Who said a thousand calories was a lot?

Saturday(30th) – Looooong bike ride – hilly loop up into the high(er) peaks with a group. 190k, 6hrs

Sunday – Longer run with sme faster pace work. 25k, 1hr 50. Swim solid 5k (4*400,4*300,4*200,4*100 main set)

Monday – Swim – masters session; 5k.  Bike 2.5hrs steady – 75k.

Tuesday – Morning ride; 4.5hrs with 1hr of TT work, 140k. (1 puncture+1.5 litres choc milk). 40min steady run, 9.5k

Wednesday – Run 6k easy. Swim 4k including 40*50 interval set.

Thursday – Run 6k easy with strides. Swim 4.5k solid. Ride 75mins, looking at race course; 40k.

Friday – Run 7k steady. Swim masters, 4k. Feet up, watch tv!

The razor-sharp amongst those reading will notice i’ve had two long rides early in the week leading into the race; but I wanted to have some volume up to 5 days out, and with no ride on Wednesday I think I recovered pretty well from the longer TT efforts of Tues. Hope so anyway. Gulp.

Running has been low volume, low intensity and ‘thro the roof’ breathing!! Needless to say I am finding the altitude is taking some time to adapt to.

Swimming i have kept pretty consistent; I am gaining quite a lot of aerobic fitness from the swim sets and i do feel it is making a difference to my general fitness. Hopefully it will help lift my swimming back to where I would like it quick time. Time will tell.

It’s been a good week though; a nice mix, and the race this Sunday will be another guage as to where I am at on the road back to competing rather than taking part.

And finally, on an all together different note, the week has also been an intro into hot-air ballooning – they seem to launch most mornings from down the street… i’ve watched them on my jog/runs – wondering if I might think about a trip up there? Probably not!

I’ll write more about settling in soon, but for now I will stick to the thin air stuff – since with thin air comes high moutains and I’ve been able to explore them a little more over the past few days as breathing has become easier.

Boulder sits just on the edge of the Rockie mountains at around 5500ft, with rolling plains stretching away as far as the eye can see away from them. So when I arrived here I stayed ‘low’ and didn’t ride up the moutain roads and canyons to give the lungs and heart a chance. So on Thursday I did my first longer ride – topping out at nearly 10000ft at the stunning Lake Brainard. It was a fun ride with ‘local’ fellow Commonwealth training buddies Joe Gambles, Richie Cunningham, Dan Hugo and Josh Rix. – They have all spent at least a couple of summers here and know all the good hang out spots

The ride was one of the hilliest I think I have ever ridden – with nearly 8000ft of climbing throughout the day – taking in 140ks in just over 5hrs saddle time.

Joe Gambles and I as we hit the Lake at the top of the ride – 2990m (that means O.U.C.H)

We weren’t sure if he was more surprised than us?! – Have a look at some more pictues that Dan snapped during our ride over on his website … he’s a little bit better at it than I am.

Today I did my second longer mountain ride of the week (and  think my longest ride outside of racing Ironman or Abu Dhabi) with a rather talented group of individuals including not one but three world champs. I did my best to keep up and not stop for photos too often!

The ride was 187ks door to door and took me just under 6 hours … as well as six 750ml bottles of fluid, 2 large chocolate milks and maybe a cheeky chocolate bar to keep me happy.

I used my iPhone to take these and have edited them with a clever little App called Camera+ – it’s fun to use and I will play around with it a little more with time i think – as long as I am allowed to stop for photo shoots and not get left behind that is. If you snooze you loose.

All in all though its been a really fun couple of weeks so far, and I feel really settled here. It is entirely obvious why Boulder is such a popular choice for so many traithletes, cyclists, runners and sports enthusiasts in general - it’s a mecca for all things fitness and outdoors. I love it!

me in front of the our appartment for the next month

Today I got through a good initiation to the heat and humidity (it was a hot 90F according to the car thermometer) - a 12k run this morning, a 65k ride out and back along the Queen K highway and a 5K swim in the Kona Aquatic Centre to cap it all off. If anything, it was during the swim that Julie and I felt the most thirsty!

It is good to be here and starting the process of simply ‘getting used’ to the island. I really believe that if I am going to race to my potential here on Ocotber 9th then I must get myself fully dialled in to the unique conditions over here.

Roll on Day 2 …. (i’ll be back with better pictures from tomorrow!)

Myself with Wattie in LA back in May

For someone who would ride, ride and ride some more, you have to take your hat off to him for his decision to jump headlong into entering an Ironman … not having done much (if any i think?!) tri before! - Why not give it a go huh?

He tells me that what with all this swimming and running he’s had to do in the Californian summer, “the weight is melting off me” – not really been the case for me here in the Shire Wattie!

A big good luck from me for this weekend. Enjoy

being worn on my feet sometime soon. Pretty cool I say

I have to say that I have been slack (yet again) on the frequency of blog posts, no excuses. No, hang on, who am I kidding … there are plenty of them! Swim, bike and run excuses to put a finger on it. It’s all this training for an Ironman – I’m a few weeks into my main block of work and with a final hard few days remaining, the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be approaching. Phew.

