) they didn't feel like there were working anything other than my arms... having said that, my abs were in bits today and it hurt to laugh/ mop the floor/ eat chocolate etc... so maybe i'll do them more often :/

Apart from that i'm still not doing that many hours training... and i'm spending most of my time playing around on the pump track and jumps area up at Llandegla.. so whilst my bike skills may be up to scratch i'm unlikely to actually finish the race... but, Dan was the first to utter the words "so...are you actually doing mountain mayhem then?" on tuesday... which makes me even more determined to do it... hence writing a load of rubbish on here... just to make sure I am at least thinking about doing lots of training :)


now i'm off for an early (ish) night so that i'm bright eyed and bushy tailed for a Speed Awareness course tomorrow morning... thank-you North Welsh Police... it better not be sunny or the poor instructor will need to deal with me in a sulk for the full 4 hours... hm

xx