and he emailed me this picture!

Very cool – my second magazine front cover, after a mountain biking shot taken at Xterra UK (which became a duathlon!) back in September 2006. This shot was taken in South Africa whilst I was training in Stellenbosch.

I rode along this section of road a number of times for this shot!! Worth it though.

There are some great views around the Southern California hills

It really is quite lumpy around these parts if you go explore. Which I am trying to do more now, at least more so than on previous visits here. There are some busy roads, major freeways/motorways in fact, all about, and yet thankfully I am able to sneak off onto a maze of back roads without much trouble. A great training environment without doubt.

And when I got a little tired of looking out at the views, I looked down at the pretty colours on my top tube

Oh yeah, I almost totally forgot!

After a good many months training in Australia and South Africa over the years, I finally had a real live snake slither and wriggle across the road right in front of me. Jeeso they are fast, and before I knew it the wriggly beastie was offski. – Not without scaring the bejesus out of me first though!!

The session was pretty simple – 20 * 50 strokes backwards and forwards: against and with the tide. 20 strokes steady, 10 strokes hard and 20 strokes easy. A couple entry and exits from the beach and that was it! – I get bored on my own pretty quickly….. probably 1200m all in. Done.

Looking the other way was the bridge that I will race up and down 4 times on Sunday morning – the only hills here in Florida. It looks nice and easy, but I rode it flat-chat yesterday and took most of the ride home to recover……. looks can be deceiving!

The South African experience is drawing to a close. This time next week it will be ‘this way to depatures’.

It does seem amazing that 90 days can zip by so quickly. It’s almost as if you blink and you miss them. But then I actually think about everything I have done since I left Stirling on the 29th November last year and it’s a reasonable list. Here goes……

Well, starting with the obvious – the training, especially since the New Year, (and big toes not withstanding) has been super consistent. Tick. The weather has been all over the shop, but above all sunny. Most notably during the first week of Feb when it go so warm the hills were a-burning. The racing went to plan. Tick. The company has been pretty damn good Between Gavin Noble, Tim Don (timdon.info) and the last couple weeks, Nick Saunders, I have had wicked training partners, and I think between us we have managed to spur one another along nicely from time to time. I certainly feel I have moved along and that is in a large part due to the confidence I have had in the sensible and controlled training environment day in day out.

I have managed to spend some more time with Nikola (in the words of Conrad Stoltz aka the ‘Caveman’) – The Crazy Serb behind the blogging - our website guru. His funny words are here. Nikola lives in SA for the winter time each year, and it was out here this time last year that I briefly met him on one of our longer runs (where, and this is bizarre! – he thought I seemed exteremly GRUMPY.) I guess I can be a grumpy so and so from time to time. I must add I was most recently displaying such a mood during the hotness that was the fires of Stellenbosch which you can re-visit here. – I was best desrcibed as being similar to a ‘Grizzly Bear with a sore head’ during that period. Hmmmm.

I also got going and planned my next few months of racing in the USofA. From here I fly home and spend 8 days in Stirling before pitching up in Miami for 10 days or so. I will race the Miami International which appears to have a cracking start list. I look forward to returning there and seeing my homestays from last year – Martha and Mark. I then head over to California for the rest of March and April. I will race Oceanside 70.3 on the 4th April and St Anthony’s in St Petersburg, Florida on the 26th April. I then return to California to take part in the Wildflower Half Ironman which was probably my favourite race last year.

Tim Don, Raynard Tissink and myself at the press conference

I’m in East London now after flying up the coast from Cape Town yesterday morning. I travelled up with Blair, who as I said has been out here with me for a couple weeks plus my training buddy in Stellenbosch, Tim Don. Our bikes and gear all rolled off the bagage belt in one piece and half an hour later we were at our hotel. Happy days.

Blair cruised around town for a look yesterday, although it didnt take very long, for East London is not the most scenic of places i’m afraid! However it does have a lot of hotels, which confuses me slighty.