Don’t get me wrong, I am really enjoying the training – I love the satisfaction I get when one good session follows another and fingers crossed a week of that routine becomes a multiple. It certainly is all about consistency, that doesn’t change whatever the distance you choose in this sport, and if anything these weeks have proven it is that much more important when preparing for an Ironman. However every now and then ‘the grump’ sets in – and for those who know me better, you’ll not be surprised to learn that the weather here over the past week or so has been ensuring that said grumpiness has been that bit more apparent than normal – another aspect of the consistency if nothng else

I guess it’s just the nature of being in Scotland over the summer. We know it’s coming (the rain, the wind … not to forget the cold) and yet for some reason I still find it depressing to wake in the morning and hear the rain fall. – I rode longer on Tuesday (140ks) and was delighted to make it over Comrie Moor and around the Lochearnhead loop without a sinlge drop of rain. It was the first time in over a week I was able to get in the door without having to think about jumping headlong into the shower.

As I mentioned beforehand though, it’s the last few days that I have planned on this routine, and then the bulk of the sessions needed will all be tucked away, leaving me more time to start resting up, be less grumpy and get excited about the prospect of racing Ironman!

Lets hope the rain gives us a little break soon, allowing some riding under a blue sky in Stirling once more …. it happens you know! (as Gavin & Blair show here)

training kit got abandoned, just for a while ...

 Training has kicked back in well though … it’s always hard to get back into the long(er) training sessions, but at the same time it’s a satisfying feeling being tired each night, a feeling I am going to get used to over the course of the next month with all this Ironman jazz!

So far this week i’ve been dong:

Monday – swim 5k aerobic, bike 70k steady, run 10k easy shuffle

Tuesday – swim 4k including hard 400m reps, ride 100k hilly, run 15k incl grass intervals

Wednesday – swim 4k easy, ride 60k easy, run 30k steady ….

…. and so the week shall go on. And the next one … following the template.

we even made it to the beach...

So Friday we ’sailed’ across, drove scenically through the middle of the Island and finished off the evening with Shepherds Pie – one of my all time favourites that reminds me of home cooking from mum as a kid. Delighted.
Saturday was spent circum-navigating the whole of Arran – keep the sea to your right and keep going! Now, in a highly useful fashion, the loop of the Isle happens to be exactly 90k … but a helluva hilly loop may I add! The sun was out and the wind not quite at Gale Force 9 – with a midway stop for the obligatory Coke&Mars (is it just me or do they not seem so much smaller than they did ‘back in the day’?). All good.

Sunday provided more of a ‘Scottish’ feel as we pedalled away from the house – mist/drizzle/chilly, but it quickly subsided, and my new phrase for the w/e seemed to ring true – ‘wet before seven, dry by eleven’. A run off the bike along the beach rounded off a nice wee break. (Note lack of swim – but there were purple jellyfish, and as a rule I don’t do stingy/squidgy/wriggly things!)

who needs 'abroad' when Scotland looks like this??

So training for me is being wound down. The w/e was the end of another nice little block of work that kicked off again after I raced in Kent – now it’s a few days till UK Ironman 70.3 and I’m getting excited about all systems being go for that.

I’ll report back before we fly down on Friday morning … but for now it’s bedtime – I turn 28 in half an hour

Toby and I are usually hanging out in St Pete this time of year....

So I didn’t get to fly to Florida earlier this week after all. The Icelandic volcanic erruptions ensured of that … I am able to fly (I hope) on Monday, which means that I miss racing in St Anthony’s  this w/e. I am dissapointed of course, but it is out of my control, and I am glad at least I can make it over in time to race St Croix the w/e afterwards. Control the controllables I say.

Training is going well, I’m happy with that, and I have another few days here to round it all off. Hopefully avoid snow during those days ….

Myself and fellow team members Joe, Julie and Heather share some of our thoughts before race day ……

On Wednesday Blair and I headed into town to have a little look around … we didn’t see much to be honest, and here we are on our way inside a shopping centre, where we ended up killing time watching a movie. Hmm … couldnt have done that at home could we?!?

And finally … this morning we all had to climb onto buses with our bikes! to get down to the race start and rack our bikes before race day tomorrow morning. We figured a little ‘team shot’ could work out nice.

We race at 6.20am tomorrow (Saturday) morning, which is 2.20am at home. If all things go to plan, then have a think of me on the run course from around 8ish onwards …

I’m nervous, but excited too. It’s a unique distance, but ultimately I can learn a ton from it and take it forward for racing Ironman later in the year. That’s the plan. I’ll try stick to it

I am I think. I’m back at the ‘grindstone’ (it’s a hard life in the Southern Hemisphere sun!) and it’s going fine. 4 days of the week gone, 500ks to the good with a smattering of solid swim and run work thrown in. A couple of massages for good measure and the odd cafe stop for lunch to keep the body guessing.

I’ll update you on the week that was on Sunday …..