Today we had a few bits of pieces to do, including the press conference for the event and then the pro briefing. I don’t ususally arrive for a Sunday event on the Thursday, but because of these, I had to. Tim and I also headed out for a look at the bike course, which is something I was keen to do, given the terrible ride I had here last year (which I was asked about plenty already…!). The course is a really honest bike course, just like I remembered – we basically head inland away from the sea and climb steadily for 45ks to the turnaround, which is at 500m elevation. If the wind is like it was this morning then we will have a cracking tailwind on the way home, which is an incentive to get up there to the turn!

We also had a look around the run course, scouted out the swim bouys and generally familiarised ourselves with the whole gig. The run course has been altered since last time, with the ridiculously tough hill mostly being removed, although there is still a reasonable grade for 500m up to a dead turn on the lap. Whilst driving back down it I commented on it being nice to ‘relax and float back down’. To which Tim responded ‘bloody hell, you can float all you like – but i’ll be piss-bolting down it!’ I liked that

I am really looking forward to having a hit out this w/e however, so lets wait and see when the business end gets going!

Athletes started with a 12k surf ski (pictured), 1.5k swim, 50k road bike ride, 13k road run, 12k canoe, 25k mtb and to finish them off good and proper – an horrendous 9k beach run – the kind of soft, horrible sand that you dont even want to walk on! Virtually everyone that I know here in the ‘Bosch was taking part in some shape or form, be it individually or as a part of a team. That also included my brother Blair, for I had decided to enter him in the ‘Terra firma’ event – everything but the ‘wet stuff’. We were barely on speaking terms by the end of the day……. well, he was barely speaking to me!!!!

Gavin (fresh off a flight from Norn Ireland), Nikola (my website guru) and myself watched the early depart with varying degrees of excitement

My job for the day was to be the ’seconder’ for Blair. Every athlete needs a second, since the event is mostly point-to-point, and so you rely upon helpers to set up the next transition area. I have entered the books as possibly the worst seconder in the history of seconding after my dismal attempt on Saturday! Blair arrived here in SA late on Tues evening, giving him only 3 days to acclimatise to the warm climate and get his bearings, yet I went ahead and entered him in the ‘little novice event – it’s only a bike run bike run’. My reassuring words were not ringing so true 5 and half hours later whilst he trudged in from the beach run. I think we started to realise at the briefing on Thursday eve that it might take a little more prep than he had managed in the previous months!!! – Not much! However, he decided that by taking things easy on the runs it should be fine. Ummm, nope.

Fraser was late getting to the first change over after the road bike, missed him mid way thro the road run to give him fuel and was subsequently 5-10mins late arriving with his mtb – parking was a nightmare! Then when Blair finally appeared for the final change over (by which point I was asking race officials if they had heard anything over the radio …) he looked white as a sheet and asked simply, but desperately ”have you got any food?” Err, that would be no. “I’ve got a gel, if you want?” That didn’t go down well at all. Truth be told, between us it was a complete cock up and we hugely underestimated the task at hand, especially for him under the South African sun.

But credit where it is more than due, for he ran off out onto the beach, vowing to finish and claim his medal. Over an hour later he came back into sight – trainers evidently not required.

- I’ve seen my first South African spider – a Rain Spider I am told. I don’t really mind what it’s called, it just means i won’t go anywhere near the bathroom for the rest of the day!!

- I fell over running in the park on the gravel, trying to keep up with Gavin I may add. This resulted in wounds akin to a bike crash. Thankfully I avoided one of those this week, although I am sure I used up one of my 9 lives in doing so. My heart rate went through the roof and I somehow perfected the art of a fish tail skid on my time trial bike (not recommended) in order to stay upright.

- I had almost all my hair chopped off in an attempt to feel less hot whilst training. So far so good (on the training front, perhaps not on the looks front).

Scotsman, of course

Wow! Baptism of fire, or something like that ….. Dan Hugo tells me there is ‘hill climb’ low key type affair being organised by his father, so I was more than happy to go along. Oh. My. Word. 14.7k, topping out at close to 1600m with a average gradient in the region of 8%. It took me 65 minutes, and I am now a body!

Although the road to the tv mast was 95% tarmac it was much easier on an mtb; these have many more gears for a start, so i borrowed. My back screamed, my lungs hurt an my heart protested, but it was great fun!

The start ramp was out the back of a sheep pen (i think) and the views at the summit were fantastic. The ride back down wasn’t too bad either…… )

stunning

Faustus. My new best friend.

I arrived safe and sound with all my luggage (always a worry when travelling through Heathrow Terminal 5) early o clock on Sunday morning here in South Africa. It is wonderful to be back. Everything is just how I remember it to be and I have got right back into the swing of things, which although IS great, doesn’t FEEL great, if that makes sense.

I decided this afternoon, as I finished up my longest bike ride since the madness of the Sherbourne Ironman attempt back in September (102ks), that I just shouldn’t ever bother to stop training. I had a good break of 3 full weeks away from structured training after Clearwater, didn’t use the road bike at all and ran only a handful of (although enjoyable) times. Today marked the 1st significant training day including a swim, a bike and a run since the end of October, and boy am I feeling it this evening!

However, when not nursing the various aches and pains I have been reacquainted with Fasutus! He has grown significantly since I last lived here, but thankfully he likes and/or remembers me. You see he is a gaurd dog (like almost every dog in this country) so it is essentially his job to bark at anybody who he doesn’t know or like, which appears to encompass the majority of folk! He must stay outside most of the time, but he seems to need to know what is going on in and around the house – so he is conveniently now tall enough to have the occasional peek over the door, which I find rather funny.

I will be back soon enough with some more news, but for now I will leave on the note that it is less than 7 weeks till the South African 70.3, when my 2009 season starts in earnest. I learned early this week that Chris ‘Macca’ McCormack is slated to race also. Alongside Tim Don and the 2 guys who beat me on the course early this year – Rsynard Tissink and Fred van Lierde - it is shaping up to be a superb race.

The hills around Stellenbosch. Beautiful.

My downtime has all but reached its endpoint; I have been home in Stirling for nearly 2 weeks and in 2 more days I will boarding a BA flight to Cape Town, so that I can spend the next 3 months in Stellenbosch… I’m a lucky person.

Since I got back I have been tried to be productive with my time; a trip to Lake District for some mountain biking was great fun; a drive up north to see mum and Abbie; a trip to Heriot Watt to graduate; a couple visits to Glasgow to meet up with old school pals, to name a few. All were good fun and just the sort of stuff I would never normally get a chance to do in such a short space of time.

And in the past 4 days I have eased slowly back into some form of swim/bike/run routine, so that when I arrive out in SA I am ready to hit the gound running with the start of base winter stuff; miles, miles and miles.

I’ve been in the pool early doors with the squad 3 times, and consequently now remember what my ‘catch’ is – I fall out of fitness horribly quickly in the pool! Indeed this morning coach Volley had us doing an open water session – where he takes out the lane rope in our side (not the swimmers ’side’) of the 50m pool and hangs bouys from the turn flags – one at either end, and viola, we have an open water venue, roughly 100m in length. We do sets of 3 * 5 laps as a mass start, and it is bloomin hard work, especially when you have been out of the pool for a while. – And this morning we had a guest mixing it up with us – Andy Hunter was a part of the GB 4*200M freestyle quartet that smashed the British record at the recent Olympic Games, and when he saw us ‘having fun’ he asked to join in for a bit. – His comment of “anything is better than that Medley pi$$” whilst pointing a finger backwards to his swim squad made us laugh! He knew he wouldn’t have the chance again, for next week Ian Thorpes’ old coach will take over as the High Performace swim coach on deck in Stirling, and he’ll not be interested in Coach Volleys sets we doubt….

I’ve been getting out on the mtb a bit too, thoroughly enjoying the surrounding hills – have a look at my flickr.com account for recent pictures.

When I get out there I will have great company to train with – Tim Don has been out there for a week or two, plus Gavin Noble is leaving Stirling tomorrow and will be around till Xmas, plus the many good friends I made whilst I stayed there last time around. I have a major race to look forward to in the form of the SA 70.3 in January, plus I may also enter a few local events like I ended up doing previously.

As I’m told – Winter miles = Summer smiles!